G'day:
This is a continuation of the situation I detailed in my weekend article "Survey results: we've been stitched-up by freeonlinesurveys.com". To recap: on Saturday I was gonna start feeding back on that survey I ran recently: "Survey: CFML usage and migration strategies", only to find myself locked-out of the data because I was outwith a ten day window I had to retrieve it without paying. I was like "WTF??" and went and checked for the T&Cs I agreed to when I signed up for my account, as well as the pricing page, because I did not notice this restriction. The rest of the article I link to above details that.
However freeonlinesurveys.com do publish a bullet point regarding the 10-day limitation on their contact page.
Eagle-eyed (or just "more thorough") reader David McCan managed to locate this for me:
I do find it rather odd they neglected to mention this on their pricing page (screen caps in that other article) wherein they detail the 20 questions and the 100 responses, but do not mention the time-boxing. They do however give a 12 month margin on data deletion.
This seems to me to be a cynical omission, intended to trap customers on the free plan, holding their data to ransom. Especially given there was no advisory email saying "hey, we're gonna start ransoming your data tomorrow, btw" or something like that.
Anyway, yeah, I didn't check the site thoroughly enough it seems, as the information is still there.
That said, I still think they're shonky, and have contacted the Trading Standards office in Bristol. More on that in the next article (nothing interesting: it's just for the sake of full disclosure).
Righto.
--
Adam
This is a continuation of the situation I detailed in my weekend article "Survey results: we've been stitched-up by freeonlinesurveys.com". To recap: on Saturday I was gonna start feeding back on that survey I ran recently: "Survey: CFML usage and migration strategies", only to find myself locked-out of the data because I was outwith a ten day window I had to retrieve it without paying. I was like "WTF??" and went and checked for the T&Cs I agreed to when I signed up for my account, as well as the pricing page, because I did not notice this restriction. The rest of the article I link to above details that.
However freeonlinesurveys.com do publish a bullet point regarding the 10-day limitation on their contact page.
Eagle-eyed (or just "more thorough") reader David McCan managed to locate this for me:
I do find it rather odd they neglected to mention this on their pricing page (screen caps in that other article) wherein they detail the 20 questions and the 100 responses, but do not mention the time-boxing. They do however give a 12 month margin on data deletion.
This seems to me to be a cynical omission, intended to trap customers on the free plan, holding their data to ransom. Especially given there was no advisory email saying "hey, we're gonna start ransoming your data tomorrow, btw" or something like that.
Anyway, yeah, I didn't check the site thoroughly enough it seems, as the information is still there.
That said, I still think they're shonky, and have contacted the Trading Standards office in Bristol. More on that in the next article (nothing interesting: it's just for the sake of full disclosure).
Righto.
--
Adam