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Is E-Rewards a Scam? – My E-Rewards Review

E-Rewards LogoE-Rewards is a survey panel website that has been operating since 1999. That is a long time for it to be running, but the questions still remains:

Can you make money with E-Rewards?


No. E-Rewards isn't exactly a scam, but in my opinion, it's not a good survey panel.

This E-Rewards review is slightly different then the other ones that I have done. I typically only review sites that I have personally tried and have been paid. However, there are a few restrictions with the E-Rewards survey panel that doesn't allow me to do that.

One of the restrictions is that E-Rewards is an invite only website, and I have not been invited. While normally I would wait for an invite, or just not review the site, I have noticed enough inquiries about the site to look into it.

What I found after looking into it made me feel confident that I could come to the conclusion that E-Rewards isn't a great site to be spending time on.

My Reasons for Avoiding E-Rewards

While E-Rewards isn't exactly a scam, they are a site that should be avoided in my opinion. To discuss this, I'll get into a list of the pros and cons of the site, then an overall conclusion.

I do want you to know that I have look at reviews of the panel from the last couple years from actual users, along with their parent company and their BBB profile. So while I haven't personally haven't tried it, I have second hand accounts of those who have.

E-Rewards BBB Profile

This may mean that this is not a definitive answer on E-Rewards, but there are certainly some telling signs.

E-Reward Pros

  • They actually provide surveys and rewards
  • It is possible to get surveys that pay above the industry standard

E-Reward Cons

  • They have a poor rewards selection
    • No PayPal, check, or Visa
  • Their payout minimum is $60
  • Their individual survey payouts very misleading
    • It takes about $60 to get a $25 gift card. This means that every dollar you get for the survey is actually worth about $.41
  • Their payout for screening you out is misleading
    • If you take the same math as above, you get paid $.10 even though they say $.25
  • The majority of user reviews are negative
    • They talk of being screened out after 20-30 minutes of questions
    • Rarely qualifying for any surveys
  • The screening process and actual survey are blended
    • This means you don't actually know how long you'll be taking the survey for, which is something I never recommend.
  • Their BBB profile score is a D+
    • This is a pretty poor score. It is because there were 137 complaints against the company and their BBB accreditation was revoked because they failed to honor its accreditation with BBB

Conclusion

While E-Rewards has had a few positive reviews, the majority of my investigation on the website certainly pointed towards negative. Since there are some positive reviews, I am not claiming this to be definitive.

If you would like to give them a try, you can search the internet for an invitation, since only their partner programs can invite you.

My thoughts on E-Rewards is that they have had a lot of complaints about them, the majority of their users are not happy with them, you can't cash out with PayPal, the screening out process seems a little uncertain, and overall they don't pay out great.

Also, you have to search the internet to find a way to sign up or wait to be invited by a partner program. With all these negative factors, I personally recommend spending your time on sites that are truly legitimate, pay out high, and you can get cash with.

If you are interested in sites like that, here is the list of my top recommended sites:

My Top Survey Companies

If you have any further questions about E-Rewards, or would like to add to the conversation, please leave a comment below.

Advertiser Disclosure: We get a commission for some of the links on the blog. The opinions expressed here are the author's alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or endorsed by our partners.
7 comments… add one
  1. I read that you have a policy of only reviewing sites you have used, that seems smart and fair to me!

    …so why did you write a post about a site you haven’t used?!? :) I first started using e-rewards about a year ago, after trying (and disliking) Swagbucks. There are a couple things that you have written in this post that sound odd to me, like when you state “Their payout minimum is $60” that sounds like you must make $60 to redeem for anything at all. Maybe you didn’t mean that, but it sounded like it You can begin redeeming at $10 for coupons, $15 for magazines subscriptions, $20 more magazine subscriptions and coupons. They do have some gift cards at higher price points, but I also don’t think they are that great.

    What I do think is great is that $25 is when you can begin to trade for airline miles or hotel points. At the $50 level I can trade that for 1 AirTran credit. Soon AirTran’s rewards will be converted to Southwest Rapid Rewards, at the rate of 1 AirTran credit = 1200 Rapid Rewards. The cheapest rate of where I want to fly to is $120 if I pay cash, or about 6,100 Rapid Rewards. Over the last year I have earned 4.5 AirTran credits from e-rewards, which converted will give me 5,400 if my math is right. Which is almost that one way ticket that usually sells for $120. In my opinion it didn’t take much time either. Now getting Airtran credits is not an option, but you can get 500 Rapids Rewards points if you trade $25, which is what I am about to do. Southwest also gave me 250 miles just for signing up for e-rewards, so now I do really have a free one way plane ticket.

    I’ve never spent 20 minutes on a survey for them to tell me I don’t qualify, maybe 5, but that doesn’t happen often. Some surveys pay like $2.50 and one recently paid $14.

    If you aren’t into traveling maybe it’s not as lucrative, but if you are, besides Southwest, other airlines will also give you 250 miles just for signing up for e-rewards, if one is close to having enough miles for a flight this is a nice easy free way to get more.

    That’s another thing I like about e-rewards, it is easy to use, what you see is what you get, it’s not as cluttered as other survey sites and usually there are new surveys to take every few days at least, if not every other day.

    You are right that you won’t make a lot of actual cash on e-rewards, but I don’t think people should be warned away from it based on that alone. It’s like discounting your neighborhood grocery store for not selling panda bears, it’s not their thing, doesn’t make them bad. As for me, my checking account has $120 more in it because I don’t have to use that to buy my ticket.

    As for the negative reviews, it is always the disgruntled that scream the loudest, as I’m sure you have learned in researching reviews for other survey sites (which is how I found your site), the happy people are not posting (usually) how happy they are, they are instead quietly and contentedly taking their surveys, racking up miles.

    I like your site, by the way, I like your question and answer format of reviewing the different sites and I am going to check out CashCrate because of you, I just don’t think this post is fair, that’s all. I’m also quite tired as I write this, I hope everything made grammatical sense and feel free to delete this post if you want, I don’t care about making a “comment” for the world to see, I just wanted to set the record straight.

    Reply
    1. Hey Milly,

      I appreciate comments like these, and would like to see more of them as I think they offer more to the conversation and overall help readers of this blog.

      I will definitely leave your comment up, as this seems like a valid way for people to use E-Rewards. It is slightly more complex way, but the creativity is great to see.

      The reason I decided to write a review on E-Rewards without using them is because I was getting enough questions from readers about them, and since it is invitation only (and I had not been invited), I figured I would dive into researching them in every way possible.

      While I understand that it does tend to be the disgruntled who speak the loudest, I did come across a couple positive reviews, but they were greatly out weighed. Taking that, in combination with E-Rewards have a D+ BBB rating on top of their membership being revoked, my opinion of them seemed to be swaying negatively.

      I have mentioned before on this blog that I prefer cashing out with money, rather than gift cards, airline miles or magazine subscriptions, so that also weighed in against E-Rewards.

      However, that doesn’t mean that people can’t follow your technique and use E-Rewards to their advantage.

      So in my opinion, I don’t recommend them, as there are other good companies to make cash from (which I prefer). But my opinion is obviously just my opinion, so I’m happy to leave your comment up as a guide for those who would like to use E-Rewards for traveling.

      Thanks for taking the time to share, and I’m glad you find my site useful.

      Survey Chris

      Reply
  2. I just found this article, not sure how old it is, and thought I’d share my experience with the company. I’ve been with it almost 2 years now and overall like it and have had a good experience.

    To start with the positives, I have read people on the internet who have said they have had issues with getting their reward currency after completing a survey, I have never had this issue. Now it can take several hours for the currency to post for me but since you’re supposed to give it up to 7 days and I never have to wait more than 3 hours I think that is decent. I can trade 100$ E-Reward currency for 30,000 Game Stop PowerUp Reward points, I have never had an issue receiving my currency (it’s all I ever trade my currency for), it takes longer than I’d like (it advertises taking up to 14 days but it’s usually in within 2-5 days with an exception of taking a week the first time I ever traded it in) while I wish it posted within 24-48 hours (48 hours being tops as the times I have to wait 5 days suck). Yes you can’t cash the currency out for cash but upon being invited and making your account just a brief look through the site will make it obvious you can’t get cash payouts for the surveys.

    The negatives, they have a pretty limited selection for what you can trade your rewards for. Mostly airline and hotel point rewards, the one redeeming thing for me is the PowerUp Rewards from Gamestop, if they ever took that off I doubt I’d continue to really use their service unless it was replaced with something else I could actually use. I too have had a few bad experiences with surveys that were supposed to be 25, 30, 40+ minutes and filling out anywhere from half to as much as 90% of the survey just to be told “you do not qualify for this survey”. Every time it happens I am a bit sore about it, but it happens so rarely to me it has never turned me away from using their service. Overall I give the site and experience a 3.5/5 stars. I’m fine with no cash payout but I do wish they offered more of a variety of things to cash out for. Also, not everyone (for whatever reason it may be) gets access to the same rewards, while one person may have GameStop and Macy’s another may have GameStop but not Macy’s, vice versa, or both may have neither (this applies to everything including Star Bucks). Why on earth they have it work this way I have no clue. I wish they would offer every reward to everyone or at least work to make rewards more diverse. Either way just my 2 cents on the site.

    Reply
    1. Hey David, thanks for the extra review and sharing your experiences.

      :)

      Reply
  3. 1. Redeems only a fraction of the money earned i.e. earn $5 get $2-$3 actual dollars applied to the reward.
    2. Spend minutes filling out part of the survey to then learn it’s only partially useable; reward is usually 0.25 cents.
    3. Primarily offer low value or not popular or just junk rewards. Not near the value of what was earned. Same rewards can often by found elsewhere for less time investment.
    4. Surveys usually take longer than listed, if listed at all.
    5. If you travel a lot or want low value magazines then what you redeem is equivalent to selling your life’s time for a few dollars per hour.

    Reply
  4. I’ve been using e-rewards for several years to get Southwest Airlines points. I finally figured out how to get 2,400 SWA points a month (the max you can redeem), which is pretty darn good I think! Instead of waiting for an email to tell me I have a survey, I go to e-rewards.com (both online and on an app on my phone) at least once a day. Most days I get only one survey online, but from my phone I usually get 2-4 surveys. Altogether I probably spend an hour or less per day. It’s not cash but it allows me to fly Southwest for free several times a year. Yippee!

    Reply
  5. I have worked e-Rewards survey’s for years and have redeemed their money to buy many magazine subscriptions, Macy’s gift cards, restaurant coupons, and others. I find their surveys a challenge and like the referral program to gain even more of their bucks!

    Reply

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