Greeting Card Panel Review: Should You Give It a Shot?

Do you buy a lot of greeting cards? And by that, I mean actual greeting cards that we use to congratulate birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, or just to say hello. If you still haven’t given up on those cute and colorful paper cards full of heartwarming wishes, there is a chance to make some money off of it. It’s not hard and doesn’t even require a lot of time. You just need to provide weekly information on whether you bought a greeting card or not, what kind, and how many of them. The platform rewarding people for sending them this information is conveniently called Greeting Card Panel, and here’s a review of it.

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The fact that many companies promise to pay you for a certain type of information doesn’t mean that all of them deliver their promises. Or, if they do deliver, it doesn’t mean they are worth your time. That’s why I will present as many facts as possible about Greeting Card Panel (GCP in further text) to help you decide whether you should give them a try.

Who Stands Behind This?

GCP is one of the projects of Lieberman Research Worldwide, a market research company. According to Better Business Bureau, this company has operated for over four decades, being founded back in 1973. As you can see for yourself, it doesn’t have an accreditation with the BBB, but it has an A+ rating. That means they have responded and resolved customer complaints in a satisfactory manner. The company is based in Los Angeles, California, and its current CEO is David Sackman.

Why they failed to earn an accreditation is beyond me. Maybe they haven’t even applied to get it. But I know one thing for certain: it’s not uncommon for market research companies, and it shouldn’t worry you by default. It certainly doesn’t mean that a business is a scam.

How Does Greeting Card Panel Work?

You’ve already spent five minutes on their homepage looking for a button to sign up. And it’s not even a complicated, information-rich homepage. It only offers an option to sign in – and that’s simply because there is no way to register. That’s right, you can’t join just because you want to. You have to get an invitation to join.

To the best of my knowledge, the only way to get this invitation is if you had already registered with MyPoints or Quick Rewards survey panels. Not every member of those panels will get an invitation to join GCP, though. And there’s no way to find out how many people are the lucky winners of this exclusive opportunity.

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But if you ever get it and are eager to try, the registration process is very simple. Once you’re in, you will instantly get access to the first 3-month study. Yup, you read that well. They don’t work with traditional surveys. What you need to do is keep a diary of sorts, filling it out on a weekly basis. After you’re done with the diary, they will reward you with $25 in Tango e-gift card, plus a monthly sweepstakes entry toward some nice prizes, including iPad.

If you miss a single week, however, they will kick you out of the study. It means you have to be very active in order to get your $25.

Advantages

• The platform is legitimate. Some people will like it, others won’t. But whoever decides to give them a chance, one thing is certain: they won’t sell your information to third parties.
• They pay in Tango e-gift cards. It’s a nice reward, since you can redeem it with tons of different retailers, including but not limited to iTunes, Amazon, Starbucks, Target, Best Buy, Bath & Body Works, Dunkin’ Donuts, Macy’s, Olive Garden and many more.
• The compensation is okay. Since you get to earn $25 in three months, and you take a survey once each week, it means every survey will bring you $2. That’s a nice amount of money, considering that it takes little to no effort.
• The surveys are easy and fun. In fact, they are not surveys in the traditional sense. They are more like studies, where you have to share the information on the greeting cards you have or haven’t purchased. Sounds like a lot more fun than writing about a topic that you’ve never been interested in. Who doesn’t like sending or receiving greeting cards?

Disadvantages

• The panel is invitation-only. It’s pretty hard to get in. Even though there is a shortcut (via MyPoints or Quick Rewards), it still doesn’t guarantee that you would get an invitation for GCP.
• They only pay in Tango e-gift cards. The reason why I’m considering this an advantage is described below. But it’s also a disadvantage. In my humble opinion, there is a single currency that appeals to every single person on Earth. And that currency isn’t a gift card, be it Tango or any other. That currency is cash.
• Limited earning potential. The most you can earn is $25 worth of Tango, in every three months. That’s up to $100 per year, and only if you are lucky enough to 1) get an invitation to the panel, 2) get a new “survey diary” as soon as you’re done with the last one.
• You have to be active every week or you will get disqualified from the study. When they say diary, they mean it. It’s not a traditional survey where you show up, complete it more or less successfully, and collect the reward. You have to log in every week, if only to say that you didn’t purchase any greeting cards that week. If you don’t do this, you will get kicked out from the survey. However, your sweepstakes entry remains active.
• Some users complain that they got disqualified even though they had regularly completed all the surveys. Frankly, we should take this with a grain of salt, since we don’t know who is telling the truth here. But there is also an encouraging fact: some of the affected users managed to get their payment after they complained. It means that the company does care about their reputation.

Final Verdict – Should You Join If Given a Chance?

I don’t want to sound like “sour grapes” since I never got the invitation to the panel. But based on what I’ve found out, your chances to get that coveted invitation aren’t great either, even if you are a member of MyPoints and Quick Rewards (like I am).

We are doing math here. And here’s what the math says: making $25 by doing a very easy activity is nice. But spending half an hour every single week for three months to earn those $25 – that’s an entirely different picture. Especially when you mustn’t miss a single week. Quite a lot of commitment makes that reward a lot less enticing.

So, I don’t think this is a good opportunity to make some money on the side. But if you disagree with me, be my guest and give them a chance – if they give it to you first. The only thing you risk to lose is a little bit of your time. The panel is legitimate and safe, so it’s basically up to you to decide.