It’s a very well-known scam. You cash the check, then they ask you to either wire some of that money back to them as some sort of fee or buy something for them and send the item to them. So, you deposit the check, then wire some cash to them thinking that the check you just deposited will cover that. A few days later, after you already send them the money, the check will bounce and the money you send to them will come out of your own account.

How it works: Pinecone Research is owned and operated by Nielsen, the billion-dollar data and measurement company responsible for TV Nielsen Ratings. With Pinecone Research, you earn $3 per survey, which typically take 15 to 20 minutes to complete. The downside to Pinecone is that they often have strict demographic requirements, which means that you may not qualify depending on your age, education, race or other profile factors.
InboxDollars is one of the worst programs. Unlike others, they have a very short “6-months of inactivity and we’ll close your account and keep your money” term. Plus, you earn next to nothing. I too stopped getting paid emails and tried to unsuccessfully qualify for surveys. As such, I mostly did the big-ticket things, like signing up for money back on donations to charities. I accrued $98 and log in monthly to avoid the “inactivity” thing. But, guess what? They just closed my account for not completing anything in six months. They don’t even hold up their own definition of “activity”. So, user beware–withdraw when you can, even though UNLIKE the other programs, they charge a 3% fee on what you’ve earned. Sketchy, sketchy, sketchy.

After my initial $5 bonus, I found that many of the surveys did not pay out a ton of money, which was a bit of a bummer. Nonetheless, clicking around and answering questions can still net you a couple of bucks an hour, which is better than nothing. You’re going to be on the internet anyway, so you may as well get paid for it. Learn more in our InboxDollars Review.
Why do you earn just $0.25 to $0.75 for completing a survey rather than $5.00 or more? And why does Inbox Dollars require certain people, based on their lifestyle and certain answers to questions to qualify for surveys? Also why are Inbox Dollars members required to earn $30.00 before they can make a payment, rather than make a payment after first opening an account?

Inboxdollars India


First, thank you for providing this extensive list. I wanted to offer a quick follow up. After reading your post I decided to give Survey Junkie a try and I’ve already closed the account. Yes, I can tell it’s well organized and it is definitely a user-friendly platform. The problems I experienced were first that not one of the surveys they emailed me about were available. I did, however, complete several surveys from the site itself and I found them to be lengthy – in itself, not a problem, but 3 out of 5 told me I didn’t qualify after I’d already invested 10 – 12 minutes filling out the forms. They got more than enough information from me to be useful which is an old and highly unethical trick in market research – which happens to be my background. All in all, it was a LOT of wasted time.
Inbox dollars is a scam. They will pull you in by offering $5 to begin and another $7 for completing some other tasks. It all goes downhill from there. I quickly realized that filling out countless surveys. I really gave them a try, I tried and tried and tried. Finally I snapped and said “No More!” What happens is that once you start a survey and it could be 15-20 minutes of filling questions, they will reject you based on answering a question as “no”. So you could answer “yes, yes, yes” for multiple questions and after 20 minutes of tedious (and yes, boooring!) questioning you are rejected from survey by punching one lousy “No”. Then they offer “sweeps” which is a raffle ticket that will never win you anything, pathetic! So, after seeing what a sham I got myself into I just decided to get my $30 by strictly opening the “paid mail” and using “paid search”. I had opened the account with them 1.5 years ago and finally was able to collect my $30 (actually $27, they even take $3 for “processing fee” – a final slap in the face) after countless hours of filling surveys and opening stupid paid mail. They pay 2 cents per one paid e-mail so yes it will take a while. I will be closing my account with inbox dollars now that I recovered a small fraction of what my time is actually worth, and I recommend staying clear from them and finding another way of making $$$.
Why would you put InboxDollars on your list? They owe so many people money, including my $36.00. I will never get it, and I contacted them 3 different times. Each time I got the same answer, which did not work. Then, someone else from InboxDollars emailed me with the same information, that does not work, so I emailed back. Now they ignore me. I am on my 4th or 5th email with no answer. I think my next step is to report them.
So after a year I finally have 29.59 so hopefully when I cash out I want my money. My sister was getting checks for 40$ almost every week so they don’t take the 3$ process fee if u try to cash just 30$ but im not waiting anymore it’s been way to long and I can’t wait to take this crap out my phone I can’t even get thru a survey without them saying I don’t qualify smh the is in box dollars when I get my 27$ I will write a different review hopefully it will be a good one.
Rip off. I referred a couple people to Inbox Dollars that lived close to me and they closed out all of our accounts saying we were all in the same location and the same person. We provided IP addresses and even went to as far as asking if we could provide identification to show proof and of course it was negative. Lost a total of about $31. As for my neighbors probably the same or close to the same..
Me and my roommate had both accounts and used the same PC. they told us we can only use one account. it doesn’t make any sense because it’s not like we are using each other bank accounts, etc. inbox dollars also manipulates with how much money you can earn per surveys. if you make a couple of bucks one day, i guarantee you, you will not qualify for any surveys the next day! it’s all bogus. SCAM!
Interesting read, thanks for sharing. I suppose that online surveys may generate a few extra dollars on the side for some people, but it does require you to qualify for certain surveys online. In many cases you may not qualify, and will result in having to search for more surveys. This can be time consuming and in most cases not as profitable as may be expected.
×