review: opinion square is just ok

I've been a member of Opinion Square for 35 days and in that time I've earned 2800 points - one $10.00 CVS gift card costs 2500 points but I haven't redeemed anything yet. In addition to merchandise, Opinion Square offers gift cards for Starbucks, Amazon, iTunes, Applebees, TGI Friday's, AMC Theatres, Bass Pro Shops, KMart, Cabela's, O'Charley's, and more.

I enjoy taking surveys but I'm on the fence about Opinion Square. They often send me email alerts that a study is available, and when I click the link I'm informed that I've already taken the survey (I would estimate that this happens 70% of the time). This drives me nuts, I wish they would stop.

The other thing that's irritating and a time sucker is that you must first qualify for many of the surveys. So you take a pre-survey only to find out you don't qualify for the real survey, and often the pre-survey questions ask for information that Opinion Square already has about you. When a member doesn't qualify for a survey they are given a consolation token - tokens are spent on a game that awards additional points, generally 25 points at a time. Personally, I'd rather they did away with the pre-qual surveys altogether.

Here is a screenshot of my account activity since I signed up on Oct. 11:

You can see that I've completed eight surveys (none more than 10 minutes long) and I have won points with the consolations tokens that I received.

I should mention that Opinion Square offers software for download that they say increases the surveys that are offered. The software is not available for Mac so I can't use it. I'm reluctantly going to stick with Opinion Square for now, I'll continue to track my earnings and decide if I feel my membership is worth it over the next few months.