Toluna - who are ya? A so-so survey site. (toluna-group.com)

Member Name: deelot

Product:	toluna-group.com
Date:	29/04/09 (378 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Earn shopping vouchers for completing easy surveys

Disadvantages: Takes ages to receive reward points and vouchers, an unhelpful Helpdesk

Toluna, Toluna - many a word has been said about Toluna. Many of these words are not very complimentary particularly if you browse the Toluna thread on the Money Saving Expert Forum for example. I'm not here to bash Toluna to pieces in this review - after all, I am still active Toluna member and have been for three years. What I would say though is that if you are selective about the survey sites you want to join up to, then you could probably give Toluna a miss, because there are quite a few better survey sites out there (many of which I have reviewed already).

JOINING

I found it easy to join up with Toluna or Test and Vote as it used to be called *back in the day*. It will take a while to complete the profiling questions. I always find that profiling questions are really boring to complete, but they are nevertheless necessary, because the answers that you give them will determine the types of surveys you will be invited by email to complete. If you don't complete your profile, it is highly unlikely that you will receive any survey invites. In any case, Toluna rewards their members with points when they complete each section of their profile. Profiling questions are used to help Toluna identify your consumer behaviour, spending habits and lifestyle.

REWARDS

Ah... rewards. Each time I successfully complete a survey, Toluna are supposed to reward me with a certain number of points. When you have enough points you can redeem them for various rewards. Many of these rewards include paper and e-vouchers. At the time of writing, you need to earn 60,000 points to earn a £12 Halfords paper voucher or a £12 Love2Shop voucher. You can use Love2Shop vouchers in loads of shops on the high street, including Boots, Homebase, River Island, W H Smith, Iceland etc. Alternatively for 60,000 points you could get a £12 CD-WOW, £12 HMV or £10 Amazon e-voucher. I have usually redeemed paper vouchers from Toluna. I normally have to wait up to 2 months to receive my vouchers through the post. I know it is quite a long time to receive the vouchers compared to other survey sites, and I know there are a lot of people who spit feathers about this. I just think that as Toluna is in no way part of my main income, I can afford to wait a bit longer for my vouchers. I think that the by-product of being a Toluna member is that it *may* help develop the virtues of one's patience and perseverance! Also, don't expect to e-vouchers to arrive any quicker. I've heard that they can take up to 2 months to arrive in members' inboxes. If you really want to, you could trade a smaller number of your hard-earned points to receive discount or money-off vouchers from some obscure online shops. For instance, for 5,000 points you can get a 10% discount voucher for purchasesover £50 from Drinkstuff.com. I personally think this is a waste of my hard-earned points, as are the prize draw tickets that you could also spend your points on.

As I mentioned earlier, patience is a very important human attribute to have as a Toluna member. Trust me, it can take a long time to even reach the 60,000 threshold in the first place. The number of points awarded for completed surveys varies to say the least from 500 points to 10,000 points. You might reasonably think the number of points are awared according to the duration of the survey, as they are with other sites like Valued Opinions. However, Toluna and logic do not seem to go hand in hand. These days you might only be awarded 2,000 points for a 20 minute survey, but then on other days you may get 6,000 points for another 20 minute survey. A couple of years ago, you used to be rewarded between 4,000 to 8,000 points for the same survey length. This is why if may not be worthwhile to join Toluna. If you are really desperate points, you can always log on to your Toluna account, access the Explore tab at the top of the page and select Sponsored Polls. The Sponsored Polls page will have many quick questions available for you to answer. Members are usually awarded with 15 points per question. In any case, I find that Sponsored Polls are useful to complete for once a week, because sometimes they may lead to more survey invites in the future. You do not earn any additional points if you are screened out of a survey, but Toluna state that you are entered into their cash prize draw. I would personally prefer a few extra points!

Another problematic feature of Toluna is that points for completed surveys are only awarded after the study has been finished. This is extremely vague and unclear for all members including myself. The likelihood is that you might have to wait for one month or even longer before you see the points appear on your Toluna account balance. It is something that I don't particularly like about Toluna, but that I have come to accept. I know that many people keep a record of the Toluna surveys they have completed so that they can email Toluna to claim their points back, if they have not been credited after 1 month. I keep a special folder in the my email account of completed Toluna surveys precisely for this purpose. In this respect, I find that there is a lot of unnecessary bureacracy involved when dealing with Toluna.

TYPES OF SURVEYS

The surveys themselves are usually about consumer products and services. Some are interesting and some are not quite frankly. There is an opportunity to test products with Toluna, but I use the term opportunity very loosely. I have never received an products from Toluna to test myself after 3 years. If you do want to put your name into the hat as it were, then log on to your Toluna account, go the the Test & Rewards tab and select Test Area. Every week there is a product that needs testing and you can enter yourself to be selected for the product trial. Good luck - you'll need it! Sometimes, Toluna may invite you to particpate in other exclusive survey panels or online focus groups, which may offer subsequent rewards. I think that is the reason why I stick with Toluna, because they can give you other survey opportunities in this respect.

"CUSTOMER CARE"

To be honest, I gave up using Toluna's standard help desk email for queries and claims long ago, because I never got anywhere with them. I instead use a couple of personal staff email addresses if I want to correspond with Toluna. You can find them (as I did) if you search the Toluna thread on the Money Saving Expert Forum. The Toluna thread on MSE is far more supportive than the Toluna Helpdesk, which says a lot in itself. In fact, if it wasn't for the Toluna thread, I probably would have given up on Toluna long ago!

Summary: You could probably give Toluna a miss, as there are better survey sites out there