[HOT TAKE] SurveyJunkie and Vindale aren’t actually half-bad
tl;dr: People hate SurveyJunkie and Vindale Research. I don’t.
If you search either “SurveyJunkie” or “Vindale” in this sub, you’ll see a ton of posts from people citing why both of them suck hard, even calling them some of the worst survey sites out there. I see where some of their complaints come from, but I just wanted to share my experiences with both of them and why I don’t think either of them (particularly SJ) are as bad as people say, at least from my use of them.
So firstly, I want to clarify that I’m not terribly experienced when it comes to making beer money. I’m an 18 year old guy as of last November, and I’ve only been doing this stuff since roughly last month. The only reason I started doing it was because I love collecting retro video games, and wanted to make some extra moolah to buy myself a Sega CD, which I found listed on Mercari for a hefty $195, and which I couldn’t afford as I only had $60 or so in my savings. In addition to selling a 2nd Game Boy Advance I had and borrowing $20 from my friend Collin, I signed up for InboxDollars and SurveyJunkie and started taking surveys.
Ultimately, I managed to make just over $50 with ID across a few days, which I managed to do both by taking some crummy mobile game offers, and simply by virtue of the fact that I’m in high school and have several hours almost every day to waste in-class. I also racked up a little over $30 with SJ, but because of some dumb technical difficulties with verifying my account, I had to email customer support and wait for them to mail a damn postcard to me with a verification code on it, so until then I couldn’t actually request payment until after I’d already bought the Sega CD.
Since then, I’ve still been doing it on-and-off. Less so with InboxDollars, as I actually stopped getting any surveys whatsoever on my dashboard (maybe I sped through one too many?), but generally with SJ and a tiny bit with Vindale. It’s a great way to kill time as long as my school is closed because of the Contagion that Shall Not Be Named- especially since I work as a substitute teacher for an after-school kids’ program and won’t be able to work at all for the time being- and I’m trying to save some extra money so I can get the new Animal Crossing game to play with my friends over the next 2 weeks.
Anyways, getting back on-topic, I’ve seen a ton of people complaining about SJ on here, stating that they’re filled with scams and they don’t pay well. They’re even listed under the sub’s list of shady websites, albeit mostly because they’re apparently pretty ban-happy. I find it slightly confusing, because as far as I’m concerned they’re one of the better sites I’ve come across so far in my opinion. Most of the surveys I’ve seen pay somewhat proportionately for however long they take (a lot of 4-minute/10¢ ones it seems :P), plus the fact that you get a few cents for each unqualifying survey is a great touch and seems to add up fairly quick for me. And the one time I requested payment, they followed through with it- I got my $30+ sent to my PayPal almost immediately, though I haven’t requested payment yet since then.
Yeah, I do get the occasional survey where I make it all the way through to the end, then get hit with that “Aww, sorry but you didn’t qualify” bullshit, and that is pretty annoying. I’ve also had one instance in the past few days where I just didn’t get paid at all for a really long, $1.10 survey I took, which I contacted them about and am currently waiting for a response on. Generally though, my experience has been decent with them and I don’t see where people’s issues are coming from. At the very least, they’re leagues above InboxDollars, if simply due to the fact that the payment takes mere minutes and comes without any obnoxious transaction fees. I haven’t been banned from it yet, so I guess we’ll see how that turns out in the end. As a whole though, I haven’t had any issues with them besides the verification troubles I mentioned.
Now, as for Vindale, in all fairness, I can’t really speak much for them as I haven’t used them very much yet. I started using them after the whole Sega thing, and I haven’t reached $50 yet, so I haven’t even gotten the chance to request payment yet and can’t speak on behalf of whether they actually pay you or not. I will say that both the $50 minimum and the biweekly “payment date” are fucking stupid and undeniable downsides to the website.
Still, based on mere first impressions, I seriously dig Vindale So far! The daily studies they are absolutely great, because they just keep redirecting you to new surveys whenever you don’t qualify for one. Not only does this basically guarantee you can make $4+ every day, but if you get a really long survey that you don’t feel up to taking you can just keep accepting it and pushing the back button until you get one with a nice length. So for instance, if you’re taking the $1 survey and you run into one that’s 30 minutes long, you can just click the green button, then immediately go back, and repeat this process until you get one that’s, say, 5 or so minutes in length. I’ve also occasionally gotten some really cool surveys from them– I cringed at first when I saw I had gotten a 120 minute survey, but I took it just for the hell of it, and ended up getting to watch some movie that premiered at Sundance and hadn’t even come out in theaters yet. How cool is that– I basically got paid $1 to watch a movie! AND it was a good movie, for that matter!
Like I said, I can’t speak for whether they actually pay in the end, but at least from my initial experience Vindale isn’t the worst in my view. They have their annoyances, sure, especially with how payment works, but they’re relatively small issues as far as I’m concerned, and trumped by how decently quickly it can add up. I guess I should not that I’ve had VERY little luck with the surveys besides the daily studies, but those daily studies still work well as the primary source of income.
Ultimately, I can’t speak for other people and their experiences. I know a lot of people have cited serious problems they’ve ran into with these 2 sites, and I can’t change that. Still, I thought it’d be worth sharing my experiences, as comparatively, my experiences haven’t been the worst with either of them, especially as far as SJ goes. I’m sure there are other websites that pay way better than these ones, but as a beginner who’s just gotten into survey taking, I think they’re pretty decent.
Thanks for reading my overly long TedTalk about online survey websites. Have a good week and remember to wash your hands. ~Tristan
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoney/comments/fkwoj8/hot_take_surveyjunkie_and_vindale_arent_actually/
No comments:
Add Comment