An Interview with a Real Nielsen Family (Page 2)

Q: Were you paid to be a Nielsen family?

Barb: "Yes, but minimal. We received $50 every six months for a total of $200. We were told that we would receive a $100 thank you gift at the end of the 24 months, but have not received that yet. Think I will have to give them a call."

Q: How long were you a Nielsen family?

Barb: "Two years."

Q: How did it feel to have this kind of power?

Barb:Anyone who knows me, knows I love to give my opinion so there was no question that I would do this when asked. I am not sure how much it helped my particular favorites, but I did feel like we had a vote. From what I understand there are not that many families nationwide that do the monitoring/tracking we did, so that was exciting that we got chosen.

I was extremely impressed with how seriously it was all taken, we were called several times throughout the 24 months to make sure that all current personal data was the same. e.g. a personal survey on cars, we owned, computers, stuff like that. If we added any new equipment (e.g. new TV) they would install it for us and gave us a small stipend for allowing them to monitor it."

Barb also adds...

"The equipment was connected to a phone line and downloaded every night in the middle of the night, so if something wasn't right or wasn't recording right they would know it immediately and I would get a phone call. The representative/technician would come out and figure out what was wrong, etc. As I said they took it very seriously and were also very conscious about not intruding on us more than necessary. We had a wonderful representative who was with us the entire 24 months."