The reality is we all seek some type of approval from others at one point in our lives. Well, the same goes for new products. Manufacturers are willing to pay people to test their products. You probably already knew this which is why you are searching through American Consumer Panels reviews to see if they are a legit product testing website. Well, this American Consumer Panels review will look at the good, bad and ugly. Don’t sign up as a product tester until you read our shocking review.
What is American Consumer Panels?
AmericanConsumerPanels.com is a market research company that provides in-home testing services. According to the privacy policy, the owner of the American Consumer Panels website is Innovation Consulting LLC in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but that company information yields no useful results, and also doesn't lead to any individual people. In other words, there is not much info on this company; with no founder, no employees, no company profile information, and no real contact information.
How Does American Consumer Panels Work?
According to their website, American Consumer Panels sends products to testers in their homes. Testers may be asked to write reviews of the product, or record audio or take photos of their experiences. Testers may sometimes be asked to visit a client site, but always within 20 minutes of their home, or to participate in calls or video chats to communicate with market researchers. Most of the time, testers can even keep the products they test, so it's an additional free bonus for the work you do.
How Do I Join American Consumer Panels?
To join American Consumer Panels, sign up at their website. After you sign up, you will be directed to also sign up with one or two partner survey sites to capture your demographic data, which will be used to determine which products are suitable for you to test. If the company determines that your demographic data is a match for a product that needs testing, they will contact you and explain the nature of the assignment.
How Much Can I Make with American Consumer Panels?
If you are selected for testing, American Consumer Panels claims they will send you work every week, with rates ranging from $25-$45 per hour.
The problem with product testing is that it’s an inconsistent way to make money. You only get paid when there are products available to test.
If you are looking for a consistent way to make part-time or full-time income with your own business, you might want to try My Best Work At Home Recommendation. It’s also free to get started.
If you aren’t interested in a business opportunity at the moment and want to make some side income, you can also try free sites like Inboxdollars.com, SurveyJunkie.com, Swagbucks.com and Fusioncash.com.
How Does American Consumer Panels Pay You?
They pay the week after the assignment is completed, by mailed check or by direct deposit.
American Consumer Panels Complaints
Now that you know all the logistics about American Consumer Panels, let’s dive into some of the red flags we found out about them.
Who is Behind This?
That is one question nobody will ever know. You will not be able to find the names of the founder, management or any employees. This is a major red flag. If they were running a legit business, they wouldn’t have a problem sharing that information and revealing their identity. There is too much secrecy and it’s a big concern as to why they are hiding this information from the public.
No BBB Listing
At the time of writing this review, American Consumer Panels doesn’t have a Better Business Bureau listing. So that might be a deal breaker for some of you.
However, you can also try sites like Wealthy Affiliate, Inboxdollars.com, SurveyJunkie.com, Swagbucks.com and Fusioncash.com. They all have good ratings with the Better Business Bureau.
Misleading – No Products To Test!
They require you to sign up with one or two survey sites as part of their sign-up process. These survey sites include both legitimate and less reputable survey sites. American Consumer Panels encourages you to continue completing surveys for these companies for weeks, while they “build your demographic profile”, calling these surveys a phase on your way to becoming a product tester.
In fact, American Consumer Panels is an affiliate of these survey sites, and they make a commission off of everyone who signs up for the survey sites through their website. There are hundreds of complaints saying there are no at-home product testing jobs with this company, and there never were.
There is no point in joining American Consumer Panel if you’re just going to be directed to surveys and never get products to test. Seems like a waste of time.
If you just want to make some extra income with surveys and other things you do online, you can skip the middleman and join sites like Inboxdollars.com, SurveyJunkie.com, Swagbucks.com and Fusioncash.com to help you earn some extra cash.
But if you’re looking to make a full or part-time income, you might want to check out My Best Work At Home Recommendation.
What’s with All The Spam?
By signing up with some shady survey sites, your contact information may, in turn, be sold to other companies who generate even more spam. Most people who sign up with American Consumer Panels, believing that they are applying for a job as a product tester, use their legitimate contact information, which bypasses measures you may normally take to avoid or sequester spam emails. In response to signing up through American Consumer Panels, you receive a wide range of survey email invites, as well as a lot of spam, but never an invitation to actually test a product.
Deception Press Coverage
By having an FTCGuardian emblem on the site, press clippings and social media links (which don't go anywhere), the site tries to make itself look legitimate. The FAQs actually tell readers that the process of filling out third-party surveys is part of their own recruitment process, and that other sites that call American Consumer Panels a scam are “click bait”. It's all designed to take advantage of naive readers. While many scams are, of course, intentionally deceptive, this one goes pretty far to disguise itself as a legitimate work-at-home job and lure people into signing up.
Even if you look at their press releases, anyone can pay a press release service and have it distributed to various news sites. In this case, the American Consumer Panels press releases were published under the name ABNewswire, which is a press release service.
Fake Address
The company gives its address as One World Trade Center, 285 Fulton St., Suite 8500, New York, NY, 10007. This address happens to be a “virtual office”. A company called Servcorp allows you to rent this address, and forwards your mail to your actual address, so that you can have a more prestigious street address than you actually do. It's unclear where American Consumer Panels is actually located, and, again, the company website doesn't give the name of any associated individual. You can also view all the tenants renting at One World Trade Center and American Consumer Panels is not one of them.
Is American Consumer Panels A Scam or Legit?
I would probably avoid American Consumer Panels based on the overwhelming number of red flags we found. It's a fake work at home opportunity that misleads you into signing up for third-party affiliate survey sites some of which are less reputable. There is nothing wrong with referring people to good companies that can help them and make money in the process. But they should be upfront about this. If that wasn’t bad enough, the company's own press release doesn't give a person's name or a real address, only the fake address in New York.
For those people who thought that a part-time, work from home job that paid $25-$45 per hour with guaranteed hours was too good to be true, they are correct.
If you’re looking for a legitimate business opportunity to make real money, then My Best Work At Home Recommendation might be something you want to try instead. You can make this type of money and more in time. But it will take a lot of patience and hard work.
So, that’s my opinion on American Consumer Panels. If you have any other questions, you can check out their FAQ page. Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments down below in the comment section.
Until next time,
Eddy “with a Y”