Nielsen Ratings - free money

[TheStachery]

Yesterday I collected the mail and saw something from Neilsen Ratings Media Study.  It looked like junk mail and almost threw it away, and on most day I probably would have.  I opened the envelope to find two crisp dollar bills. and a note, and a short survey.  It said, here is two dollar cash, and we will send you five more once you return the survey.  I filled out the survey and sending it back in their postage free envelope.

I have never seen a company send out actual dollar bills in the mail before.  Maybe i remember record /book clubs way back when sending a nickel or quarter, but two bucks?   Awesome.

Anyway keep an eye out for this incase you see something from them.

[Vic99]

About 10 years ago JD Powers sent me $1 dollar and enclosed a survey to rate how satisfied I was after I purchase a Saturn car.

[forummm]

That happened to me once. The dollar bill was so crisp and new!

Ed McMahon kept promising me $10M. But that check never showed up.

[Million2000]

I recall a few years back a statistics teacher of mine talking about this, apparently it is a common practice by them.

I casually work on MTurk doing surveys on my phone if I am bored or have to wait at the doctors office, etc. and I do these little surveys that pay you a small amount do to the survey with promised bonuses later. Just yesterday I got a $2 bonus for a survey I did last week when I was waiting on my wife to get ready for our evening walk. On a per hour rate, the pay is terrible, but if you think in terms of "What else would I do with this exact time" it becomes worth it.

[boarder42]

this preacher on TV keeps sending me dollar bills and asking that i send him 10 dollars back to plant my seed to watch it grow.  i've been currently diverting all of my savings this way as i have cancer and he promises this seed i'm planting will cure it .. and that doctors will just be poisoinging me with chemo.  I've got a write up coming on share your badassity.  Its pretty awesome how well this works.

in all seriousness i found it to be too combersome.  i did the first couple steps but the last step they wanted me to write down everything i watched on any different TV. and we were out of town or not watching TV most of the time or i didnt care to write it down when we would sit down and binge watch 30 episodes of jeopardy. 

[forummm]

this preacher on TV keeps sending me dollar bills and asking that i send him 10 dollars back to plant my seed to watch it grow.  i've been currently diverting all of my savings this way as i have cancer and he promises this seed i'm planting will cure it .. and that doctors will just be poisoinging me with chemo.  I've got a write up coming on share your badassity.  Its pretty awesome how well this works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg

in all seriousness i found it to be too combersome.  i did the first couple steps but the last step they wanted me to write down everything i watched on any different TV. and we were out of town or not watching TV most of the time or i didnt care to write it down when we would sit down and binge watch 30 episodes of jeopardy. 

I guess mine would be a lot easier to fill out. It would be:

[boarder42]

this preacher on TV keeps sending me dollar bills and asking that i send him 10 dollars back to plant my seed to watch it grow.  i've been currently diverting all of my savings this way as i have cancer and he promises this seed i'm planting will cure it .. and that doctors will just be poisoinging me with chemo.  I've got a write up coming on share your badassity.  Its pretty awesome how well this works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg

in all seriousness i found it to be too combersome.  i did the first couple steps but the last step they wanted me to write down everything i watched on any different TV. and we were out of town or not watching TV most of the time or i didnt care to write it down when we would sit down and binge watch 30 episodes of jeopardy. 

I guess mine would be a lot easier to fill out. It would be:

Yes that's what that was getting at. They want to know all media consumed even YouTube shows etc. Makes it complicated  we don't have cable but all digital media is what they wanted to know.

[forummm]

Youtube huh? I didn't know they had ratings for that as well. Podcasts also? I'd have a lot more to report then.

[boarder42]

It was shows you watched that were on networks. Which made it harder bc you had to list original air date and time etc. And it was all on paper not digital. It's like 1920s

[arebelspy]

I got the same thing awhile back.  A couple bucks on the front end, then like $25 or $50 on the back end for filling it out?

Never got another request again, cause my viewing habits (maybe 3-4 half hour shows over the whole week, all streamed, no actual TV, and me putting a paragraph description/commentary about how Fox shouldn't have cancelled Firefly) didn't exactly fit in what they were looking for, I guess. 

[Choices]

We got to the phone call stage, when they left daily straight-to-voicemail messages (The phone never rang. I don't know how they do this.) asking us to call to discuss this further. We called, and were told that the number we were given was for the wrong department. We made an appointment for the right department to call us and they never did. The daily voicemails continued, still leaving the wrong number, until I blocked it.

[RFAAOATB]

I got a couple surveys.  The post return payout was $30 for us.