What Is Springboard America and How Does It Work?
Springboard America is a company launched in 2009 by Vision Critical (which has now transitioned to Maru/Matchbox). Maru/Matchbox is a customer intelligence professional service that uses surveys to give information back to their clients.
Springboard America works like most of the other survey sites out there; you sign up, giving up personal information like your email, name, date of birth, credit card number and security code (just joking. DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT give up your credit care and security code). These surveys are about a whole slew of topics, ranging from politics to lotion, but are generally about consumer projects due to this company's partnership with a ton of consumer companies. They can become extremely tedious, as can most survey websites; I would recommend switching between several different ones (another favorite of ours is Swagbucks) to keep it fresh.
Click Here to Join Springboard America!
Getting Started
After getting to their site, you are asked to create an account. You need to add personal information like your email, birth date, and a small amount of demographic information. The initial demographic survey is extraordinarily irritating and repetitive, as you’ll have to take it multiple times. How many surveys you get will result directly from this. If you're from a favorable demographic, you'll get more surveys, it's that simple. However, do not lie to try to impersonate a preferred demographic, because your account will be suspended.
From that point, surveys will be emailed to you at a rate of a couple a month (I’m a white male in my late teens… so not a super favorable demographic for survey senders). The surveys vary in time and price.
How Much You Can Make
The price for the surveys varies in price between $0.25 and $3.00. This is pretty low for surveys, and as a result, you’re probably not going to be making very much money. They payout threshold is pretty high as well: it’s $50, which is a lot of points! It seems to take on average several months to be able to cash out, one customer stating how she cashes out 3 times every 12 months.
The way that the money is kept track of is through points, where for example, 1,000 points equal $1. The way it’s paid out is through mainly a physical, sent through the mail check (yeah, I like being in the 1980's too!), but they have recently brought in PayPal for a direct deposit. There is also the ability to cash in for gift cards. However, the problem is that there are occasional discrepancies between the amount on the cards and what you have depending on the retailer that the card. For example, while you may have enough points for a 25$ gift card, when you attempt to obtain a Cabela's card (for example) you may only get a 20$ card. I can't find out why this is, but it's just something to keep in mind.
Public Perception Springboard America
Generally the reviews have been mixed.
Numerous people have praised Springboard America for it’s ease of use and enjoyable surveys, which is definitely a plus because if you're taking a lot of surveys you might as well enjoy your time! For example, if you fill out your profile properly, you may able to get surveys related to your areas of interests or expertise. Not only is this more enjoyable, but it can also help you feel more like you're sharing your valuable knowledge and experience with companies that need it.
That said, we've also seen a few folks complain about Springboard America's inability to pay, which kind of destroys the purpose of doing these online surveys. There's nothing more frustrating than sharing your heart and soul expecting to get paid, only to find out you lost all your earnings.
Also the problem of little to no work arises. There also doesn’t seem to be a very active customer service hotline. There’s also a problem with the suspension clause of their terms and agreements.
How It Compares
Springboard America seems to be on par with most of the other survey sites. There seems to be the same problems with it as some of the other web sites. There’s problems with customer service, as well as occasionally being problems with the payment. Also, there's strangle no sign up bonus, even though a majority of other survey sites offer one. However, the by far the biggest complaint is the 50$ limit. This high limit makes it hard to keep sight of the goal, and not just fizzle out with no payday.
Customer service has the problem of not really answering, which again, isn't unfamiliar with many of these websites. As far as payment, people have experienced problems, although whether this is due to the company or their own stupidity is the question for the ages (knowing people, it may be he largest problem. It takes an extraordinarily large amount of time to be able to cash out due to the high threshold.
Click Here to Join Springboard America!Is it Worth it?
Overall, Springboard America is a fairly average survey site. They do a lot well, from having an easy to use platform and a fair payment plan, but they also do some stuff poorly, namely bad customer service and a high payment threshold. Springboard America is good in a rotation of survey sites that are all the same to help you earn a little bit of extra money on the side. I highly recommenced our favorite survey site, Swagbucks to help earn some extra cash.
