Natural and Thrifty In Your Inbox!
The Nielsen Homescan Consumer Panel is accepting applications again! If you are accepted you will receive a scanner which you use to scan all the bar codes of everything you purchase.
You will send in your scans once a week to Nielsen, and will earn points to redeem for prizes/rewards. It’s a pretty awesome program, so sign up HERE and see if you are one of the lucky ones to get accepted.
Have you tried this before? I would love to hear your feedback if you have!
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Crystal Collins is a writer, author and speaker who's passionate about helping people save money while living healthy and protecting the environment. She blogs to help others save money, live healthier and learn to add a little bit of "crunchiness" into their lives.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Overall, the scanner is very, very, very slow and difficult to use which causes me to ignore it a lot of the time. I think the idea is very nice, but Nielsen is going to have to come out with a much better scanner and user interface if they want better data.
Also, the prizes/rewards are very expensive and low quality. I would not recommend wasting anyone’s time with this panel unless you really have a lot of free time.
I didn’t have a great experience with a similar panel (it could have been the same one–I just don’t remember the name of the one that I did). I could never get the software to work, and their tech support never called me back when they said they would. I never got anything sent in, and when they asked me to send the scanner back since I wasn’t participating as I was supposed to, I did.
The concept is good. Manually entering all the prices of your purchases, plus any sales, store and manufacturer coupons is kind of tedious. It takes a while to get used to it. It is fun to do though, IMO. It isn’t something that I would do for years and years probably, because of the time it takes. It is very hard to remember to download every week. Also, the points take a long time to accumulate enough to get a good prize. I think I’ve been doing it 6-8 months and may have enough for the low end of prizes.
I do not recommend doing this unless Nielsen has significantly improved their scanner. When I was doing it (a few years ago) I quit after only a month because it was SO time consuming. You can’t just scan your items, you have to scan them, and then manually enter information about them (price, coupons used, etc.) and the interface isn’t simple. I don’t think that the rewards even come close to being worth the time investment.
.-= Emily´s last blog ..Seaworld (part two) =-.
I agree…I’ve been doing for 1 month. It takes alot of time to enter all the information they require. They want you to enter price, if you used store or mfg coupons, what their value is…I have received 2000 points in one month for scanning and serveys together. Lowest prise is 9000 points which is a dog chew toy they sell at dollar tree for 1.00. I’m getting ready to send it back.
Wow, ladies! I really appreciate for all of these reviews. I would have jumped on this one, but now I know not to waste my time. And the trade-off for the time spent is most definitely not worth it. Who wants to spend hours of scanning to get a chew toy?? We’re thrifty, not stupid.