Panda Research Review
Name: Panda Research
Website: pandaresearch.com
Owner: Unknown
Price: Free to join
Rating: 20/100
If you’ve been active in the world of online money making, then there’s a high chance of you coming across websites that pay users to fill out surveys.
Let’s face it, getting paid for filling out surveys sucks, and there’s no way it can become your primary source of income. Well, that’s just my own opinion as many other people swear by these websites and claim they’ve benefited from them financially.
Today there are dozens of these paid survey sites on the web, and one of them I recently discovered is Panda Research. Most of the times when you think of a panda, you can’t help but smile thanks to their cute and cuddly nature but can we say the same for this online survey site?
Is Panda Research a scam or a legit website?
Can you really make money working on Panda Research?
Well, in this review, I’m going to dig in to see if Panda Research is worth your precious time and effort so you can decide if the survey panel is right for you.
Sounds good? Let’s dive in!
For starters, What’s Panda Research?
Panda Research is a market research company that recruits and pays people for completing surveys. The company is located in Buffalo, Illinois and doesn’t have an accreditation from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), don’t know if that means anything to you.
Does Panda Research Work?
• How Can You Earn Money With Panda Research?
There are three ways you can make money with Panda Research including:
a) Get paid for completed surveys: This is pretty simple as you only have to participate in available surveys successfully.
b) Get paid for completed offers: This is the second way Panda Research claims you can make money on this website. When you sign up for free, you also subscribe to receive emails from the company which contains ‘offers’ for product trials. Some of these offers require a small fee for shipping and handling while others will be free of charge but demand for your credit card information.
c) Get paid for referrals: In this part, the website tells you to get all your friends and family to become free members also. Once this is done, you’ll be eligible to receive 10% commission of all their activities as long as their account stays active.
• How Do They Pay You?
For starters, the payout threshold is $50, and when you reach this amount, a GET PAID button will be displayed on your account page. Now, when you click on it and request payment, the support team will get in touch with you for the account verification purposes. They say doing this is necessary to avoid fraudulent activities.
Once they’re done with the account verification, there will be a mandatory 30 day waiting period before processing the actual payment which will be transferred to your PayPal account.
Now all these might sound pretty straightforward right? Well, don’t get all excited yet because we’re still going to dig deeper than the surface to find the annoying issues with this site.
What Are The Issues With Panda Research?
- Shady Payment Claim
This is just hilarious! The company website claims to have paid over two million dollars to their members over the years. To be honest, I’ve tried to look for some payment proofs that shows that they’ve paid that sum, but I couldn’t find anything that relates to the claim.
I actually find these numbers to be quite contradicting because there seems to be a lot of complaints from both past and current members about not getting paid by this online survey company. Judging by all these, it’s only reasonable to see that these numbers might be false. I mean, anyone can just come up with such numbers, right?
No Payment Guarantee
What’s the whole point of joining and signing up for surveys and the likes if you’re not likely to get paid at the end of the day? The thing with sites likes this is that they tend to hide the nasty stuff in the terms and conditions or disclaimers. Let’s face it, most of us don’t take our time to read it because they’re just way too long and tiring. Well, I dug into this site’s terms and conditions to see if I could find anything fishy and here’s what I found:
They tell you straight up that there’s a chance of not getting paid for some reasons they deem valid. I mean, it’s bad enough that there are some online survey companies that use screening questions to disqualify you and don’t pay you a dime for your time and effort. However, getting to know that you might go through a whole survey and not get paid is just wrong.
Getting Your Hard Earned Money is a Herculean Task
For starters, their payment threshold of $50 is downright annoying for a survey site. Panda Research makes it almost impossible to reach that amount just taking surveys. Looking at the design, you’ll definitely have to do offers to reach the mandatory threshold.
Moreover, I find the payment and verification process to be unnecessary and annoying as hell. I mean, after saying they might not even pay you for your effort and time (according to their terms and conditions), they also make matters worse by not paying you in a timely manner. According to so many complaints I’ve come across online, it takes up to 90 frigging days to get your hard earned money. Well, the thing is that you’ll get paid but trust me, it’s not worth it!
Poor Management
It also seems like the company is no longer interested in updating their company’s site. If you take a look at their site, you’ll find that they haven’t been managing it the right way for many years. For instance, at the bottom of their official website you can find “Copyright Panda Research, 2005-2011 All rights reserved.” so, this means that they don’t even care about changing the “2011” as the year progresses. In essence, if the owners of this site have no business with updating their website, then how can you join Panda Research and expect them to pay you on time?
The Site’s Surveys Are Not Surveys!
This is the most annoying part of Panda Research. Most of their survey offerings are actually product or service offers which will only pay you some money if you complete the offer. This implies that you either buy something or sign-up for a test trial.
This so called test trial requires your credit card information and ask to provide you with a cancellation period of 15 to 45 days. Now, if you fail to cancel within the given time frame, your credit card will be charged with the cost of the product. This tends to happen on a monthly basis, and if care is not taken, you’ll likely not be able to cancel for a whole year. It’s more like getting ripped off instead of getting paid.
Final Words – Should I Join Panda Research?
The answer is a big NO! What you should know is that completing surveys and reading emails is not so easy in Panda Research. Why? Well, it’s because it literally takes a lot of your time, effort, brain and also investment, and there’s still a high chance of not getting paid. So what’s the use of doing so much hard work and wasting your precious time and investment without the assurance of getting paid? It’s more like doing charity! It’s better you do your research and discover better and sure ways to make money online instead of relying on survey sites because the truth is that they’re not worth it.
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