Optionally, they may just be looking for someone from Zimbabwe · 9:49pm Nov 22nd, 2014
Over the last two weeks, I've been trying out a survey app. It's fairly simple: at about four in the morning (which, depending on my day, is either when I got up or when I went to bed), I check the app to see if anyone wants me to answer any marketing, political, or demographics questions. (I always mess up demographic charts. It's sort of a hobby.) The typical survey, if chosen carefully, takes about eight to twelve minutes and pays for my time in Amazon credit: generally one dollar per question set completed. (The agency conducting the survey pays the app company, the app company pays a portion of that to the consumer, and thus the world goes 'round.) I had a vague idea that two dollars a day, taken over a full year, would be a nice percentage of a new computer.
However, I get rejected a lot. Many surveys will open with a qualifier question page to see if you're the person they want taking the survey at all. I get tossed on region. Income. Demographics, now and forever. Products purchased or not. Field worked in, now there's a fun boot to the backside, or possibly heels. Being dismissed from the survey pool is a near-constant. I got used to it quickly.
This morning, I got one which opened with a qualifier page. The first two questions were pretty much as follows:
1. Currently or previously, have you owned or operated any level of business enterprise?
Well... yes, sort of, for a given chance of 'business', pretty minimal 'level', and a very uncertain definition of 'enterprise'. So check off the positive for now. I may learn more about just what they're looking for later.
Like, say, right now.
2. Do your personal assets total to:
A. < $1B
B. $1B - 5B
C. $5B - 10B
D. $10 - 15B
E. > $15B
Yes, that is 'B' as in 'Billion'.
I answered A and in doing so, was promptly disqualified from the remainder of the survey.
And I sat there for a while, considering the fact that somewhere in the world, there is an agency paying a survey company on the off chance that a multi-billionaire (because a mere nine hundred and ninety-nine million just won't do) would have this app on their system, be awake at four in the morning, and decide to use eight to twelve minutes of their time in earning a single Amazon credit dollar.
That's... Kinda funny to think about actually
I guess that means the opinion of the 99.99999% (us non-billionaire slackers) is just not wanted. Sigh.
Hey, if they never try, they'll never find them. It's the Field of Dreams school of survey dissemination.
Wanna bet that the person who put together that survey was paid tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for it?
Zimbabwe dollars aren't accepted as currency anymore, and frankly towards the end their highest denomination banknote was worth more than it's face value when used as kindling, so I doubt it. They might have intended it for hong kong-ese, or namibians, both dollar currencies worth about 20 dollars to the GB pound... Amusingly daft though.
What I want to know is, would they have disqualified you if you had picked E?
That's hilarious.
And the blog post title is even better.
2610453
Just like the real world. Clearly an important lesson for us all. Someone get me a scroll. And a small dragon.
2610509
Yes, but then the fifteen countries I owned could have declared war on them.
2610466
Or possibly nothing, because the survey creator is a typically broke college student. One possibility I considered was that it was being done for a psychology/sociology experiment -- see how many people they could get to lie about being billionaires.
If so, somewhere in the follow-up questions, I would have to bury 'Do you own a mansion and a yacht?'
2610539
Maybe, maybe. That would be a meta-analysis in a different way than the usual meaning of the term. Do you suppose they also collect the data on how many people fail the qualifying questions? They'd have to, to make it work.
My first thought was that some ridiculous luxury business of some kind actually wanted marketing aimed at billionaires (solid gold and platinum individualized GPS tracking satellites for your fleet of jets! And your dog!), and just threw piles of money at their ad researchers without thinking much about where it would all go, and some of it trickled down here
This sounds pretty great for the laughs if nothing else. What's the app?
2610576
Quick Thoughts. Up until that point, I'd mostly been getting What Do You Think Of Our New Product? with a sampling of Where Do You Stand On This Policy? and a daily forty-cent chance at Hey, What Was On Your TV Last Night?, which is mostly about remembering the commercials.
It's been working for me so far, although it is already throwing Update This messages at me and the Kindle store doesn't have the new version yet. I may have to sideload it from somewhere.
2610563
But what about the dog's jets?
Pretty much. Discount a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent chance for the real billionaire who somehow stumbles into this and you can probably assume everyone who gets past Page One is lying through their
teethstylus. There's also the question of when you spring the trap -- or if you do so at all. Watch them dig deeper with every solid gold fountain...ETA: For what it's worth, prior to this, I had already run into one survey which was openly stated as being used for a student project -- so the app does host such things.
That... That boggles the mind!
I mean, how could the survey company ever think this would generate actual valid data? After a while - people being people - will just start inputting whatever data they know the survey wants so they get accepted and can get their "money"!
Then not to mention the people just wanting the cash quickly to start hammering option A, option A, option A just to get it over with!
No wonder when some people present me with "factual statistics" I sometimes cross my eyes and squint, trying real hard to understand how they got the ludicrous figures. Well, now I know.
2610705
Some of the surveys do know to get around the Option A hammerers. I've seen a few which threw in "For quality control purposes, please answer 'Disagree completely' here." You have to at least skim for the money. There's also the issue that you sometimes don't know which answers they want until the middle of the survey. But for some other surveys... yeah.
Clearly you don't live in Dubai, so of course you don't get your amazon credit >.>
I would have been tempted to answer E just to see what kind of ads Google would send me...
I would hazard a guess that intended target were managers of large corporations.
Although the "owning" part doesn't make much sense.
Still, this is kind of funny.
2610705
2610766
I suppose it's possible this entire survey was put in just to check for people who will answer anything for their amazon dollar, no matter what. Real statisticians do know (or at least are supposed to know...) to check for fake answers, and throw those surveys out. The same people who will happily answer anything tend not to be very good at covering their tracks.
2610613
Sounds like you want to invest in our exciting new startup, Floppy Dog Airs! For every hundred million dollars you invest, we'll throw in a free waxjob and spa treatment for your most loyal pal.
I'm with 2611655.
Or maybe they're trying to find Equestrian small business owners. A net value of 1 to 15 bits covers basically everypony in the farmer's market, except Applejack, who feeds the whole town.
2611818
I think you're overlooking the economic Tartarus that is the single cherry market.