A friend of mine has told me that he received the following invitation from Opinion World to participate in a survey about Ofcom. The message claimed that and assured him that the survey was confidential and that he would not be identified. He did not really understand why he had received this invitation since it claimed that he had "recently" contacted Ofcom, and apparently he had not so done recently.

Nevertheless he accessed the site to participate. When he entered the fact that he did not know which member of his family had "recently" contacted Ofcom he was ejected from contributing further. He then thought that he would test the "confidentiality" guarantee. He therefore accessed the site again, but was identified as already having accessed it !! It is quite clear therefore that this survey is not confidential at all. Any invitee is identified immediately and their details are clearly logged, as will their "contribution" or response so be also.

Be warned therefore. Anyone receiving this invitation from Opinion World should be aware that this is not a confidential survey as claimed. You participation will be logged and your response will be identified against your name and who knows what else also.

 

Dear XXXXXX,

We are carrying out a survey on behalf of Ofcom among people who have recently contacted them with an enquiry or complaint. The survey is to find out people’s views on the service provided by Ofcom and will take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Results of this survey are confidential and will be presented to Ofcom in the form of statistical summaries only. No individual will be identified as having taken part in the survey. Your views are very important to Ofcom so please click to participate in this survey. Completing the questionnaire will take approximately 10 minutes!

All your answers will be treated in the strictest confidence and your responses will only be analysed in an aggregated way.

We appreciate your time is valuable

Thank you in advance for your co-operation.

To proceed with the study simply click this link:

Start the study




© Copyright OpinionWorld 2006 
   

I got one of these emails as well.

One of the questions asked if I was complaining about the cost of calls when I made the complaint.  I answered no (which is true) and then that was the end of the poll.

It seems to me that Ofcom want opinions of the cost of calls only - are they too high, etc...?

NGMsGhost wrote on Mar 7^th, 2007 at 6:23pm:
I didn't get the impression it ended abruptly or anything as it said thank you, etc after I answered no to the 'were you complaining about call charges' question

NGMsGhost wrote on Mar 7^th, 2007 at 7:27pm:
I only really got a 3 or 4 questions from what I remember.

Something like 'am I the person in our household who recently contacted Ofcom?', 'was the enquiry personal or business?', 'was it a complaint or enquiry?', and finally 'was it concerning the cost of calls?'.

As I said, as soon as I answered no to that question, then that was it - survey ended.

NGMsGhost wrote on Mar 8^th, 2007 at 11:04pm:
Definitely a different survery then.