ZoomZoom

A few years back I joined ZoomPanel. You may have heard of them - they run online surveys on behalf of marketing companies to gauge opinion before adverts, products, etc come onto the market, and also keep tabs on the public's views on issues of the day. With a self-selecting audience I'm not sure how meaningful the results of the latter are, but let's not get sidetracked with that.

In exchange for completing their questionnaires, members rack up points which can then be exchanged for "gifts." When I first received an invite to sign up it sounded like a bit of a laugh. Register my opinion (always an attractive proposition) and win some prizes while I was at it.

Two things weren't immediately apparent:

• the rate at which points would be accrued
• the value of the "gifts" on offer

The reward for any survey is usually around 50 points, but with survey requests only arriving sporadically, often with several weeks between, the maximum rate at which points can be won is limited. The reality is worse than that. Surveys are often oversubscribed, or aimed at a different demographic, so I'd often answer a few questions only to be told that the survey had closed, or they were looking for someone with a different profile.

Far be it from me to cast aspersions, but it did seem after a while that some quite useful marketing information was being gathered before the survey suddenly announced it was full, or decided I didn't fit the bill. Not only that, but every survey always asked for information - gender, location, age etc - that was already available in my profile. Tedious, to say the least.

Even so, with the eagerness of youth (this was about three years ago) I pressed on, keen to make my first 1,000 points and gain access to the cornucopia of delights available to me. Gifts are arranged in "portfolios" which require a certain number of points before they can be opened. 1,000 points for the first, 2,000 for the second and so on. When eventually I began to approach the thousand-point mark, I took a look inside the first portfolio.

Hmm. Nothing much there to get excited about. I decided to press on towards the 2,000-point barrier. It's taken more than three years, but I did eventually reach it. Sadly, the prizes in the second portfolio proved almost as uninspiring as the first, so I cut my losses, ordered two things from the first portfolio, and cancelled my account. What had appeared to be "a bit of a laugh" actually proved a complete waste of time. The surveys took around 20 minutes on average and to reach 2,000 points I must have completed something like 40 of them. Over thirteen hours effort in exchange for two objects worth no more than a couple of quid.

So why am I telling you all this?

Well, the first of my two shiny new toys arrived yesterday morning. A small tripod "ideal for use with all types of camera."

Unfortunately, mere seconds after removing it from its blister packaging, I made the mistake of trying to deploy the legs. One of them snapped off in my hand.

When I stopped laughing I did wonder whether it was worth breaking the other one off and using the pathetic thing as a monopod. One more look at its cheap plastic construction was enough to dispel that idea. It's now in the bin, along with my ZoomPanel account.