Ciao Surveys

Ciao surveys have been slagged off a bit in the review section I have noticed (maybe by newcomers who have found they havn't recieved as many survey offers as they expected) so I decided I woud try to shed some sort of light on the whole topic with my own experiences of 'ciao surveys'.

Firtstly, its important that you realise you've got to sign up to take part in the surveys. This is done in our 'my ciao' section where you just tick a little box to say that you would like to participate in surveys. These surveys are then sent to you by e-mail. Unfortunately (and this is the key) you have to wait to be invited to participate in a survey and cannot find the links on the site.

Ok, so the surveys themselves. Well generally a survey will not take very long and the estimated time it is supposed to take you to complete a particular survey is stated when you first open your e-mail from ciao. This is generally pretty accurate, but (of course) will vary depending on your connection speed and all that kind of stuff. Most surveys will take roughly around 20 mins.

Right, now that bits cleared up les get onto the important stuff.

*How often do surveys come?*
This has become a major topic for most people commenting on this service. Ciao is actually quite organised in comparison to other survey distributors (despite it being the companies that send you the surveys) as they only send you surveys which you are eligible for under the companies preference. This is determined with your 'interest profiles' found at the side on 'my ciao' under 'account balance'. When you fill in all the sections of this ciao uses the information to filter through all the people who fit the description of what a company is looking for in the recipients of their surveys and sends them to the appropriate people. Please note that if you haven't filled out all of this, then you are unlikely to receive many surveys as the number of surveys you receive is determined by the how much of this section you have completed.

So far, I have received around 3 or 4 surveys a month. Sometimes this has been more and sometimes down to 2, but without fail in my 6 months at ciao I have probably done a survey each month. Unfortunately however many companies only want very few participants for their surveys and so I am either ineligible for quite a few surveys because enough people have already taken part, or because I am in the wrong age bracket (this happens more than you might think and it's really annoying!)

One thing that I though I'd include here was that when I first joined ciao I received a few survey invitation which I messed up because my computer was playing up (ahh, modern technology), and so by mistake I kept pressing back and exiting surveys. This makes you ineligible to continue with the survey as ciao recognises your username and stops you entering a second time. I thought I had lost the survey after that and so forgot about ciao for a few days. However, some days later I was bombarded with survey invitation (I think it was 4 in 3 days - trust me, this is a lot!). This was probably a mistake by ciao but I didn't mind. I haven't tried this again since and it probably wouldn't work if I did so I'm NOT recommending you do this, but I thought it was quite cool.

Overall, nowadays surveys come along reasonably often, but I don't think this was the case before.

*How much do you get paid for doing surveys?*
This is the section I have problems with. How much ciao is offering you to complete a survey is all good. You can be paid anything from between 33p to £25 for a survey (obviously the 33p is shorter than the £25 one) and they are often around the £1 - £3 mark. I am fine with this bit. However, it's the bit between completing the survey and seeing the money in my account that I am not so happy with. There have been a lot of cases where I have completed surveys and not been paid. I haven't counted exactly how many ciao surveys I have completed, but I am 100% sure that there have been at least 5 I have not been paid for completing (I m still waiting for 2 more at the moment, one of which I did almost a month ago). Now I am guessing most people haven't had this problem as I haven't seen to many complaints on this particular topic but it is definitely something to beware of when doing a ciao survey.

*What are the surveys on?*
Well, the surveys can be on just about anything. I have done surveys on new coke can designs to new movie trailers to stuff about sports shops. This is one of the best things about ciao surveys…..the variety of companies involved with the site is so huge. This also makes a lot of surveys really cool, coz you are not only helping decide what kind of products will be available in the future, but you can predict the future (because you've seen everything before everyone else - like movie trailers).

*What about data protection?*
Fortunately, ciao are big on data protection, and so none of your details will be spread around - so in this respect you are very safe completing any survey offered to you as a result of ciao. Also, you won't recieve any junk mail as a result of completing a survey.

So, that's it. Overall, I would recommend taking part in ciao surveys because they're interesting, not too time consuming, and also (despite not paying that well) help you to accumulate a decent amount on your ciao account, which is always nice.

Good luck with the surveys, have fun, and hope you have a bit more luck than I have in being paid for doing them!