Customer satisfaction surveys can be the worst part of being a customer, with their bland questions about your transactions, your demographics and whether or not you've purchased seven pounds of lobster this week. Wait…what? One United Airlines customer was beyond confused when he received a recent survey from the Opinion Miles Club, which allows United Mileage Plus members to earn 300 award miles in exchange for answering a handful of questions (or many, many handfuls of questions; some surveys can take more than 40 minutes to complete).
Andrew Nier told Jalopnik that he received a survey from the Opinion Miles Club that was categorized as a ‘professional survey,' one that would focus on both his life and work experiences. But he didn't realize that after completing a few questions about his workplace, his coworkers and his dream vacation, the survey would take a very strange — and oddly specific — turn. Some of the questions that Nier was asked included:
- Do you currently work as a plumbing insulator?
- Have you posted a bail for anyone in the last 30 days?
- Do you own a gerbil?
- Do you own a BMW M3?
- Do you own a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee that has a manual transmission?
- Have you purchased at least 7 lb of lobster in the past week?
- Do you own a 3D printer?
In the section that asked for Nier's current occupation, there were only seven choices in the dropdown menu, including Makeup Artist, Hair Stylist, Reiki Practitioner or None of the Above. Unless the Opinion Miles Club is playing an elaborate game of Guess Who? with its customer base, we have no idea what it was going for — or what kind of insight those questions were trying to provide. Nier suggested that it was the survey writer's last day "and he was down to do some trolling."
When View From The Wing‘s Gary Leff took an Opinion Miles survey, he was asked whether he was gay, wore glasses and some information about the last mattress he owned. Other users on FlyerTalk reported that they had been asked about recent lawnmower purchases, allergy medications, oven cleaners and "raw, uncooked breakfast sausage."
Because I was curious, I signed up for Opinion Miles Club, just to see if it would ask me any small mammal-based questions. Instead, I got a quick but incredibly detailed survey about bottled water, how often I purchased it and where (although two of the pre-survey question asked whether I'd recently built a picnic table or suffered from a nail fungus). The entire process took about 15 minutes — including creating a profile for the site — and it said that I would receive 600 United miles for my participation. Also, immediately after signing up, it generated a link that I could share and said that I could receive up to 150 additional miles if five friends (30 miles per friend) joined the site and also completed at least one survey.
So maybe the gerbil-based questions were an anomaly — or some last-day trolling — but if you have a few minutes to spare and, say, need to keep your United miles from expiring, this might not be a bad way to do it. You'll still have plenty of time to buy this week's lobster.
