As “get paid” programs have become more and more popular, the confusion about them continues to grow. Most people are aware nowadays that you don’t need to pay $34.95 to access a paid survey database. And it’s fairly common knowledge that even the legitimate survey companies typically don’t reward participants in cash, because there’s so much demand to do paid surveys that they don’t have to.
However, many companies use the demand for paid surveys and paid email programs to attract customers to their site, using inaccurate terminology and a host of other tricks to profit from unsuspecting consumers.
A pure market research company does just that – market research. This is typically what people are really looking for when they are looking for companies that offer “paid surveys”. On the other hand a company that does “incentivized offers” will give you cash back or some sort of gift for taking an offer or multiple offers. They also frequently require you buy a product or pay for shipping and handling before they give you the cash or gift.
The deception begins when incentivized offers companies start calling themselves paid survey companies or paid email programs. A true, pristine paid survey (market research) company will never ask you to pay to take an offer. But you’ll see many of the incentivized offer companies using terms like paid opinions or paid surveys in their company name or prevalent in their marketing materials. And a true paid email program…well…pays you for reading emails.
OK. So let’s say that you’ve figured out that an incentivized offers program isn’t likely to be a member of CASRO (the Council of American Survey Research Organizations). But you’ve also figured out that incentivized offers programs are actually one of the best ways to use “get paid” programs to save money on products you buy and also make a bit of extra cash.
You still have a few “gotchas” to watch out for even with the most legitimate incentivized offers programs. Part of the problem is that the incentivized offers programs don’t always screen their advertisers for how they actually promote their products. Sometimes they do, but not always.
The most notorious trick that’s used to suck cash out of your wallet is what’s known as “hidden negative option marketing”. But to understand what it is, you need to understand what regular “negative option marketing” is.
Negative option marketing is a technique in which companies charge consumers for their product or service based on the consumer not rejecting the offer they propose. The most frequent use of negative option marketing is for trial membership or subscription services. For example, a consumer may agree to pay just shipping & handling for a free product and also agree to receive and be charged for more of the product on a monthly basis unless they specifically tell the company not to ship the product or they cancel their membership.
You’ve undoubtedly seen this technique in book of the month clubs, certain health products, and magazine subscription offers. But the more insidious version of “negative option marketing” is what is known as “hidden negative option marketing”. This is where the company uses some way to hide the fact that they will be charging you on a monthly basis.
Hidden negative option marketing takes what can be a legitimate marketing technique into the realm of extremely deceptive marketing. In hidden negative option marketing the company hides the fact that you are agreeing to additional charges. Some of the ways they do this are as follows:
- They require you to pay shipping & handling to receive a trial product and hide the fact that they are going to charge you additional money in the Terms of Service at the bottom of a web page without providing a checkbox for you to check that you agree to the “Terms of Service”.
- They do provide the checkbox for you to agree to the Terms of Service, but hide the fact that they will be charging you additonal money towards the end of a very long and complexly worded Terms of Service.
- They precheck a box saying that you agree to the Terms of Service, but hide the checkbox beneath visible porition of your computer screen (also known as “beneath the fold”).
- They hide the Terms of Service by putting the words “Terms of Service” in a color very similar to the background color of the section of the webpage the Terms of Service are on.
The other “gotcha” isn’t quite as sinister. It’s merely that if you are working an incentivized offer program as the way of receiving a gift you should also pay attention to the Terms of Service. What you want to look for is what the incentivized offer company does if they run out of the gifts. Do they substitute an alternate gift, do they pay you cash, or are you just out of luck?
The takeaway from this article should be to always find and read the Terms of Service on any incentivized offer where you have to enter your credit card details. And if you can’t find the Terms of Service…run!
Paul Schlegel helps run the site OfferExperts.com, a site advises consumers on intelligent use of special offers, coupons, and get paid programs.
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