Complaint Review: Myview.com

Registered with site in October 2011. Started taking surveys. They'd recently stopped offering Paypal payments, but both Amazon.com and Visa gift cards could supposedly be earned "fast", according to info on their web site. The rest of their rewards are junk and cost way too much in points for what they are.

It took five months to earn the required number of points for the lowest value of AGC ($15.00). (You disqualify 98% of the time with this site, and they lowered the amount of points for disqualifying attempts soon after I joined.) Every time I did surveys, I'd go to the rewards area and look at what's available. I never had enough points to get anything, for months, but the Amazon.com card was always listed, so I kept that as a goal. I didn't want a Visa gift card, but it also approximated cash and caught my eye.

The day I finally reached the point threshold for the Amazon.com gift card, when I went to the rewards area to redeem my points for it, it was no longer listed. Not listed and marked as unavailable, just gone.

I logged in daily for a couple weeks and it didn't show up again, so I emailed the company through the contact form on their site. "Jordan Miller" responded to me on February 10th by email, apologizing for the "inconvenience" and explaining that they only order the most popular reward options once a month and run out of them very quickly. When they're gone, they don't show them on the site. I was told to check the site again in the next few days, and thanked for my patience.

On April 23rd, after checking the site multiple times a day, almost daily, for two and a half months, I had not seen either AGCs or VGCs ever reappear on the site. I emailed to complain and asked them to send me one individually (manually), so I could stop wasting my time checking their site. I explained I did not do surveys for lottery chances but in exchange for compensation, and quoted the text of their own web site to them. By that time, I had well over the amount of points needed for a $15.00 Amazon.com gift card.

I was told they had had them, in a higher amount than I wanted, sometime recently; and they'd have them again, sometime soon, but couldn't say when. They couldn't (i.e., wouldn't) order one for me individually. They asked if I wanted to be informed next time they were available. I said, what do you think?

Apparently, thinking's not an every day occurrence there, because I never was informed.

I only checked the site sporadically after that, maybe once a week or so. Again, I never saw these rewards options reappear.

On June 5th, I contacted their parent company, Authentic Response, Inc., through a contact form on their web site, hoping to get a more professional response. Instead, the same "Jordan Miller" replied to me, saying the same thing as last time, and that I should follow their Facebook page to see announcements of when they have these rewards available. I said, no, and I'd be filing consumer complaints about them instead.

Then I got an email from "David Virzera", saying their previous responses were not direct and specific. They don't currently offer $15 AGC as a reward option, and they change and rotate rewards in and out all the time, based on demand. (Supposedly, the popularity of this option is why it's gone all the time, so why would they opt not to offer it anymore?) He thanked me for my "feedback" and said they'd take it "into consideration", and also wanted to speak to me on the phone for some unknown reason.

I refused to waste any cell phone minutes on him since he was not being helpful, nor to keep rehashing this when there are email threads going back several months about it which he could read. He was merely wasting even more my time. He said they don't have any obligation to send me a $15 gift card and he wanted to speak with me by phone "to clear up any misunderstandings" since the matter had been 'escalated' to him. I said fraud is not a misunderstanding, just as complaints and demands to be paid by angry survey panelists are not "feedback". In his fourth email to me, he said this:

The quickest way for you to resolve this is probably to speak with me. However, if you only wish to communicate over email I will offer this option:

Email me the offer or advertisement that specifically states we owe members a $15 Amazon gift card if they have 21,000 points. If you can send that to me, I will happily make arrangements to send you a gift card.

I have reviewed this email thread. I see no evidence that we have committed any type of fraud. I am trying to resolve this situation. However, if you are unwilling to speak with me on the phone or provide me with any evidence to why you feel you are owed a $15 Amazon card, there's nothing I can do.

Regards,
Dave

David Virzera
Director, Respondent Services
MyView / Authentic Response, Inc.
317 Madison Avenue, 18th Floor | New York, NY 10017
P. 646.942.5825