Is American Consumer Opinion a Scam? (It’s NOT just for Americans)

Welcome to my American Consumer Opinion review!

I've signed up with the platform and gave it a test-drive. If you're still wondering "Is American Consumer Opinion a scam?", this review will give you all the answers you need.

I promise!

​American Consumer Opinion (ACOP) is an online paid survey panel which allows ordinary people like you and me to earn some extra cash by giving our opinions.

In fact, one of their slogan is "Get paid for sharing your opinions and ideas by answering online surveys". So the purpose of this platform is pretty clear.

Basically, large companies around the world need consumer feedback and opinions on their products and services. So they're willing to pay market research companies like American Consumer Opinion to get the information they want.

On the other hand, ACOP pays its members for providing their valuable opinions.

By the way, don't be misled by the name "American" Consumer Opinion. This platform is available worldwide, not just the US.

I think it is important to know the history of American Consumer Opinion because it is not any random paid survey panel. It's one of the oldest and most experienced in the world.

American Consumer Opinion was founded by Decision Analyst, Inc. in early 1986 as a small mail survey panel.

Back then, they didn't have the Internet, that's why they can only run survey panel via mail. And thus, it was restricted to the US. (I guess that's the reason why they named it "American" Consumer Opinion)

By 1995, they had approximately 20K members. In 1996, the panel went online and the membership was opened to the whole world.

Till date, they have more than 7 million members worldwide.

So, American Consumer Opinion is one of oldest paid survey panels in the world with one of the largest member sizes.

Just based on this fact alone, they have pretty high credibility because I believe being in business for more than 20 years is not by chance.

It's really easy to get started with ACOP and it's completely FREE to join.

Firstly, create a free account here.

Then, you need to fill up your personal particulars, such as:

• Gender
• Age
• Employment status​
• Educational background
• Family member details (name and date of birth), etc...

From my experience, just fill them up honestly because these are the necessary information for them to give you relevant survey opportunities.

Don't worry about security and your privacy. Being more than 20 years in business online, ACOP is well-known for the confidentiality of their members' particulars. 

After filling up your personal particulars, you're all set and you're now officially a member of ACOP.

You won't be able to take survey immediately because there's no available survey when you just join the platform.

You'll need to wait for their Email update regarding new survey opportunities that are suitable for your particular demographic.

There are 4 main ways you can make money with American Consumer Opinion:

This is very obvious since ACOP is a survey panel.

There are 2 main types of survey you can take - Normal Survey or Screener.

• Normal surveys are surveys that requires about 10-20 minutes to complete and you'll earn anywhere between 50 to 500 points per survey depending on the time needed. (I'll cover the point system and how to redeem later on.)
  
  
• Screeners are short surveys with less than 20 questions and you can complete them in just a couple of minutes. You'll either be rewarded with 5-50 points or a lucky draw opportunity for a gift card.

These are some of the things you can expect to be surveyed on:

Most survey panels only offer online survey opportunities. Or even worse, some survey sites like SurveySay and Survey Money Machine are just affiliate websites which make money by referring people to real survey panels.

Very few survey panels actually offer other forms of survey such as product testing.

In American Consumer Opinion, you may have the chance to review a physical product. So, they'll send you the product for you to try and you'll need to give them feedback regarding your user-experience for the product.

The good thing about this product testing is that you can potentially earn anywhere from $50 to $200. Not only that, sometimes you may be able to keep the product afterwards.

However, the downside is that this kind of opportunity is extremely rare. Don't have any expectation that you'll get this chance.

Another interesting type of survey is for you to review advertisements.

You'll be given some banner Ads and you're required to give feedback about the pros and cons of each or which one captures your attention most, things like that.

Lastly, American Consumer Opinion has an affiliate program which you can invite people to join this survey panel. You'll earn $1 for each person you refer and set up their profile.

You can check out their affiliate program page for more information.

In fact, affiliate marketing is my top recommended way of making money online. So, if you're serious of making a full-time income from the comfort of your own home, do check out my affiliate marketing guide 🙂

Like I've mentioned earlier, you'll be rewarded with points according to the length of the survey.

1 point = 1 penny

You need to have at least 1,000 points ($10) before you can cash out.

There are 5 main ways to get your payout:

• Check
• PayPal (couple of days)
• Hyperwallet (8-12 weeks)
• Sweepstakes Entries
• Donate to Charity

For sweepstakes entries, you can enter the contest to win a prize even if you have less than 1,000 points. However, this is only for US residents.

One thing I like the most about American Consumer Opinion is that they offer the option of donating your money to charity which is not provided by any other platforms.

They have a list of charities which they are working with. All you need to do is to choose the charity you would like to donate to.

I really like this idea. The amount of money you can make with online surveys is very limited anyway. Giving those to a charity is a really good option!

To get more survey opportunities, you need to complete all the surveys they recommend you to do, including those screeners which only reward you 5 to 50 points.

All the surveys you take allows ACOP to better understand who you are and they'll send you more surveys.

If you want to get the opportunity to do some product testing, you need to be active and complete as much surveys as possible.

Membership is completely FREE and there's no hidden fees or upsells.

This is the requirement of a legitimate survey panel. Stay away from any survey sites that requires you to pay a fee to join. 99.9% of them are scams!

American Consumer Opinion put a lot of emphasis on their members' privacy. You can see that all around their website.

They promise that they will never sell any of their member's information to anyone.

This is clearly stated in their Privacy Policy. So for ACOP, you can trust them to handle your personal information, unlike some other survey scams.

American Consumer Opinion is founded in 1986 by Decision Analyst, Inc., a global marketing research and analytical consulting firm headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the United States.

Decision Analyst, Inc. has acquired an "A-" rating by Better Business Bureau (BBB).

In addition, they have been around for many decades. If they are not legit or legal, they wouldn't have survived for so long.

Like I've mentioned, American Consumer Opinion is not just restricted to American. They are available to the whole world, unlike some survey panels that only serve certain regions.

Some panels have a threshold of $100 which will take a long long time to reach. Most of the time, it's not even possible to reach that threshold, which means you'll never get paid.

For ACOP, $10 threshold is a really reasonable payout requirement.

Sometimes, there's even a possibility for you to earn $50 per survey in product testing 🙂

American Consumer Opinion only allows one person per household to join.

But the fact that they can have more than 7 million members means that they managed to reach a lot of households.

This is a common problem for many survey panels.

For ACOP, there's no surveys available on their site for you to take. You'll see this most of the time:

They'll only update you through Email about the available surveys for you.

In fact, American Consumer Opinion states on their site that "You can expect to receive survey invitations SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR!"

There are a lot of members complaining about the long delayed payout. Some waited up to 3 months to receive their money, which is pretty ridiculous.

Take a look at some of the complaints:

American Consumer Opinion is definitely NOT a scam!

It's a highly rated company and you don't need to pay any money to join. They also take your information and privacy very seriously. So, it's a real legit paid survey panel.

The only problem is the low earning potential and your wasted time. In my opinion, time is more important than money. So the valuable time wasted is actually quite costly.

That's why I wouldn't recommend any paid survey opportunities!

However, if you still want to do online survey and make some extra cash, I will recommend you to check out Survey Junkie. It has much more survey opportunities and higher ratings.