Get Paid £5 Per Opinion* (smartstudents.co.uk)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	smartstudents.co.uk
Date:	04/02/03 (760 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free to check out

Disadvantages: Sucks butt

*IF you've got a time machine or have a pocket full of lucky rabbit feet and are sitting with your fingers, legs and eyes crossed in a field of four leaf clover.

Rant type thing:

One of the things which really annoys me about dooyoo and sites like it is that old opinions, which are not necessarily true any longer sit proudly near the top of category sections, often wearing nice golden headgear whilst completely misinforming the world because none of these sites have been foresighted enough to work out what to do with time-sensitive information. The internet categories are the very worst for this because as we all know, things change fast online, companies alter policies and even their whole business structure, yet the old opinions sit their throwing out a heap of duff information. Still, why would anyone want to change their opinion once written? Seems like a lot of work considering you'll probably pick up just 2/3 extra reads anyway by bumping it up your profile. Member reads that is anyway. Well, aside from reading such things as dooyoo is great because it pays 10p per submission and 5p per read or "Beenz is the best site in the world"(except it has been dead a year) and all that other junk, you also end up with sites like Smartstudents.co.uk being portrayed as being absolutely stonkingly fantastic when in reality, they aren't anymore. They once were of course, well they were if you wanted quick and easy cash(lasted about 2-5 months) then they went shitty but they still have a 5 star rating here of course...whilst very definitely not deserving it.

Forget the details, I've no interest in giving you extensive details of the nasty, garish yelllow and pink Smartstudents site and what it offers but rather my mission here is simply to save you wasting your time. You've basically got something like the same set up as dooyoo. You write opinions, they give you cash, you know the drill. Old opinions here will tell yo
u all opinions pay £5 but thats old info. so you'll want to ignore it. Now, if you write in most sections you go into competition with everyone else who has written and stand to win £20, £10 or £5 depending on whether you are adjudged to have one of the best reviews of the month in that area. These will need to be UNIQUE reviews so no using your dooyoo reviews even though there is still nothing on the site which says this. The former policy change they decided upon without letting anyone know for months by the way. Anyway, if on the other hand you write a review of a local shop or service you get a fiver straight off. Very generous you say, much better than hawking around for 3p's and it was for a brief time until they seemingly ceased to have any intention of honouring their claims.

Whether the monthly draws are legit is anyone's guess seeing as they never tell you who won them or indicate in any other way which were adjudged to be the best. What I can tell you about the local review thing is that my first cheque arrived in the early days after much badgering(they never did send them without being pestered) whilst my second hasn't and my email queries have been replied to with some of the most outlandish excuses as to why not. I'll not bore you with these excuses however amusing but suffice to say, you'd have to be a bloody idiot to swallow any of it. I'm expecting the reply to my last email(which they've ignored so far) to be along the lines of the whole office having been abducted by aliens or something because it wouldn't be too far off the last excuse. I know mine isn't an isolated experience either, in fact, I've not come across anyone who has been paid by them in the last six months but plenty who have had similar outlandish excuses as to why they haven't paid up or why they selectively ignore pointed questions or entire emails.

If a company is in financial difficulties and can't honour its
debts (after offering a seemingly foolish amount of money in the first place for reviews and accepting utter crap for it) then fine, I'll accept that, it wouldn't be the first time I've wasted time with a place like this but to see them STILL asking for student reviewers and STILL offering £5 per review etc. when they seemingly have no intention of coughing up takes the p*ss. To also be fed constant lies and bullsh*t in response to email queries is equally not on. I'm not given to writing this sort of erm 'opinion' but considering all the 4/5 star reviews it has here someone had to in order to redress the balance somewhat. Rate as you please to be honest, just do yourself a favour, heed the warning and avoid the shite, erm 'site'.

Bottom line:

Useless to opinionators because they seemingly aren't about to pay you and have absolutely nothing in the way of community interactivity and never have. Useless to anyone searching for information because they accept utter rubbish and therefore mostly have a database full of crap 2 line reviews(well if you could write an essay for a fiver or 2 lines which would you have chosen?). Pants all round. AVOID!

Much better alternatives can be found at:

http://www.dooyoo.co.uk
http://www.ciao.co.uk
http://.bigrag.com


Or simply here which lists all the ones I've ever heard of:

http://www.geocities.com/lazycatsurveys/moreop inions


Of course I'll be happy to raise my rating to two stars if they ever do pay up(it has been around 8 months and counting now in my case for those interested). Nowhere that requires you to jump through hoops to get at the money you've earned and they owe you deserves anything more.

**FEB 19th 2003 - was promised a cheque in the mail this week after another lame excuse...it'll be interesting to see if it materialises and even more interesting to see if it's for the righ
t amount and, or that matter, if it doesn't bounce ;) **

Summary: