I had them call me today. They were quite polite... When you don't speak English to them. I ALWAYS answer the phone from a number I don't know in Spanish. Hell, my Spanish sucks too, any High School first year Spanish class student is better than me; But that's besides the point here. I always answer the phone with a 'Hola' and say nothing more. Let them do the talking. All you need to know is two more words, 'No' and 'Si'. They figure it out real quick that you don't speak their language(those racist b@stards!) and quickly hang up.
This number has been calling me 12 times everyday for three months. I finally answered it and they said they will pay me $20.00 to answer 20 questions via email, but first they wanted me credit card number. I told them to get lost and never call this number again. I then contacted the state attorney general. they said this is a scheme to collect personal information and this company is under investigation for fraud. I then called my phone company and they have blocked this number from calling me again.
LOL! Honestly guys, I'm an IU alumnus and I worked for Stone Research to help put me through school. Different companies hire Stone to do research to check out how they are doing on their services, pricing policies, ect. This way the company (i.e. Duke ect) will have a more valid standard of measurement. For example, "we (company XYX) were rated #1." They can't really hire people to do surveys internally because the surveyor would be more biased and may "coach" the respondent for the answer that will reflect best on their company. Hiring an outside company ensures a more unbiased answer. Sometimes we also did blind surveys where a company like Walmart would get a seed list of numbers where they were interested in building a new store. In this case the surveyor from Stone who calls you, won't know what company they are calling on the behalf of and will ask if you would like to take a short survey. They would ask questions like "how far do you have to travel to a retail store", "how much do you spend there," "if there was a store closer to your home what is the likelihood that you would shop there instead" etc, etc, etc. The scores are tallied and given in aggregate form to the company who hired Stone Research. The company that hired Stone takes the data and will make an informed decision on their operations based on the repondents answer. If you ask to be removed from "the list" it doesn't really matter: 1) the Do Not Call law applies to telemarketors not research companies (so you better be nice with your request because if they don't take you off you don't have any legal grounds to get damages) and 2.) You will be removed from the list of the company who hired Stone (so if you are on another company's call list and they hire Stone you will get called again). My advice is to give them a try if you like. It is 100% legit. One note though, if you don't want to do the survey tell them upfront. If you cut the survey short half way through, its an incomplete and won't count towards their surveys needed so they will call you again and again and again. Say yes and do the whole thing or say no and ask nicely to be removed from the survey list. Hope this helps!!!
Received a call today from this number doing a survey asked a lot of dumb questions about what percent of business we did in each of these catagories etc etc lot of bs after about five minutes of rate this 1 to 10 bs told the person on the other I was to busy for all this crap called number back told them to put me on no call list if we receive any more calls from this same number will call Attorney Generals office of the State of Missouri and file a complaint.
Just echoing Brandon's Mom - agree with everything she said. I work there too and it's a legitimate market research company. It's all general information that they're requesting. x1962x said they requested a credit card number. As long as I've worked there and as far as I know, they would never request any personal information like that, nor are they under investigation for fraud.
I'm very hesitant myself to give out personal information on the phone and am leery of anyone who calls me, but from all the surveys I've done for them, I personally would feel comfortable completing any of them. If you prefer not to give a particular piece of information, just say so and they can either mark it refused or your survey will end and you will not be called back for that study.
You will be called back more times if you do not answer your phone. Just answer and say you don't want to participate if you don't want to be bothered anymore. They only keep calling because there is no way they can know if you're interested in participating or not unless you tell them. And congress exempts market research groups from the do not call list because they realize the value of your opinions. If you want to have a say in what goes on in your community, which stores move closer to you, etc. Just take a little time to answer a few questions.