Frequently Asked Questions

Being a Vocalabs Panelist

Is my privacy protected?

Yes. Signing up to be a panelist will not lead to telemarketing calls, junk mail, or unsolicited E-mail. We will not provide any identifiable information about you to our clients; you will be identified only by your demographic information (age, gender, education level, etc.) and your answers to our survey questions. We do record all survey phone calls, but we do not sell your name, address, phone number, or E-mail address. In addition, we take the following steps to ensure your privacy:

• All survey phone calls go through our own telecommunications facility.
• All E-mail sent as part of a survey goes through our own E-mail server.
• Any web sites you visit as part of a survey will go through our own web server.
• If you are calling a phone number, sending an E-mail, or visiting a web site as part of a survey, you do need to be careful if you are asked to provide personal information. You will not normally be required to provide your real name, phone number, address, or E-mail address; in some cases, we will provide you with a false E-mail address or phone number to use just for that survey. In some cases a survey may ask you to provide real personally identifying information as part of the survey, but in this case you will be warned before beginning the survey, and you may refuse to take the survey without it affecting your panelist status.

Please read our Privacy Policy for more details.

Can I participate if I live outside the United States or Canada?

At this time we are unable to accept panelists unless they reside in the United States and Canada.

Do you have a referral program?

We welcome all Panelists who want to participate. Anyone can sign up at: http://www.vocalabs.com/panelist/. We do not have a formal referral program.

I'm going on vacation for a few months, and I won't have access to E-mail. What happens to my account?

As long as you have participated in surveys within the past year, your account will remain active. If you don't respond to our E-mails with survey notifications there is no penalty. If you go more than a year without participating in surveys we may declare your account inactive.

Can I sign up more than once?

No. We do not permit the same person to have more than one active account at a time. Anyone found to have more than one active account may have all of his or her accounts disabled, and may forfeit any unpaid survey payments. We also require that all panelists supply complete and accurate information, and anyone found to have supplied incorrect information may have his or her account disabled and may forfeit unpaid survey payments.

What if I don't want to participate any more?

If you want to be removed from our system, you can remove yourself by logging in at http://www.vocalabs.com/panelist/login.jsp and clicking "Delete Account." You can also send E-mail to panelist@vocalabs.com if you have any problems, and we will help you. When you delete your account, we will remove all personally identifying information about you from our panelist database within 30 days.

Do you support Web-TV users?

Unfortunately, we don't currently support Web TV. If you are able to access the Internet via a different method you should be able to register successfully.

Survey Payments

Are there any costs associated with participating as a Vocalabs Panelist?

Participation as a Vocalabs panelist is free. We pay you for participation in our surveys.

Vocal Laboratories is not affiliated with any entity which charges to participate in surveys or sells names of survey companies. Unfortunately, there seems to be nothing we can do to stop other companies from charging people to get our name. Please sign up directly through our site at http://www.vocalabs.com/panelist/.

How will I be paid?

We pay for surveys within 5 business days via PayPal. You can find out more about PayPal at their website, http://www.paypal.com/. PayPal works like an on-line checking/savings account. You do not need to provide PayPal with a checking or savings account information unless you want to electronically transfer funds in and out of PayPal and into another account.

If you don't have a checking or savings account, you can still open a PayPal account. You can hold our payment in that account and either (a) use it to pay for something else online which accepts PayPal (for example, many online auctions accept PayPal), or (b) combine it with future payments and when you have enough, PayPal can send you a paper check (they charge for this service).

If you don't have a U.S. mailing address, PayPal will require that you manually accept each payment. If you are a Canadian resident, PayPal may require you to include credit card information to sign up.

What if I already have a PayPal account?

Payments will be sent to the address you are registered with as a Vocalabs Panelist. Unfortunately, we cannot send panelist payments to E-mail addresses other than the one you signed up with.

If you are currently a PayPal member with a different address, the best thing to do is to add that address to your PayPal account (log in, and click the "Add E-mail" link on the account overview page). If not, you should be able to claim the PayPal payment by signing up at PayPal. Once you are signed up with PayPal, payment will be deposited automatically even if the payment E-mail gets misdirected.

Is there another payment method besides PayPal?

At this time, we are only able to pay Panelists via PayPal. PayPal is the only service which is cost-effective for us to use for paying panelists (for example, it would cost us about $2.00 to print and mail you a paper check). In the future we hope to offer other alternatives.

How much will I get paid to take a survey?

Each paid survey will pay a minimum of $0.50. Typically, most surveys pay around $1.00. For this, you may be asked to spend about three minutes on the phone, and complete a short survey afterwards. Surveys which ask you to do more—for example, spend a long time on the phone, or answer a very detailed survey—can pay more. For each survey, we will tell you how much you will be paid, and what you will need to do before you take the survey.

Are there tax requirements for participating and receiving payments as a Vocalabs Panelist?

U.S. law requires us to report (on form 1099) any amount over $600 we pay to an individual during a single calendar year. Under $600, we do not have to report it, but you would be bound by the law and your conscience to report it on your 1040. If you approach the $600 threshold, we are required to obtain your Social Security Number before you exceed $600.

Vocalabs Surveys

How are Panelists selected?

We use an automated system to select panelists for each survey. This system puts a priority on inviting panelists who are more likely to finish each survey, so if you're doing most (or all) of the surveys we invite you to, you are maximizing your chances of being invited to future surveys.

Some of our surveys are only open for a short time, for example one hour. Because this drastically decreases the opportunity to participate, these surveys are less important than others in our priority calculation.

We also have certain surveys which are open to all panelists, such as our SectorPulse studies. These do not factor into our priority calculation.

We select who takes each survey based on several factors, including:

• Demographics: Age, gender, your home state, education level, and so forth. If we happen to have a customer who wants your particular demographics, you are more likely to be asked to take a survey. While we don't require you to give us all the demographic data, the more data you give us, the more surveys you are likely to get.
• Response: The more often you take the surveys we offer you, the more likely we are to ask you to do more in the future. If you usually ignore our surveys, our system assumes that you aren't very interested. Each survey is weighted by the percentage of people who respond, in order to adjust for surveys which are particularly difficult to respond to (for example, our one-hour surveys.)
• Random Chance: Whom we ask to take a survey is partly determined at random, so some people will happen to get more than others.

How much time do you allow to complete a survey?

We've discovered that most people respond to survey invitations within about six hours or not at all.

Because of this, we don't penalize people for not being able to do a few surveys. In fact, we assume that nobody will ever be able to do everything, but we look for people who do a lot more than average.

Some of our surveys have very short time frames, such as one hour. (This includes several minutes to E-mail the invitations.) We realize that it is frustrating to get an invitation only to find that it has already expired. We do it because our customers love being able to get results quickly. Because they are harder to respond to, they are not as important in calculating how often a panelist will respond.

What if I miss a survey?

We understand that not everyone will be able to participate in every survey, and when we have to have a short deadline, we invite more panelists to compensate.

We won't penalize you if you can't participate in a survey, and with luck, the next time, you will get the invitation in plenty of time to participate.

What sorts of surveys will I be asked to do?

Usually, you will be asked to call a toll-free phone number, try to get some information or complete a task, and then do an on-line survey about your experience. Our customers are usually interested in knowing what your experience was like, so they can improve their customer service. Sometimes, you may be asked to visit a web site, or send E-mail somewhere. There may be times you will be asked to do something at a particular time or on a particular day. Generally, the more things you are asked to do, the more money the survey is worth.

What if I don't finish a survey?

In order to earn the money, you must complete everything in a survey. You will know you've finished the survey if you get a "Thank You" e-mail, or if the survey shows as complete when you log on to our website. If you have any questions about a particular survey, send E-mail to help@vocalabs.com.