FEE - $10 more for:

• Priority boarding (getting on the plane first)
• Priority disembarking (getting off the plane first)
• Expedited baggage delivery
• Priority rebooking in case of flight cancellation
• Complimentary meals/hotel accommodations when a flight is either cancelled or substantially delayed
• In-flight Internet access
• Guaranteed space in the overhead bin
• In-seat power
• Premium snack/meal offering
• A freshly laundered pillow/blanket set that you may keep after the flight
• An amenity kit with earplugs, eyeshades and toiletries to keep you refreshed on the plane
• A wait of 10 minutes or less to clear security checkpoints
• Sitting away from parents traveling with babies/small children

• Savings for not checking bags
• Savings for not earning frequent flier miles
• Savings for only bringing aboard one small piece of carry-on baggage (e.g., only a purse or computer bag)
• Savings for being the last to board
• Savings for using online check-in instead of a kiosk
• Savings for using either a kiosk or online check-in instead of a human agent
• Savings for having my checked luggage to be among the last to be delivered
• Savings for sitting in a middle seat
• Savings for making no changes to your ticket prior to departure
• Savings for not getting free water, coffee/tea, juices or soft drinks in flight
• Savings for having a seat that does not recline
• Savings to sit close to parents traveling with babies/small children

How about a $10 savings for helping out fellow sleepy passengers...

Airline considers $10 surcharge for baby-free seating, priority disembarking [ELLIOTT] (Image: Getty)

Reader Jay says:

I thought this email was particularly funny... Hi, we aren't allowed to send you e-mails, so we're sending you an e-mail to ask you if we can send you e-mails even though you told us not to...

Here's the email:

Dear JAY [Redacted]:

Because you are a valued customer and your opinion is important to us, we would like to periodically ask you to provide feedback regarding your experience with our hotels. The feedback we collect from our customers is used to make improvements to our hotels and processes so we can better serve you.

However, our records indicate that you have not given us permission to send customer survey invitations to you at this email address. If you would like the opportunity to provide occasional feedback, please give us permission to contact you at this email address to complete future surveys. This permission is for research purposes only and does not give us permission to send you any marketing or promotional information.

Thank you in advance for your feedback and for spending your time away from home at Marriott.

Sincerely,

J.W. Marriott, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Marriott International, Inc.

(Photo: genetic.drift )

From the survey:

• 77% of surveyed credit card issuers (17 of 22) answered “Yes” to the question “Can you increase my APR or change my terms ‘any time for any reason’?” This includes all Top Ten issuers – even Citibank which pledges not to change a customer’s terms before the card’s expiration date.
• Bank of America, Chase, Citi, American Express and Capital One all reserve the right to change rates without notifying consumer in advance.
• Representatives for Bank of America, Capital One and Citi cited “market conditions,” “the economy,” and ”business strategies” as factors that might cause an interest rate to increase.

• As consumers pay off large balances, creditors slash credit limits so that the balance is always close to the credit limit.
• Credit limits are reduced to levels lower than the current balance, triggering over limit fees and requiring a large “balloon” payment of the over-due amount. This practice also puts the consumer at risk of being hit with a penalty interest rate.
• Cards are declined at the point of purchase, and only then do cardholders find out that their limits have been reduced with no warning.

2008 Credit Card Survey [Consumer Action]
(Photo: Getty)

Below is the top 10 list, but check out the full list of 75 companies for some interesting surprises, like Hewlett Packard coming in at #18 (right behind Apple!) despite the horror stories we've seen from Consumerist readers.

"The 75 Most Reputable Companies in the U.S." [Forbes] (Thanks to Rick!)

RELATED
"RI Hall of Fame" [Research Institute]
(Photo: Getty)

"We've seen a fall in customer service as we've gone into a recession," says a customer service consultant in the article. "As the cost cutting occurs . . . they start to cut the wrong things." But that implies that AOL had good customer service before the recession, doesn't it? Wait, what?

All but one of the top 10 companies are either in communications or finance, with the one weird exception of Abercrombie & Fitch (4th place, 38%).

"Most of these companies actually aren't thriving," said Michael Shames, the executive director of the Utility Consumers' Action Network, a California nonprofit that monitors business practices. People don't look at companies with poor customer-service scores and say, "Here's where I should invest," he said.

"The Customer Service Hall of Shame" [MSN Money]

On Sunday, May 4, 2008 I went to the Home Depot on Joppa Rd, Baltimore County Maryland. My purchases includes several plants, pots, and tile sealer. I went to the self check-out line because of the speed and scanned my items. Before I could indicate I was paying by cash the machine wanted me to enter a zip code, I entered 11111 because it's really none of their business. The next screen wanted me to key in if my items were for home or business use. I had no ability to bypass this screen even thought I did not want to answer this question.

I requested assistance from the employee assigned to the area because again I do not feel I need to report to Home Depot where I plan to use items I purchase. I was told my transaction would not be completed without providing the information requested. I left without my items.

What next? Is "big brother" going to screen my cholesterol levels before allowing me to by diary products at the grocery?

I have e-mailed my concern over this interaction to Home Depot and all I have in response is some statement about sending this on to someone else in their system. Clearly, most individuals who utilize the self-checkout want to get out quickly and do not stop to question the invasion of privacy issue. If this is an attempt by the Home Depot to collect information as a survey, I would hope they would have the sense to request an individual's cooperation.

Thank you for the forum where I can at least vent to a group who seems to care.

Sincerely:

Helen

Yuck. You already emailed the store, but if you're really concerned about letting Home Depot know that this stupid survey cost them your business, feel free to launch an EECB (executive email carpet bomb). The CEO's email address is Frank_Blake@homedepot.com. For more information about launching an EECB, click here.

What do you think about "surveys" like this one? Do they affect where you choose to shop?

(Photo: cmorran123 )

(Photo: Getty)

Basically, the company tracks your spending habits by collecting data directly from your credit card statement. But rest assured, they say, that the data is in good hands:

Registering these accounts simply authorizes secure collection of monthly information from those accounts for research purposes only. Your specific credit card information will be collected through an infrastructure that ensures the highest level of security with a world-class network, data, and physical security system.

Password and statement data are stored and transmitted in encrypted format at all times. All data is securely housed in the Exodus© Vault™, a revolutionary Internet server hosting space that provides enhanced physical security, fire protection and electronic shielding.

My credit card information. My online financial statements. What the hell?! Even if this is legit, there's no way.
 
Thought you'd like to know. If this is a scam, I'd like to know, and I'm sure so would some other people. I'm sure the survey site won't like me sending this, but it's not like I make anything of value from watching pre-production commercials or telling people how often I buy shampoo.

10. Sales Associate (SA) A ignored you - did not say hello, smile, make eye contact 21
9. SA didn't listen when explaining what you wanted 22
8. Product/item was out of stock 22
7. SA not very polite, courteous 24
6. SA not interested in helping you find what looking for 27
5. SA insensitive to long check-out lines 27
4. SA acted like you were intruding on their time/conversations 29
3. SA followed, pestered when you wanted to browse on own 30
2. Could not find anyone when needed help 31
1. SA had 'that's not my department' attitude 32

Does this hold true for you? What most turns you off when you go out shopping?

Shopper Research Pinpoints Loyalty, Problems [ifoAppleStore] (Thanks to Jgodsey!)
What Customers Expect Sales Associates To Contribute Toward The In-Store Experience (Powerpoint)
(Photo: Getty)

Just 25 percent reported gains in their home's value, down from 48 percent in February 2007 and the peak of 76 percent in mid-2005.

When asked about prospects for the year ahead, 27 percent of all home owners in February anticipated additional declines in home prices, up from 21 percent in January and 12 percent in March 2007.

"More homeowners say their homes depreciated: survey" [Reuters]
(Photo: Suburban Cowboy)

 
In the commentary on last quarters scores, ACSI says they've started including Nordstrom again because of its increasing market share, and back before it dropped off the survey in 2001, it held the top spot frequently, so no surprise there.

They also suggest that Dollar General, "which typically serves neighborhoods that may be too small to attract Wal-Mart," may be scoring high because of its wide variety of items in such small retail spaces.

Sears and Kmart are pretty much exactly where we'd expect them after their plunging customer service last year.

One thing we're not sure about is how the various recall disasters last year affected scores—clearly Dollar General emerged unscathed, despite its healthy dose of lead-tainted toys, Halloween pails, and holiday decorations.

"Q4 2007 and Historical ACSI Scores" [ACSI]
"Customer Satisfaction Falls Again; Retail, Financial Services Down; Wal-mart, Home Depot at All-Time Lows" [ACSI]

RELATED
"How are ACSI data collected?" [ACSI]

(Thanks to Shaula!)

Sadly, the real intent of the study was to measure how much of an impact "the media's relentless coverage of recalls" have had on customer trust, and not on topics like, oh say, whether mixing batches of meat is a sound business decision.

Although the majority of consumers remain confident in the overall safety of the U.S. meat supply, 34 percent said they are less confident than they were five years ago.

Only 35 percent of consumers surveyed agree that the U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure meat product safety.

36 percent of consumers said they worry about serving fresh ground beef or hamburgers to their families due to concerns about E. coli contamination. The majority, however, indicated that such concern has yet to impact purchase habits or even intent.

Survey respondents were mainly dissatisfied with mandatory contract extensions imposed on them by wireless carriers, as well as the high cost of service. More than 60% of respondents that made changes to their service plan last year were required to extend their contract. In some cases, carriers aren't upfront with customers about extensions so the 60% survey result might downplay the problem, according to Consumer Reports.

"More Than Half Of Cell Phone Users Dissatisfied: Consumer Reports Survey" [Information Week]
"Consumer Reports study garners rave reviews for iPhone, Verizon
" [Daily News]

RELATED
Consumer Reports
(Photo: Getty)

Survey: Global Manufacturers Staying Put in China [the smart cube blog]

We wonder if the discrepancies have anything to do with the nature of the organizations—Accountemps is a temporary accounting staffing firm, and Shop.org is an "association for retailers online." The Memphis Business Journal's poll was online and, we're guessing, not very scientific. Spherion is also a staffing company, but their study was performed by Harris Interactive and seems to at least have some methodology behind it, so we'll choose to believe it's 30%. If there's one thing we've learned about statistics, it's "you must choose to believe."

Here are some more factoids from the Spherion survey:

• Workers aged 25 to 29 are more likely than other age groups to use their computer at work to shop for or buy gifts online during the holidays.


• Females are more likely than men to spend 30 minutes or more on each online shopping occasion.


• Workers earning $25,000 to $34,900 are more likely than other income groups to spend 30 minutes or more on each online shopping occasion.


• Nearly half of workers disagree with the statement: "I feel it is acceptable to use my computer at work to shop for or buy holiday gifts."
        — 46 % of workers disagree with the statement.
        — 32% agree with that statement.
        — 22% neither agree nor disagree.

• 73% of shoppers "feel either antagonistic towards or have no loyalty to their local supermarket"

Clearly the customer loyalty card efforts across the grocery industry have fallen short of their goals as grocers sacrifice customer experience to focus on lower prices.

• quality
• selection
• employees
• product availability
• social responsibility

We would just appreciate it if the cashiers didn't always treat us with theatrical displays of contempt when we check out. We're also surprised there's no mention of crowding or store layout—in NYC at least, the markets are almost always 1/5th the size of "normal" stores, and god help you if you go on a Saturday afternoon.

"IBM Survey Finds Grocery Industry Falls Short in Building Loyalty With Customers" [IBM via USA Today]
(Photo: Getty)

Nationally, gift-giving budgets are down 2.5 percent, to $569, according to the survey of 14,135 consumers conducted between Sept. 24 and Oct. 4. Deloitte said New Englanders spent a lot more in 2006 compared with consumers nationally, making this year's pullback bigger.

Consumers everywhere are feeling the pinch with a slumping housing sector and a volatile stock market. And the soaring price of crude oil could give New Englanders their highest winter heating bills ever.

Making a holiday list, trimming it twice [Boston Globe]
(Photo: Chris&AmyCate)

Industry scores dropped 12 points on 1,000 point scale. Verizon has the highest ratings at 726. Sprint scored the lowest with 679. The average is 709. According to the survey, the four most important factors driving customer satisfaction are sales staff (51%); store display (17%); store facility (16%); and price/promotion (16%).

The study's authors claim in the press release that the biggest thumb on customer satisfaction scores are employees in big box retail stores who using high-pressure sales tactics and not accurately conveying product and
service information. Gee, I wonder who that could be...

2007 Wireless Retail Sales Satisfaction StudySM-Volume 2 [J.D. Power and Associates]

10. Business Opportunities: .8 mil
9. Credit Repair Scams: 1.2 mil
8. Advance-Fee Loans: 1.7 mil
7. Unauthorized Billing - Internet Services: 1.8 mil
6. Credit Card Insurance: 2.1 mil
5. Work-at-Home Programs: 2.4 mil
4. Prize Promotions: 2.7 mil
3. Unauthorized Billing: Buyers Clubs 3.2 mil
2. Foreign Lottery Scams: 3.2 mil
1. Fraudulent Weight-Loss Products: 4.8 mil

To protect yourself, the FTC advises only dealing with reputable companies, reading the small print, resisting the urge to "act now," protecting your personal info, never paying a dime for stuff touted as "free," and reporting fraud at FTC.gov.

2007 Consumer Fraud Survey (PDF) [FTC]

...we can figure that HSBC, Bank of America, and Capitol One probably have the fewest membership benefits, the highest fees, and the highest APRs. These three companies are certainly not well-liked among our readership.

J.D. Power and Associates attributed the high marks for American Express to the array of membership benefits their cardholders have. While airline miles are some of the most widely dispensed and used membership benefits in the credit card industry, the study found that cashback rewards have a greater impact on customer satisfaction.

Interestingly, while membership benefits drive much of customer satisfaction, most customers are unaware of all the benefits that they have, a factoid provoking enough that we're going to check in with our credit card company to make sure we know the full power of our plastic.

American Express Ranks Highest in Credit Card Satisfaction [J.D. Power and Associates via FiLife]

(Photo: Getty)

• 10% had trouble getting an appointment to see a doctor
• 21% had to deal with billing errors
• 25% had problems with their primary care providers
• 36% had trouble getting help when they called a plan representative for assistance

Those with serious illnesses faced far more problems than those who were not seriously ill, which is what we'd expect of an industry that treats healthy people as "good customers" and sick people as "bad" ones.

The survey also finds that HMOs and PPOs vary widely - neither category is overwhelmingly better, although HMO participants faced more problems getting appointments, while PPO participants had more trouble getting reimbursed.

Rating the health plans [Consumer Reports]

(Photo: Getty)

A survey from a Michigan consulting group found that 54% of customers looking to purchase bundled services in the next year would prefer to patronize a phone company, compared to 44% of consumers who would buy from their cable company. The difference may seem slight, but it represents a serious threat to cable companies. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Now heavyweights AT&T and Verizon, which have enjoyed better results on customer service surveys, are encroaching on Charter's core business in markets nationwide. That lends more urgency to fixing customer service woes, said Joe Stackhouse, Charter's senior vice president for customer operations.

"We need to continue to improve our service," he said. "We know we're not where we need to be."

Charter has worked on integrating its call centers, to get calls answered faster, Stackhouse said, and recently set up a "day of" desk, to quickly help customers with problems on the day of an installation or a service visit.

CONSUMERS: Telco 'bundles' more attractive than cable's [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
(AP Photo/Tom Gannam)

I equate it to sex surveys, which are notoriously inaccurate because people won't own up to how they actually behave,' says Farmer [CreditCards.com VP of Marketing]. 'There's a high level of denial.' The other possibility: Ten percent of the population has huge revolving balances that skew the numbers higher...

...The survey based its number — $9,300 per household — on a figure published by CardWeb.com, which divides the outstanding revolving debt by the number of households with credit cards.

We think most of the respondents are either lying or are misinformed, part of the reason there' such a debt problem to begin with. Either that, or the survey must have drawn its population entirely from Lake Woebegone.

Five Credit Card Traps to Avoid [Yahoo Finance]
— FREE MONEY FINANCE

(Photo: Getty)

Continental won the overall satisfaction award for a traditional carrier with 704 points out of a possible 1,000, despite hosting a sewage geyser on a recent flight. JetBlue won the overall satisfaction award for a low cost carrier with 810 points, despite massively fumbling its response to snow.

Blemished records aside, this is Continental's second consecutive year winning the award, and JetBlue's third. Congratulations, airlines - just don't celebrate by buzzing the tower. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER

Traditional Network Ratings [J.D. Power]
Low-Cost Ratings [J.D. Power]
(Photo: stephenhanafin)

Results inside...

— BEN POPKEN

PREVIOUSLY:
If Banks Came To Life...
Run Away, Banks Are Coming To Life As People

Actually, in addition to not recalling the survey, and forgetting that we already linked to it earlier this week, we miscombined two separate pieces of information from The Red Tape Chronicles writeup,

1. "Companies that improve their customer service experiences find consumers become immediately loyal — they are 2.5 times more likely to buy again from the same company."

and

2. "[C]onsumers who have a problem and enjoy a positive customer service experience are actually more loyal than customers who buy a product and never have to call the firm looking for help."

So while it was found that loyalty increased after problem-fixing increased, it's not true that it increased by a factor of 2.5.

Here's the actual source survey, "Superior Customer Service Capabilities: Key Factors in the Journey to High Performance" [PDF]

Talk about a brain hiccup. Thanks to commenter bluwapadoo for the spot. — BEN POPKEN

(Photo: annehelmond)

PREVIOUSLY: Run Away, Banks Are Coming To Life As People

How about, if one of these brands came alive, which would win in a duke-out in the streets of Tokyo? Now that would be our kind of survey, and HarrisPollOnline would probably get more revealing results. — BEN POPKEN

(Thanks to Jason!)

According to F.M.I. saying the words, "If you ever call me again, I'm going to contact my lawyer." Should get you blacklisted not just from the survey they've been calling you about, but their entire system. Read all the delicious details inside.

F.M.I. writes:

I worked for one of the largest phone survey companies in the country, and I thought I'd share some tips on how to avoid getting those pesky calls in the middle of dinner.

Survey firms don't have to abide by the do not call list, since they're not selling anything, so getting them to leave you alone can be a bit of a pain. Simply telling them "No thanks" generally won't cut it.

When we call, we have a few tools at our disposal: we can start the survey, set up a callback time, mark the call as a "soft refusal" or a "hard refusal". Most of the time, we don't count the call as a refusal unless we are talking to the person that qualifies for the survey, usually a specific person given to us by the company we're calling for or a person who meets a certain criteria (such as the female with the most recent birthday).

If you aren't the person who qualifies, you just hang up, or give some excuse to why you can't do it, you're scheduled for a callback. The general rule for most surveys is 7 or 8 calls before we stop bugging you. So if you just hang up every time we ask you to do a survey, expect to hear from us several more times.

If you are the qualified person and say "no", we mark that as a "soft" refusal. Soft refusals are called back again a few days later. After 2 soft refusals, you generally won't get called again on that survey. If you get very angry or start cursing, you get marked as a "hard" refusal and aren't called again for that survey.

However, any of those three methods will just get you off of our list for that particular survey. Even asking us to put you on our "do not call list" will just remove you from that survey. The only surefire way to get off our lists forever is say something along the lines of "If you ever call me again, I'm going to contact my lawyer". You'll get an apology and be blacklisted from all of our systems. Of course, you'll have to do it with each company that calls you, but it should help make dinnertime a bit more peaceful.

-Former Meal Interrupter

(Photo:stopnlook)

Though each Indian call center is different, our tipster explains how his measures success, inside...

(Photo: sarae)

An outside firm calls the customers after they've had contact with us, and asks them to score us on a scale of 1 to 5. And yes, we get a weekly report of the scores for each site. [We have] minimum targets (which is for 50 percent of callers to rate us a perfect 5, and 85 percent of callers to rate us a 4 or a 5.) And despite what people may think, they REALLY care about those scores. A single low scoring call has managers scrambling, arranging meetings, people tracking down the recording, action plans, training sessions being arranged, charts, graphs.... etc.

It may seem to the customer like no one cares, but that's because no one at our site is authorized to get into contact with the customer to apologize or acknowledge the complaint. (another issue to send up the totem pole.)

There are a series of around 15 questions they ask.

• What's your overall experience with the company,
  
• How likely are you to recommend the company to your friends,
  
• Overall how would you rate the agent you spoke with,
  
• How would you rate their attitude, the level of resolution they gave you, the level of personal attention.... etc.

  The questions about the company are used by the company themselves (and also to give the customer a place to vent so they don't have to take out complaints on the company on the agent), the "overall how would you rate this agent" is the sole factor used in the scores, and the rest (along with comments) are used by trainers to see what exactly lead to the low score so we know what to correct.

Starbucks and Cracker Barrel fared well, along with several upscale chains, including Bonefish Grill, Ruth's Chris, Legal Sea Foods, and Morton's. The survey attributes the faltering satisfaction levels to record expansion and a lack of innovation.

"They all drowned in the sea of sameness," he said, asserting that they had failed to innovate and largely had similar menus. "They overbuilt and underwhelmed."

Eateries found failing to deliver [Chicago Trib]
Restaurant-Beverage Demand Today 2007 [Kanbay Research Institute]

(Corporate hotels have little to worry about because if they foul up, Marriott will just send in a glut of extra labor to fix the problem.) So how to keep labor costs way down and keep the scores way up? Easy.

Based on logs of guest problems kept by the "At Your Service Agent" (the hotel operator) and the on-property comment cards, the franchise managers know in advance which guests are likely to give the property a low score. Before or soon after the guest checks out, the list of problem guests gets copied to the hotel's reservationist, the person responsible for updating records in Marriott's massive guest database called OSCAR. The reservationist opens each problem guest's file and "updates" the guest's e-mail and postal addresses—actually changing them to invalid or just plain fake addresses. This way, if the guest gets selected for a GSS survey. . . the survey never arrives. This way, only happy, satisfied guests ever get the surveys, and the franchisors can run a hotel into the ground while laughing all the way to the bank.

Marriott, "the leader in brand loyalty," prides itself on having some of the best customer service in the industry—so much so that the corporate Quality Assurance group uses some really tough metrics. And the stakes are high: these QA metrics determine whether a given franchise hotel gets to keep the Marriott "flag," or the right to use the brand. Guest surveys are split into two types: on-property comment cards, which alert staff to problems while a guest is still around, and "Guest Satisfaction Surveys." As the name suggests, the former is just a bellwether, it never gets seen by anyone outside the property. The latter, however, is a corporate metric.

After any given stay, a guest may be randomly selected to receive a "Guest Satisfaction Survey" by e-mail or post. Guests are asked to rank nearly every aspect of the hotel, from breakfast to meeting room temperature, on a scale from 0 to 10. What the survey doesn't mention is that there are really only two valid scores: 0-7 counts 0, 8-10 counts 1. A hotel's GSS "Score" is calculated as the percentage of all responses that are 8 or above. Precisely because the stakes are so high, franchise hotels are willing to do anything to keep their scores high. (Corporate hotels have little to worry about because if they foul up, Marriott will just send in a glut of extra labor to fix the problem.) So how to keep labor costs way down and keep the scores way up? Easy.

Based on logs of guest problems kept by the "At Your Service Agent" (the hotel operator) and the on-property comment cards, the franchise managers know in advance which guests are likely to give the property a low score. Before or soon after the guest checks out, the list of problem guests gets copied to the hotel's reservationist, the person responsible for updating records in Marriott's massive guest database called OSCAR. The reservationist opens each problem guest's file and "updates" the guest's e-mail and postal addresses—actually changing them to invalid or just plain fake addresses. This way, if the guest gets selected for a GSS survey. . . the survey never arrives. This way, only happy, satisfied guests ever get the surveys, and the franchisors can run a hotel into the ground while laughing all the way to the bank.

I doubt Toyota and Marriott franchisors are the only ones who have found the holes in the system....I'm not surprised. It's the culture of modern business.

The customer's husband suspected that the salesman refused to sell his wife a car because he was afraid of receiving a poor customer service survey from them. It turns out that he may be on to something, if what our tipster says is true. He claims that his roommate used to be a CSR for a Toyota dealership and it was the roommate's job to make sure the customer either did not fill our the survey or filled our paper surveys so the answers could be changed or poor reviews thrown out.

The tipster writes:

Toyota pays each dealership an extra amount of money for marketing based on the customer satisfaction surveys that are given to each customer after they purchase a vehicle. If they do not score a 90% or better they do not get the extra money each month, (part the extra money is then distributed to the employees so there was significant incentive to get positive surveys) anything less then a 5 on a 1 to 5 scale will reduce your customer satisfaction score. My roommates job was to get those surveys back to the dealership (while they are still not filled out) by offering free tanks of gas, carwash etc, and to not let the customer fill out the survey online. My roommate would then fill the survey in for the customer online (using as many different computers as possible, in case Toyota was looking for a repeat IP address) or fill in the paper survey and return it to Toyota. If the survey was already filled out they would either change the answers or throw the survey away so that Toyota never received it. It was a constant battle each month to try and change enough surveys to counter balance the surveys that people submitted without returning them to the dealership. If you want to get the free incentive and still get your opinion heard, fill out the survey online and then take the paper copy to the dealership for the free tank of gas. I do not know if all the Toyota dealerships work this way but the way the system is set up I imagine that many do it this way.

(Photo: Leonid Mamchenkov)

You can win an iPod shuffle if you help us out with this 6-question poll to learn more about our readers.

If you opt to enter your email address, you get a chance to win a free shuffle, with color of your choice. This email address will solely be used to communicate with winners and will never be sold to anyone or used to market to you. Entering the email address is optional.

The information you provide will help out our ad sales team and keep the Goodship Consumerist running like a freight train of justice. — BEN POPKEN

Contest rules.