The National Consumer Panel is open again for applications. I have not posted about this in a really long time so I thought I’d mention it again.
Some people love this program and some people really hate it. I signed up myself a long time ago and I will share my experience with you in just a sec. National Consumer Panel is a program where you sign up and if you qualify, they send you a scanner in the mail. You hook the scanner up and you are supposed to scan all your grocery purchases and transmit the data to them.
In exchange for your time in doing that, they award you points that can be redeemed for various prizes. This is the same company that does the Nielsen TV Ratings so they are looking for patterns and such in purchasing to pass along to manufacturers.
The biggest complaint I hear is that it can be time consuming to scan all the UPCs of the items you purchase. So this might not be a good choice for someone that has very limited time. I believe they want you to enter prices and any coupons you use after you scan.
I personally did this awhile back and I found it too time consuming myself. I do want to note though that most people don’t lay out their entire shopping trips and then take the time to type them all up like I do so I already have my hands full with that and I honestly didn’t give this program much of a chance.
I did get a box from NCP with a mailing label on it so once I decided I didn’t want to participate, I was able to just pack it up and leave it for the mailman.
So if you are interested in checking this program out, you can get more information here.
I’m sending my scanner back because it’s too time consuming for me with the way I shop and all the coupons and sale prices. I feel like the compensation for time spent is not worth it.
Ditto. Had did it for 4-5 months, and it was just too time consuming. You can purchase merchandise with points, but it takes a lot of work to get a point total needed to get something decent…Just my 2 cents..
I agree with all three of you. It was FAR too time consuming and the reward wasn’t comparable to the time required. I sent mine back!
I see so many people that are super excited about this thing so I thought I’d post for people that might be interested. I guess the worst case is you return the thing 🙂
I just sent mine back after a year. It was extremely time consuming and considering we are a large family (6 kids aged 9 months to 16 years old) every second is pretty full. If they made the program a bit less time consuming I would love to participate. Also, their rewards were not equivilant to the amount of time/work it took.
BUT, like you said, the worst case scenario is you decide you don’t like it and you send it back to them postage paid since they include the label and packaging to return the scanner when they send it. Worth a shot since everyone will have a different opinion.
Ditto! Very time consuming if you use coupons! I cashed out my points and got kinda lame prizes – a picture frame and a Brewstation coffee maker that I didn’t really need, but oh well…
The rewards were poor quality. And I sometimes had to submit a few times to get it to go through. We sent it back and reclaimed our lives. 🙂
I’m with everyone else. Great deal for a non-couponing/light-couponing family but I sent the thing back in a week. The amount of stuff they make you enter is ridiculous. They never had my stores on there either so I’d have to load everything manually.