Complaint Review: Harris Interactive - rochester New York

Though I've NEVER heard of anyone having problems with harrispoll incentives, this was so pathetic, I thought it'd be worth a mention. After years of trading in my 'points' for telephones or other physical goods, THIS time I went for a $20 amazon certificate.

I waited log past the required time then e-mailed support. This has been going on since the beginning of August!  The whole mess over a $20 gift card. After they 'expedited" my inquiry, THEN told me yes indeed I'd be getting the certificate, more time passed and in LATE September I received an e-mail announcing the wonderful arrival of my gift card code. I went right to Amazon.com, went to the link for adding codes to my account, and entered the super special secret code.

A pop-up error message informed me the code had been used before and as such, was not valid! Hmmm.. I e-mailed hpol who told me to contact amazon. Fine, I contacted amazon, spoke with a rep who of course told me that I'd need to contact hpol because they (amazon) merely supply the codes to hpol, but are not sponsors of the promotion. The rep looked up my account, confirmed my current credit balance, and informed me that the code must've been given to 2 people, that I should have hpol issue me a valid number. I e-mailed hpol, whose response was a VERY snarky "our codes are correct!" & "to contact amazon". Trying to soothe the attitude, I e-mailed that I was certain is was an accidental error, but that.. blah, blah, blah.

Their next excuse was that I had put it into my amazon account in August. Of course I referred them to the fact that since I RECEIVED it in late September, it would be unlikely I could've redeemed it in AUGUST!

They blessed with with their form letter telling me to contact amazon if I was having trouble with the code. Instead I contacted upstate ny bbb and filed a complaint.  hpol did not respond to this either. Rather, they next e-mailed me telling me If I needed assistance with the amazon check-out procedure, I would need to contact Amazon. A bit redundant huh?  I informed them I'd been a customer of amazon for quite awhile & was fully able to maneuver their check-out procedure. AHA! That's it! They determined that since I do indeed have a credit balance on my amazon account, then I OBVIOUSLY redeemed the freaking code! Forget that the amazon rep confirmed I hadn't. Like MANY people, I add gift codes that I receive from multiple sources. I DO have a credit balance. Yes, we agree on this.

The fact that the second I TRIED to add this one, I got the error notice seems to mean nothing at all to hpol. I again received the notice that hpol had 'escalated my case for review'. Within moments I got 2 more e-mails; 1 from hpol telling me I had redeemed the code, and simultaneously 1 from upstate ny bbb telling me they were happy to have helped me and they've closed the case since there had been a resolution!

????what reso-freaking-lution was that????? I immediately contacted bbb to say there'd been NO resolution and the case should thusly not be closed.

After the weekend, I received the bbb reply telling me that if I had any more evidence (not words), then I should send or fax them. Not words? I had sent bbb every single dated e-mail I'd received from hpol! and every e-mail response I sent them too.

I saw on the market report that hpol was being adversely effected by this economy, but it didn't eVER occur to me they would go through so much effort to avoid paying a duly earned $20 incentive. I will no longer be GIVING them hours of my time. I'd rather do surveys for sweepstakes that I have no reason to expect a return from than to waste my time with a "reliable" company with so little regard for their consumers.

It doesn't take a genius to do the math. If I redeemed the code, my balance would have gotten BIGGER, in fact.. by $20. right? And I'm not sure in whose world I would be able to spend the incentive a full month before receiving it. Anyone who would like to see the ridiculously nonsensical e-mail, i will gladly provide them. With all the time and effort they put into inventing excuses, they surly could've honored their obligation.