consumerpulse.co.uk

I've been a member of the ConsumerPulse panel since early last year, and have so far received well over £100 worth in vouchers with the most recent of these arriving this very week.

REGISTRATION

Unfortunately, joining the panel isn't simply a matter of entering your details and waiting for confirmation. You have to be invited to join the panel in a similar fashion to Pinecone (although I don't think that there are sign-up banners etc for this panel). I signed up with my details after finding a link on the MoneySavingExpert forum and heard nothing for several months until a letter arrived on the doormat inviting me to join up and giving me a sign-up code to enter to confirm my invitation. If I remember correctly, my code didn't work at first no matter how many times I tried to enter it but for some strange reason, it was absolutely fine the next day!

WHAT IS INVOLVED

Once you've been invited to join, you can set about uploading your purchase history. Unlike survey websites, they don't want detailed information about your demographic as the main reasoning behind the panel is to collate information about the members' buying habits.

When you have purchases to enter, you simply need to click on the quite prominent box at the side,which is titled 'To enter My Shopping click here'. This takes you to a screen in which you can enter the number of purchases that you have made in specific categories. The current categories include:

• Clothes - Outwear
• Clothing - Underwear
• Entertainment (books, DVDs, music downloads, computer games etc)
• Phones & Accessories
• Health & Beauty (cosmetics, fragrances, skincare etc)
• Professional Beauty Treatments

If your purchase doesn't fall under one of these categories, it isn't an area that Consumerpulse are interested in collating data on so you won't be able to enter it.

Once you've ticked the relevant box(es) and informed them of whether you've not made any purchases in the other categories, the next screen will ask you to confirm the number of purchases that you wish to inform them of and lets you know how many points you'll receive for this.

The next screen asks you for specific information about the purchase, such as the date of purchase, the price, the shop or website that it was bought from, who it was bought for and why. This may seem tedious and it certainly can be for multiple purchases, it's mostly a case of selecting from drop-down menus and occasionally filling in numeric values such as price. For books, you'll also need the ISBN number and you may sometimes need to enter barcodes. Once this section is complete, you'll be asked if you want to enter any more purchases. If you do, it'll take you back to the original screen to go through the process once more, but if not, your pending points total will be confirmed. All in all, it's a pretty simple process and doesn't take as long as you might think. I prefer to enter my purchases as they're made rather than wait to do a load at once as it's less tedious this way. There is a limit for how many purchases you can enter per month.

QUESTIONNAIRES

Consumerpulse also have monthly telecoms questionnaires through which you'll be asked questions regarding your mobile phone purchases (handsets, top-ups, contract bills etc.), broadband etc. This is quite a lengthy process initially but once the first survey has successfully been completed, it's more a case of confirming that all of the details are the same as the previous month (assuming that they haven't changed), which is still a bit tedious and adding in any new details about what you've spent. You get 2000 points added for doing this survey so it's well worth taking the time to do it.

REWARDS

On average, you get 500 points per single purchase and most redemptions start at 10,000 points. It might sound a long way off but you'd be surprised how quickly points mount up. I buy a fair few music downloads, which bump up the total no end and often find that I can redeem a voucher every 4-6 weeks on average. Even if you buy nothing that qualifies in a certain week, you should still go through the purchasing process (simply by ticking the 'no new purchases in this category' or similar box for each category) as Consumerpulse still want to know whether you have or haven't bought anything that week, and you'll get 500 points for doing so.

Points are added around 24 hours after your purchases have been entered so don't worry if you don't see them sooner than this. I've never had a problem with points being added. To view your points, click on the 'Rewards' tab in the navigation bar, but remember that you may be 24 hours behind as far as totals go depending on when you last entered purchases.

The rewards are either gift vouchers or charity donations. So far, I've redeemed vouchers from B&Q, Boots, Next, Thorntons and Leisure Vouchers which can be used at a wide range of places (but I used them at Pizza Hut). All of these have arrived within a week of being ordered, and I always receive a confirmation email more or less straight away after ordering a voucher to let me know that it's being processed.