Money for your opinion. That’s what Shopper Thoughts promises, and it gave me pause, because a nice promise doesn’t tell me anything about getting paid. I was worried I’d run into a scam or waste my time on surveys I’d get nothing for.
I didn’t want to judge the site by what it promises. That’s why I signed up for Shopper Thoughts and answered their surveys myself. I wanted to see if the rewards actually arrive and if it’s worth the time.
The result put my mind at ease. Shopper Thoughts is a trustworthy site, and I’m telling you that right from the start.
But is it right for you too? A site that pays isn’t automatically a site you should spend your time on. In this review, I’ll tell you everything you need to know and what to expect before you create an account. I’d hate for you to sign up and only be disappointed afterward.
Read all the way to the end, and only then decide!
What is Shopper Thoughts, and what to expect?
We all have an opinion about what we buy. Shopper Thoughts is an online research community that collects exactly those opinions from the people who do the shopping and passes them on to the retailers and brands that want to make better products.
Members answer online surveys, cast quick votes (polls) or join online discussion rooms, where they talk about products and about how they shop, and the retailers and brands use that to decide what a product should look like or what to change about what they already sell. I liked the idea, because the buyer’s opinion makes it all the way to whoever makes the product.
Who’s behind it? A customer data company, dunnhumby Limited, which owns and runs the site and is itself a subsidiary of Tesco PLC. I find it reassuring to know it’s linked to Tesco. But that doesn’t tell me anything about the money yet.
Tesco has also used special testing groups, such as Tesco Home Panels, and the difference between them looks big to me. Survey sites pay in points. Tesco Home Panels sends product samples to members’ homes (things you hold in your hand, not questions on a screen) so they can try them out in real life and then say in detail what they think of them.
Shopper Thoughts is trustworthy. The rewards do arrive. But a trustworthy site and a good way to earn aren’t the same thing. What matters is how much time and effort you put in for each reward, and you can only see that from the earning methods, which I’ll go through one by one.
You can get every reward and still come out behind if you also add in the time you put in.
Shopper Thoughts doesn’t have surveys you can take whenever you want. It’s a private panel run by dunnhumby, Tesco’s data company, and you only take part after you get an official invitation from them by email. That was a little inconvenient for me, because you don’t choose the timing. But the invitation is still the part that saves you time.
Each email comes with a unique link, and if you’ve received it, you’ve already qualified for the survey. You don’t go through screening questions, and nobody kicks you out halfway through. Whenever I got an invitation, I clicked, answered honestly to the end, and the system added “Shopper Thoughts points” to the balance in my profile. No surprises. I count the minutes I give a site, so this matters a lot to me. Not a single minute goes to a survey cut off in the middle.
And what do you get for those minutes? Points. The site doesn’t pay in physical cash or coins. Everything runs on a digital points system. Every time you take part, you also earn entries into a monthly prize drawing, where “bonus points” are given out. The entries add up on their own, with no extra effort, and I like that. But you only get the bonus points if you’re lucky.
The questions change all the time, depending on what the brands are planning, but they always revolve around shopping. They usually ask for your opinion on how products are arranged on supermarket shelves, on new packaging or flavor and scent ideas for food and household products that haven’t reached the stores yet, and on how often you buy certain things online compared with how often you go to a physical supermarket. We all have an answer to that last question, because we all shop one way or another.
If you like this kind of invitation-based research, with the data in the hands of big analytics firms, there are two more panels that work the same way.
Kantar Worldpanel (ShopandScan) usually doesn’t let you in through a public ad. They send letters by mail or digital invitations to selected households in the UK. Members scan their shopping every week with a barcode app and get reward points in return.
M&S Your波 (Marks & Spencer Panel) is a customer community, also invitation-only, that runs for Marks & Spencer. Invitations go by email to people who have a registered Sparks card, the surveys are about fashion and food, and for those you get entries into prize drawings and gift cards.
If I put them side by side, Kantar takes more of your time, because you scan your shopping week after week, and M&S requires the Sparks card. I like the M&S gift cards, because they’re closer to cash than points are.
If you also want other survey sites that don’t work by invitation, you can read my reviews of Eureka Surveys, Prolific, GrapeData, or Testable Minds. On those, you get in whenever you want.
Polls and Rooms discussions
I expected a poll to be a kind of shorter survey, with pay to match. That’s not quite how it works. You get a single question and a short list of options, you pick one, submit it, and right away you see what percentage of the other shoppers voted for each option. The whole thing takes a few seconds.
And the pay still matches those seconds: very little. That didn’t bother me, because the part with the percentages seemed more interesting to me than the points. I liked seeing on the spot whether I’d answered the same way as most people.
Through polls, the site collects opinions for brands and big retailers like Tesco, and you can tell from the questions that they’re made for supermarkets. The poll questions are about things like:
- which packaging makes a new snack look healthier
- frozen or fresh in winter, and how often
- why you prefer self-checkout to a checkout with a cashier
- what you expect from your household budget over the next few months (beyond the shopping basket)
You answer these questions from what you already do when you buy your groceries, and that’s why the answer comes right away.
But most of the work is in the discussion rooms. These are chat forums run by the site. You go into a room, read a topic about shopping and write your opinion in your own words, and you can read what the other members have posted and reply to them.
Because you have to write clear sentences, it takes longer here. But you usually get more points than for a poll, or a better standing in the community. It seems fair to me to get more when you write more. Even so, neither the polls nor the rooms pay you an hourly wage. They’re an easy way to grow your points balance.
There’s also the monthly prize draw. For every activity, including polls and discussions, the system automatically gives you entries into the draw, and if your name is drawn, you win a bundle of bonus points. Besides that one, special draws come up too (Spot Prize Draws). When one comes up, they tell you how to enter. The prizes can be extra Shopper Thoughts points, members-only rooms or activities, and other Shopper Thoughts products or experiences.
I don’t know what your chances are in the draw, and that’s why I don’t count on it. But I like that the entries come in on their own, even for a poll that takes a few seconds.
Status Levels and badges
When I saw that Shopper Thoughts has badges and levels, I expected each new level to come with some extra points. It doesn’t come with anything. You don’t get any direct payment or any automatic bonus points for moving up a level.
The system tracks your activity on the site and rewards you with titles and badges when you answer surveys, vote in polls, and post in the discussion forums, kind of like in a video game. It has two parts, Badges and Status Levels.
Officially, the point of them is exclusivity. The managers at dunnhumby look at your badges and your level when they choose members for special or exclusive research activities. I don’t know for sure how often they pick someone this way.
Your level reflects everything you’ve done on the site since you opened your account, and it goes up with the number of activities you’ve completed. Each title has its own exact threshold:
- Window Shopper: 0 activities, where everyone starts
- Aisle Explorer: 1 activity
- Deal Detective: 50 activities
- Savvy Spender: 100 activities
- Checkout Champion: 300 activities
- Elite Shopper: 600 activities
- Shopping Superstar: 1,000 activities
- Retail Royalty: 1,500 activities, the final level
The first step is simple: one activity and you’re an Aisle Explorer. But to reach Deal Detective you still need 49 more, and from there the gaps between thresholds keep getting bigger. I’m afraid Retail Royalty takes a lot of time for something that doesn’t put any money in your pocket.
Badges are tied to what you do in the online community. You get them when you complete activities, upload media files, or post comments in the chat that collect likes and replies from other members. I liked the part about comments, because you only get the badge if other members appreciated what you wrote too. Badges are awarded at set thresholds, for example at 1, 10, or 25 activities, and you don’t get one for every activity you complete.
I was hoping to see the badge on my profile as soon as I finished the activity. It doesn’t show up then. The site processes activities overnight, and you only find the new badge after that. The ones you don’t have yet stay locked and grayed out on your profile page.
I still liked seeing what I have left to unlock, even though I know I don’t get any money for them.
How do you get paid?
I expected the points earned on Shopper Thoughts to convert into cash. They don’t. You get either e-vouchers, which are codes for online shopping, or Tesco Clubcard points. Because the panel is run by dunnhumby, Tesco’s data company, your survey points can go straight into your shopping budget.
Of the two options, Clubcard is the one I recommend, especially compared with a regular digital voucher for other stores. A £5 Tesco voucher can often be exchanged for double or triple its value, £10 or £15, if you use it with Tesco Reward Partners, the official partners, such as theme parks, cinema tickets or restaurant chains. I liked that the points I collect anyway can be worth two or three times as much just because I send them somewhere else. Often, not every time.
If vouchers aren’t for you and you want actual cash, Shopper Thoughts isn’t the right site. I’ve written reviews of Timebucks, Earnopolis and FireFaucet, good sites that pay through PayPal or in cryptocurrency, and I recommend those to you.
To get the points onto my Clubcard, I linked the two accounts from my Shopper Thoughts profile, in 4 steps:
- I logged into my Shopper Thoughts profile, which is where the two accounts get linked.
- I opened the profile options and looked for the “linked accounts” section.
- I entered the number of my active Tesco Clubcard, which I found in the official Tesco app on my phone, in the Clubcard management section.
- Once the link was confirmed, rewards from validated surveys started transferring to my Clubcard statement automatically, as shopping points, without me having to do anything each time.
This link is one of the two requirements for withdrawing anything from the site. The second is the 500-point threshold, which equals £5 in rewards. A survey usually pays between 25 and 150 points, and the longer it is, the more it pays. I worked it out for both ends of the range. With 4 long surveys, you’re over the threshold. With short surveys you need 20, and a 25-point one is worth 25 pence. It doesn’t pay much, but it doesn’t take much of your time either.
And if the points go to Clubcard, the same 20 short surveys can be worth £10 or £15 instead of £5.
How do you ask for help?
When points go missing or you have a problem with your account, you can’t call anyone at Shopper Thoughts, and there’s no chat with a person who answers right away. You send a request and wait. I have no patience when it comes to points, and I didn’t like this part. But at least you have three places you can write to.
The most convenient one is the pink button that says “Help,” in the bottom right corner of the screen. I clicked it, and a dark window opened with the title “Need some help? Send us a message below.” It also had a form where the team asks for everything it needs to solve your problem:
- Name, which the team needs so it knows who it’s dealing with.
- Email address, which has an asterisk (*) and is required, because that’s where they send you the reply. I worry about a mistake here more than in the rest of the form, because without the correct address the reply has nowhere to go.
- “What is your enquiry about?”, a menu where you choose what it’s about, for example a technical error or an account problem.
- Subject, also required, a short line where you state the main problem.
- Description, required as well, a large text box where you explain the problem step by step.
If you don’t want to wait at all, the “Get in touch” page advises you to search the FAQ before you write, for quick answers to everyday questions. And it’s the only place where the answer already exists. When you can’t find what you’re looking for there, you can send an email from your personal address to [email protected].
I was worried that a form with no phone number and no chat would go unanswered. I didn’t find any public complaints about ignored messages or about a contact form that doesn’t work, though. The business behind it is dunnhumby, a big company that takes care of its users’ data and fixes errors in the system properly.
You wait for a person to read your message, but you know someone will read it.
Shopper Thoughts on Trustpilot
When I read the reviews, I expected to find people who didn’t get their rewards. I didn’t. The people who reached the threshold got what they requested, an Amazon e-voucher or Tesco Clubcard points.
The payout threshold is 500 points, at least in the current Terms. Older reviews mention other thresholds too, because the threshold changed from time to time or depended on the reward you chose. The payout is the part that works. Almost the only one, going by what people write.
All the other complaints are about getting to the threshold. Long-time members say they went months on end without a single invitation and that, when a survey finally came, they were often disqualified halfway through it. You lose time both while you’re waiting and while you’re answering a survey that stops before the end. Without invitations, there’s nothing you can do on a survey site, no matter how reputable the company behind it is.
But I’m more worried about the support than about the lack of surveys. Several people wrote in about a locked account or missing points and waited weeks without anyone replying. Why does this scare me more? Because it’s about hard-earned points, from the few surveys that reach you, and about a balance you can no longer access.
And all of this comes from a small number of reviews. Trustpilot has only 3, and they aren’t even for the site, but for dunnhumby Ltd, the company that owns it, with an average of 2.8 stars out of 5. On SurveyPolice I found 9, and 7 of them have 1 or 2 stars, about 77%. I added them up and got 12 reviews I checked, around 9 negative and around 3 positive, roughly 75% and 25%. The 3 positive ones praise only the company’s reliability and the fact that the rewards arrive in the end. The negative ones again complain about the time they put in for too little reward and about the lack of surveys.
Based on 12 people, I can’t say what all the members think. Many probably give up on the site quietly, without writing about it anywhere.
It wasn’t always like this. In old forum posts, the site was a good way to add a little extra on top of Clubcard points. The newer reviews describe it as an abandoned site that has stalled, where you rarely get the chance to do anything.
Going by everything people write, the site does well on payouts, but poorly on how easily you can earn points and how quickly support gets back to you.
Red flags you should never ignore
When we collect points on a site, the big fear is that it turns out to be a scam. Here I didn’t find any evidence of phishing, financial fraud, or verified rewards left unpaid, and both the WHOIS data and the privacy policy show that the site belongs to Tesco and dunnhumby.
What happens to my answers if I close my account? I thought they’d go with it. They don’t. The privacy policy says clearly, in section 13.1, that answers from surveys already completed aren’t deleted and are kept for the company’s analyses.
The terms and conditions let dunnhumby stop offering points or change the withdrawal thresholds at any time, as long as they give notice first. The points collected now are worth whatever they decide.
I couldn’t verify what’s said about the support, but the complaints come from several people, on different platforms, with no connection to each other. They write that their emails went unanswered when a technical problem kept them from using their points. I think they’re worth taking seriously.
I’m not worried about the money. I’m worried about the points that took patience to collect and about the answers that stay with them even after I leave.
Who can use Shopper Thoughts?
Before you get to an account on Shopper Thoughts, you answer a lot of questions about your grocery shopping. And there’s a reason for them. The site uses your answers, from your date of birth and postcode to the stores you go into most often, to decide whether to accept you or not, and only then does it give you the form for your name, email, and password.
Age and country matter before any of the questions. You have to be over 18 and live in the UK. The platform mentions three strict rules, but the only ones I found written down were age and country. People in the Republic of Ireland have a separate version of the site, just for them.
Getting my account went like this:
- Everything begins with the “Join Today” button, which I clicked to start signing up.
- I was asked to agree to the “Terms and Conditions,” the “Privacy Notice,” and the “Cookie Policy.” I accepted them, because anyone who refuses them can’t go any further.
- I gave my date of birth, gender, and postcode, details the site also uses to see whether it can accept you.
- Next came the questions about grocery stores (there are a lot of them, but they’re all about everyday things). I said which ones I had gone to most often in the last 12 months and which ones I spend the most money in, and then, for each store I picked, what kind of shopping trips I usually make. There are also questions about how I go about my shopping, about the celebrations and events I take part in, about whether I usually buy in store or online, and many more.
- The registration form came after all of that, with title (Mr., Mrs., Miss, and others), first name, last name, email, and password.
- My account only opened for me after I confirmed my email address, through the link that came to that address after I signed up.
The email step is the smallest one in the whole process. But without it, all the answers that came before it don’t get you anywhere, and I’d have been really sorry to lose them over a link I didn’t open.
Can you use it on your phone?
If you look for it on Google Play or the App Store, the Shopper Thoughts app won’t show up. There was an official one, but it was removed from the UK Google Play store back on September 20, 2017, and it no longer turns up in searches on either store.
What scares me more are the Android .APK files that some random blogs pass off as the official app. Their app has been gone for years, so any file like this comes from someone else. Nobody has checked it, and it could damage your phone. Don’t download anything like that from any blog.
But you don’t even need the app. I expected going without it to be inconvenient, and it wasn’t. The panel works straight from the browser, with a regular internet connection. When dunnhumby picks your profile for a study, you get a link by email, you tap it, and the community page opens in the browser your phone already has: Safari on an iPhone, for example, or Google Chrome on Android.
The menus and answer buttons shrink on their own to fit the narrow screen of a phone held upright. I answered surveys, left comments in discussions, watched videos, and didn’t need any extra software. It works well.
As long as everything happens in the browser, there’s no point in putting your phone at risk for a file downloaded from a blog.
Is Shopper Thoughts LEGIT or SCAM?
When we collect points on a survey site, the biggest worry is finding out that it’s disappeared, points and all. With Shopper Thoughts, I didn’t have that worry. It’s run by dunnhumby, a data analytics company owned by Tesco, and it’s a legitimate market research panel, not a scam.
And it pays. You get points for what you think about shopping in the UK or the Republic of Ireland, and once you reach the threshold, they’re paid out as Tesco Clubcard points or Amazon vouchers. It doesn’t pay cash, only gift cards and Clubcard points. I’d have liked a cash option too.
I thought an invitation meant a guaranteed survey, because the site says that when you get one, you’ve already qualified. But disqualifications are frequent and people complain about them a lot. Add the infrequent surveys and the small rewards, and the time you put in is worth more than the points you get back. And if you have a problem, support almost never replies. It’s a shame, because I expected more from a company that big.
I think it’s useful for someone who shops at Tesco anyway and isn’t in a hurry. Over time, without much effort, they collect a few small Clubcard bonuses. So small that I wouldn’t call them income. If you want steady extra income or a sizable amount of money, it’ll disappoint you.
I’d only keep it as a secondary site, and only if I lived in the UK or the Republic of Ireland.
If you have an opinion or a question, or you’ve tried Shopper Thoughts yourself, leave me a comment below.