Ipsos Access Panel > Reviews (11)

This review is for Ipsos Access Panels.

Who they are and Signing up

Ipsos is a huge company known throughout the world for giving regular people a chance to fill in surveys on a broad range of topics.
The company conducts six million surveys each year in over one hundred countries and have a great range of surveys for people to take part in.

They send regular surveys for those who sign up to the service and those surveys are converted into points and these points are then transferred into vouchers to use at various high street stores and online.

The surveys are sent quite regularly and are usually multiple choice type surveys as well. Although all this information sounds fantastic I was invited to join this survey site via another site I was with at the time.

The process of signing up is not that complicated but it can irritate people and it did with me. You fill in details about your home and job and other information but if you write down you have more than one person at your home you need to fill in their name as well to the site which can be a long drawn out process.

You will receive an email asking you to confirm you are who you say you are and then you can fill in some more details about yourself such as items you own and the sort of person you are. These details are there to help them find surveys which would suit your needs.

I have been a member for over a year now and you were originally given this long number which I believe was 8 numbers and then you had this 4 digit pin for a password but now they use your email address but you still have the four digit pin to enter.

You will find the four digit pin slightly unusual as I usually get to choose my own password so I guess they want to be unique.

The Surveys

The surveys are hard to work out sometimes because you can be screened out like other websites but this one tends to screen you out before you enter all your personal details.

When you receive an email through you mind find the time frame for the survey and a link attached to the email for you to click onto. Once you have clicked onto this link you are taken to their survey page and you begin with the survey. Currently the surveys begin the same way by asking your age and gender and location. I can only presume they want a set number of people from set areas to complete their surveys.

Once you have entered the survey you are then told how many points you will get and the time duration for the surveys. This is a recent event to happen because before you were told a time frame but never the amount of points on offer so it did make you wonder how many points you would accumulate.

You will notice that points on the website vary you might have a survey for 30 minutes which gives you 200 points and another survey which takes 10 minute give you just 50. I find the longer the survey the more likely you are to have a higher point’s value.

The points you get are key because you do not want to take part in a survey for 30 minutes for just 50 points as that is silly and pointless.

Once you have got into the survey you might find them repetitive. You have some surveys which ask about eating habits or shaving habits and then you have to keep answering the same questions over and over again.

Once you finish the survey you are told your points will be added to your account and you’re ready to leave the page. Not all surveys offer you points some let you have entries into a prize draw and I have to admit I never see that as a real competition winner so I tend to ignore those surveys.

You will get a few surveys a week and sometimes even more if you’re lucky and you have details they want to explore.

The Website

The website has been updated recently which is a good point because before it was terrible and extremely boring. The website now allows people to explore all aspects of the company and with great ease.

At the top of the website you can sign in using the details provided to you in the email you received on the sign up section. Once you have logged into the website you can then do some searching.
Some of the areas you can search as under various tab headings and these are:

My Surveys You can click on this link and find available surveys you might be able to take part in and usually all details such as points and time duration are displayed under this section. You can also check your survey history as well.

Rewards This is where you can search all the rewards you could obtain with the points you have and check your points balance at the same time.

Loyalty This is where you can check the VIP loyalty and the loyalty programme and I am not sure on either but they are there should you wish to explore them in more detail.

Winners This is where you find all the winners of top prizes such as the cars and holidays which are given out to those who enter the competitions which can be entered regularly.

Refer Friends You can ask friends to join the site and if they do you get 100 points for them just for joining and it means you can get more points much quicker.
The website overall is extremely quick and easy to navigate and it should be noted that once you update details or complete a survey all the information on your profile changes immediately.

Your points are always displayed on the right hand side of the website as well just incase there is a reason for the website to not work for any reason.

All the help you will need and information is on the website and should be easy to find.

Rewards

Obviously the main reason for joining a survey site is always to get decent rewards and they offer a good range of vouchers but they rarely add any new companies.
If you get 750 points this is the same as £5 and you can get yourself a voucher and if you save your points longer you can get a £10 voucher with 1380 points so you’re best waiting that slightly bit longer to get a bigger reward.

The rewards are done with a few companies such as John Lewis, Argos, Whsmith, Boots, Amazon and the Arcadia group (Burtons, Outfit, Evans, Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis).

If you felt a voucher for a retail store was not for you then you could get leisure vouchers for food destinations and other locations and these could be places like Beefeater, Bella Italia, Pizza Hut, Chessington Park and much more.

Finally you could give your money away to charities such as the WWF, Oxfam, British Red Cross and Unicef. The points and values are the same for the charities as well.
The only downside to the rewards is how long they take to come through the post which is the biggest problem with them overall.

Customer Service

I have had issues in the past with points which never show up and your left bemused as to where they have gone to and usually you want to know more so I have found it easy to contact the company directly.

Usually I explain the situation and keep the email they sent me so I can send it to them should I need to and they reply with an instant response as to where the points are.

If they struggle to locate the survey you have done you send them the email you received with the link attached and they eventually locate the points for you and add them instantly.

Not only are they good for lost points but if you have a survey and the link does not work they usually email you back a day later with the same survey but with a new link attached they never try and tell you the survey is finished they always try and assist you promptly and with speed.

Good and Bad Points

The website send out regular surveys to myself and I admit this might be different for other people due to gender, age and location you are in the UK but overall they send me about five surveys a week on average. I find the amount of surveys they send out extremely good and they are always easy to complete.

The points they offer are not too bad because they are easy to accumulate and for 10 minutes work sometimes you can earn 100 points which is excellent when you consider the time frame they suggest. You find you complete surveys much quicker than the time frame they suggest so again this is something to remember.
The layout of the website is very good and makes the whole process of navigating very easy and no one should find problems there at all.

The time it takes for vouchers to arrive is a sore point because my average time is over 4 weeks and that at times is no good enough. The time they take for me is longer than needed and I just feel that could be improved.

The details you enter at the start cannot be altered ever. You will find that you can change the basic information about yourself but not the more important details which sort of makes you think that your missing out on potential surveys you might suitable for.

Summary

I have to stress to people you cannot just ask to join this website I tried this you can find banners and links on free websites sometimes and they are very useful.
You could just ask people who know you to put a request forward and you can join this way as well.

I would highly recommend this site to anyone because they are easy to use and provide plenty of points.