It seems like there isn’t a single area of the internet that hasn’t been hit by the old claim refund bug. Wherever there’s money to be made, you can bet people will use shady methods to promote a new type of service. Their only goal is to take away your hard-earned money, after that you’ll most likely never hear from them again. There are plenty of warning signs when it comes to scams in general, and these can often be applied to paid survey scam sites as well.
The good news is that you’re aware and searching for information on this subject, which is the best thing you can do. Arming yourself with the power of knowledge, you can cast aside the darkness of ignorance and expose these propagating scam sites for what they are. So why target the paid surveys genre? It’s quite simple really. Paid surveys are a well-known way of earning an income from home, which amounts to two things. More potential people to scam, and perhaps even more importantly, many people who are newcomers to the internet and making money online, and are more likely to be fool than the veteran web surfer.
A well written sales pitch, some phony testimonials, and a shiny. Professional looking exterior is all it takes to convince many people that these sites are legitimate. They end up shelling out a good deal of money and getting next to nothing in return. These scam sites usually have nothing but links to free sites that could be easily find. Somewhere else on the web with having to pay a premium fee.
A common paid survey scam of companies is to charge users for the right to take individual surveys. Whether you’re with a free or paid survey site, this should never be the case. The company is most likely skimming money from the top, or simply won’t send you money. In conjunction with this, these sites often have minimum payout limits before you’ll receive any money. You’ll need to continually pay them for surveys, and by the time you reach the minimum payout amount. You’ll realize they aren’t going to pay you and you just lost all the money you’ve invested in the surveys. As well as the time it took to complete them.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are many legitimate sites. Which offer services that may seem like a paid survey scam, but actually aren’t. One of the most misunderstood and mistrusted of these is the product review job. Which requires you to pay the shipping fee on an item so that you can receive and review it. These most often are not scams at all, but legitimate offers. You’ll get to keep the product, as well the money that you’ll earn from writing up the review about it.
Another common system which may seem like a scam at first glance is the points reward system. This one is similar to the minimum payout amount scam. As it will take a number of surveys to complete before you have a chance to claim any reward. These points systems are not scams though and will reward diligent survey takers. Some nice merchandise after enough surveys have been take.