Toluna Review – Worth Joining or Waste of Your Time?

Toluna formally known as Test and Vote (many years ago) is more than just a paid survey site, it is a modern and interactive community that will pay you to test free products, vote in online polls and take online surveys.

The site is owned by the Toluna group who are headquartered in France but have 19 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. As of 2016, there are over 10 million Toluna members in 59 countries around the world and 800 employees making it by far one of the biggest market research communities.

Taking Surveys at Toluna

Surveys do tend to be sent regularly. You will probably find that you are receiving them most days of the week. With regular reminders sent out if you forget to complete one. Rather than waiting for invitation emails you may login to your account and take surveys directly from there. You may find that if you left it a while there will be lots of surveys within your account worth thousands of points.

Testing Products if You Get the Chance!

To test a product you need to visit the test area on the site and register your interest in each available product. The items that you can test mostly include household and beauty products. Although from time to time they may include electronic products. If you are selected the product will be sent out to you free of charge. After thoroughly testing it you will have to review it via the Toluna site, for this you will be rewarded with more points, after testing the product is yours to keep. You should bear in mind that many thousands of people apply to test the same product so the chance of you actually being selected is fairly slim.

Getting Paid is Achievable

For each survey, you complete points are added to your account. After many complaints that their points system was too high to claim rewards Toluna has recently reduced the amounts and lower the minimum you need to make a claim. This change has made getting rewards much more achievable. The general rule of thumb is that 25,000 points are worth a £5 voucher, 50,000 is a £10 voucher, 80,000 is a £15 voucher and 100,000 is a £20 voucher. Although these amounts are not set and you may need something in between to actually claim. For example, to claim a £10 Cineworld voucher, you would need 55,000 points in total.

The vouchers you can claim are for hundreds of different shops and restaurants. Some of the biggest names include Sports Direct, Next, M&S, Tesco, Starbucks, River Island, Amazon, Toni and Guy, Halfords, B&Q and TK Max.

As well as vouchers there are Toluna branded products such as keyrings, chargers, watches and travel kits that you can claim for a lower number of points. The smallest amount of points you would need to make a claim for a discount voucher or keyring is 1000.

Getting Paid Cash is Difficult!

If you don’t want vouchers or nick nacks then you can try and save up enough points to get a cash payment via Paypal. For a £35 Paypal payment in the UK, you will need a staggering 185,000 points. (Varies in other countries) The Paypal option is the most points you would require in order to make a claim.

On a side note their current policy removes any points you haven’t spent after 1 year (see this discussed below) so getting 185,000 is in our opinion is very difficult and would require a lot of work. This policy has by far picked up the most complaints so maybe one day it will be reviewed and changed.

The Pro’s of Being a Toluna Member

Massive community with over 10 million members in the majority of countries all around the world. The site has many active members that interact on a daily basis taking their online surveys, writing polls, taking sponsored polls and giving their opinions on brands/products through their forum.

The site is 100% free to join and members are paid with points for completing surveys which can be redeemed for gift vouchers, cash or small gifts.

The minimum amount to claim a reward has recently been changed which has made it much more achievable.

Using a small number of points members may choose to ‘buy’ entries into the monthly prize draw which offers a number of small and large prizes totaling £5000. 1 entry is also given into the prize draw each time you are ‘screened out’ of a survey.

Survey invitations are sent to members via email or can be accessed through their website.

The website itself is very user-friendly. It contains lots of helpful guides about taking surveys, testing products and other useful information

Toluna has a full privacy policy that clearly states that your personal information will not be sold or transferred to any third parties.

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The Con’s of Being a Toluna Member

The biggest con to being a Toluna member is their policy that your points expire after 1 year if they haven’t been spent. This has led to many complaints from people who were saving for a particular reward only to lose thousands of points.

Some members have also reported their points expiring in between making a claim and their claims being processed.

Another complaint is the lengthy processing times with rewards taking as long as 8 weeks to be sent out. Many users have also said that after waiting so long they have then been contacted to say their particular gift card was out of stock.

The amount you can earn per survey is very small in comparison to other paid survey sites. The average you earn per survey is around 2000 – 3000 points. If you work out that a £5 voucher can be claimed at 25,000 points this means that each survey you take is only worth 50p each. For a 20 – 30-minute survey other sites would offer double or even triple.

Concluding Thoughts

Although Toluna is one of the biggest market research companies in the world they do pick up a fair number of complaints on the Internet.

The biggest complaint is their 1-year expiry on points. This seems like a completely unfair rule given that the points you need to claim a higher value reward would take quite some time to save up for.

Another of the main hurdles is the excessive processing times. Many members have reported as long as 2 months to receive a high street voucher for as little as £5. This could be in part due to their large user base of millions of people.

Toluna’s customer service is also supposed to below average. Members have reported late / no replies or very vague answers to their questions. Many members have taken to review sites like Survey Police in order to vent their frustrations on this poor customer service.

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Although there are many complaints there are as well many happy users who have experienced none of the problems listed above. Some even go so far as to say that Toluna is one of the best survey sites offering their members many different ways to earn points, earn rewards, interact and make new friends.