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E-Rewards Review: Can You Make Decent Money Here?
By Ian | Negative Reviews
Ever heard of a paid survey site that’s an invite only? It gives off an “exclusivity” vibe because the only way for you to join is by receiving an invite from their “partners.” Don’t let your guard down just yet, though.
You know better than to trust a website immediately, especially when you’re going to spend lots of time on it.
Is e-Rewards no different from other second-rate paid survey sites out there? Will your time be worth the effort? Is your personal information safe with it? All of these questions, and more, will be answered in this review.
I am not an affiliate nor am I writing this review because I’m sponsored by e-Rewards. Thus, this review is completely free of bias.
E-Rewards barely qualifies as a decent paid survey site. It eats people’s time without properly compensating for it. There’s no chance of earning anything close to reasonable with e-Rewards.
If you haven’t received an invite to join e-Rewards, you’re not missing out on anything. Your time is much better spent on a different paid survey site.
Take Swagbucks (industry’s leader), for example. Once you join and spend a few weeks answering surveys, you’ll immediately notice what makes it a more superior platform compared to it.
Join Swagbucks now and see who sets the bar for paid survey sites.
Read this quick summary if you’re in a hurry to find out if e-Rewards is worth your time.
Although e-Rewards gives off a fresh vibe, there’s nothing more to it. They promise their members too much but end up failing in the end.
These are the four major drawbacks to using e-Rewards:
a. Payout and Rewards Model. The only option to redeem rewards is through gift cards, no cash. Plus, some gift cards can only be redeemed once every few months.
b. Low Survey Density. Few surveys are available per month. Take note that you won’t qualify for all of the survey invites you receive, leaving you with less surveys to complete than initially given.
c. Tracks Your Online Activity. E-Rewards’ Privacy Policy states that they do not respond to “DNT” signals. They continue to track you even after specifically telling them not to.
d. Sells Your Information After Inactivity. If your account gets closed due to inactivity, they may sell your personal information to third parties.
Feel discouraged about joining e-Rewards due to these reasons? Rightfully so! It’s impossible to earn money that’s anything close to decent through their platform, and your personal information may be at risk.
Your time is better spent on a different yet much safer and secure platform.
E-Rewards is a paid survey platform that’s currently under Dynata LLC — a market research firm. A market research firm collects information about the behavior, preferences, and opinions of consumers. This is usually done through survey platforms like e-Rewards.
The only way to join e-Rewards is through an invitation from their partners, which are nothing more than the companies and brands e-Rewards works with. Although there are other ways to receive an invite, it’s not worth the trouble.
If you happen to receive an invitation, you’ll be asked to create an account with your basic personal information. Then, you will have a total of 30 days to complete an enrollment survey that will help e-Rewards and its partners determine your profile and which surveys it matches.
Surveys on e-Rewards take an average of 30 minutes to complete, but keep in mind the high probability of being screened out if they decide your profile doesn’t match the correct criteria for the market study.
The only way to earn points is through surveys. I know you’re probably thinking: “That’s what I signed up for. To answer surveys… right?” But this has one major downfall: since you’ll have to rely heavily on surveys, if these aren’t up-to-par and are rarely available, you’re basically screwed.
You’re one of the lucky ones if you receive at least one survey invite a week. Regardless of how many survey invites you receive, there’s no assurance of qualifying for a survey. If you get screened out of a survey, tough luck. Although e-Rewards compensates their members when they get screened out, it’s only for $0.25 in e-Rewards currency. Want to know how much that costs? Read on to find out.
Upon completing surveys, you’ll receive e-Rewards currency. Although depicted as “$”, the value is not equivalent to a U.S dollar. It takes about $60 in e-Rewards currency to redeem a $25 gift card. This means that $1 in e-Rewards currency is equal to $0.42 USD. It’s kind of similar to how Valued Opinions (also under Dynata) treats their point system. Confusing, right?
If you’re joining e-Rewards to earn for a magazine subscription or to be rewarded through gift cards, e-Rewards might work for you. Otherwise, if you’re looking to earn cash (like most of us are), you’ll be disappointed. There are no options to redeem rewards through PayPal, Visa, or MasterCard.
The only bright side to e-Rewards’ payout and rewards model is the abundance of choices available. You can redeem your rewards for gift cards from over 50 different retailers, magazine subscriptions, and airline miles.
That’s right folks. Even after leaving the website and explicitly telling them not to track you, e-Rewards will still track your activity.
After taking a peek at e-Rewards’ Privacy Policy, I found out that they don’t respond to the “DNT” setting in your browser. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the DNT setting, DNT is a web browser setting that requests a web application to disable its tracking of an individual user.
It’s basically shouting at a web application to “STOP TRACKING ME!” This policy further specifies that Dynata doesn’t care if their third parties track you.
This puts a member’s online privacy and security in danger. You don’t want to be followed wherever you go online, do you? Unfortunately, the only way to prevent this is to stop using their services.
Upon further review of the Privacy Policy, I found another policy that’s a bit disturbing.
It says here that e-Rewards will continue to store your personal information up to a year from your last activity on their platform. They can also transfer your data to a third party and put it up for sale.
This is disturbing because while e-Rewards’ homepage claims that your personal information will be kept safe, this policy indicates otherwise. The only way to stop your personal information from being sold is to email them directly, something most people are probably less than willing to do.
This policy further compromises the privacy and security of any member of e-Rewards and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
E-Rewards’ rating barely reaches 2 stars on SurveyPolice and there are twice as many bad reviews than good ones.
Check out these reviews on SurveyPolice.
Julie here had her account suspended for unknown reasons. Something that’s very common among incompetent paid survey sites.
Here’s another person that also experienced their account getting suspended for seemingly BS reasons. Reaching out to customer service proves useless, only receiving automated messages.
Despite it being an “invitation only” platform, there are still a lot of members who are deeply dissatisfied with their service.
e-Rewards is barely a legit paid survey site, even in it’s best form. They’re no different from any other second-rate paid survey site out there.
One of the greatest drawbacks in using e-Rewards is that they do not offer a cash payout. Even if you’re looking to earn money for magazine subscriptions or gift cards, you’ll have to deal with the fact that it’ll still take A LOT of time to accumulate points and redeem these rewards due to limited survey availability per month.
Take note that the value of e-Rewards’ currency is less than $1 USD, which is a bummer.
Don’t forget that once you use e-Rewards’ services, your online privacy and security will be in danger. If they want to track you, they will. Even after deciding to stop using e-Rewards, your information will continue to be stored in their system and may be put up for sale.
If you’ve received an invitation to join e-Rewards, it’s better to just forget about it completely and turn to a more reliable paid survey website instead.
I've been in internet marketing for over 10 years, and I've purchased dozens of illegitimate products for the sole purpose of evaluating them and exposing the truth about these products to anyone who's thinking about purchasing it. I never let money influence my rating of a product and your success/safety is my absolute highest priority. Don't want to buy a product? Register for one of my 100% free internet marketing training courses>>
