Nov 11, 2021 09:05 AM
9536 Views
After thoroughly testing UserTesting, I do believe it is a scam. Not in the criminal sense, but in the practical sense.
Like all scammers, they offer cash rewards for what seems like a simple task. Everyone thinks their perspective is valuable, and now, here is someone that is offering to PAY for it. Easy money right? Every scammer uses the Easy Money ploy to get you to do what they want.
User Testing advertises large payouts for little effort. Earn$4 for just 5 minutes! Earn$10 for just 20-minutes! you could earn up to$120 dollars. It all seems too good to be true, right? Well, you not what they say about that right? If it sounds too good to be true, IT IS! And, User testing is no different. To say that this claim of large payouts for minimal effort is deceptive is an understatement. It is simply a bald-faced lie.
User testing makes it seem like what you will be doing is evaluating products. But that is absolutely not true. The truth is, it is YOU who will be evaluated. You will be evaluated until they know how many times you use the bathroom each day. From the very start, after signing up, User testing will begin asking you a slew of personal questions about yourself. These questions are called “Validation Questions”, and they will have almost nothing or absolutely nothing to do with the product you will be evaluating. You may be offered dozens of tests worth lots of money, but after answering hundreds of validations questions(personal information about yourself), you might not get chosen for a single test. But User Testing has already got what it wanted from, which is, tons of personal data about yourself.
In the unlikely event that you do qualify for a test, it will most likely be a test that requires you to turn your camera on so they can record your face during testing, although, seeing your face will have absolutely nothing to do with your ability to complete the test. This is nothing more than another form of data harvesting on you because there is nothing more personal and private than your face.
After completing the test, 9 times out of 10, you will get an email saying that there was an error during the upload of the video and that you have been disqualified and will not be paid. So, User Testing got all your data and work for free.
So what is the goal here? What is user testing trying to achieve? In my experience, I believe they have two goals.
They are harvesting data about you to build a profile about who you are for marketing purposes.
They are looking specifically for potential customers for the company’s they represent so they can introduce these potential customers to these company's products in the form of a test that requires you to go through their app or websites and fill out forms. In sales, this is called, “Lead Generation.”
User Testing is legitimate in that companies do hire them to do this service for them, but they are scammers in the sense that they are not telling you the truth about why they want you, or what your purpose is. Your purpose is not to test out products and give feedback. Your purpose is to help them build a complete profile about you so they can match you to the right company product to present you with in the form of an AD that looks like a test.
They also lie about how much time you will spend to earn money. You will not spend five minutes to earn$4, or twenty minutes to earn$10. You will spend hours and days glued to your computer answering endless questions about yourself just trying to get qualified for a test, that if you are lucky enough to get, will generally be disqualified for some reason and you won’t get a dime.
