A Pain in the Brain (Juicy Brains Panel)

Member Name: Zmugzy

Product:	Juicy Brains Panel
Date:	18/06/08 (239 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Surveys can be fun at first

Disadvantages: Too few surveys after an initial spurt and the surveys often run out of juice.

The juicy brains panel (www.juicybrainspanel.com) is a UK survey site run by a market research firm. At first it seems a user friendly and fun site where, compared to similar sites, you have an opportunity to use your own thoughts and words in order to complete surveys called brain juicers. After a while though, some of these friendlier aspects of the site become cumbersome. The survey process is often slow with pages taking ages to load. In my experience on more than one occasion a survey has seemed to run out of juice and crashed half way through. There seems to be no compensation for this. Trying to get feedback from the site is often futile. The actual website though is well designed and well laid out without excessive amounts of advertising. On the site you can view an alter you profile page, view you survey history, see your earnings total and access a help section. There is also an email and a postal address, but as I say, I've never had a reply to an email.

Once you've completed the fairly simple signing up process, upon which you are immediately credited with £1.00 for joining, you'll be invited via emails by 'Cedric' to complete brain juicers. Although he seems a fun type of guy at first, Cedric will soon be getting on your nerves. The surveys I've received have covered a variety of topics from food, movies, finance and even the Big Brother TV show. Surveys are not too long - usually lasting between fifteen to twenty minutes, although as already mentioned, sometimes the pages do take ages to load and you may find yourself giving up halfway through. The questions also tend to be rather odd at times. For example, you'll be questioned about different phrases and asked how they make you feel, but sometimes the phrases make no sense or are quite abstract and evoke no feelings whatsoever.

Surveys seemed frequent at first, maybe two per month on average, but after 18 months of being on the panel they have virtually dried up. You earn about £1 per survey, I think £1.25 is the maximum I've come across. You also receive 20 pence for referrals - hardly worth the effort. During the last six months I've received invitations to complete 6 surveys. I've started all of them but got screened out for four of them. You may get screened out half way through a survey in which case you'll receive a token 25p. Therefore I've only been able to complete two, earning £1 per survey. So I have earned a grand total of £4.25. I have cashed out a total of £20 since I started. You cannot withdraw your earnings until you reach £5 which you can only redeem in the form of an Amazon voucher. I will say that the redemption period is usually quite swift, just a few days until your code arrives by email.

If the pages were quicker to load and the surveys were more frequent, this might be a fun site worth recommending. However, the lack of surveys, too many screen outs and frequent delays lead me not to recommend this site. It might be worth signing up in order to earn your first £5 or £10 but after that I recommend that you dump it. It will become more of a pain in the arse juicer than a brain juicer.

Summary: Grab a fiver then dump it!