Survey Says … That Was Rude

We are sorry, but unfortunately we have collected all the surveys we need from your particular demographic group. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Boy, is that one phrase that I really get tired of seeing … especially after I’ve decided to go out of my way to offer up a company my opinions that they’ve requested! This particular time it was for VistaPrint because I had the promo cards for my book printed by them last year. They did a good job and I’ll probably do my next batch with them as well, so I figured I’d take a minute to give them some feedback, plus I had a chance to win $100, too!

Five or six not exactly brief questions in, apparently they realized that they already had enough opinions like mine and abruptly ended the survey like they just stopped caring. Honestly, it’d be like having dinner with a friend, and then at one point just standing up and walking out the door because you’ve already heard that story about their cat three times before. But there’s nothing rude about that, right?

I honestly stopped doing most of the hotel surveys because so many of them end like this, and it even disappoints me to say that I’ve gotten this same response from Disney before as well. From a programming perspective, I don’t understand why they can’t set the thing up to continue collecting your information as normal and then just mark it as “extra” if they see that they’ve reached whatever quota they set. Why would you want to insult your customer by implying that their opinion is no longer important to you after they’ve already gone out of their way to help you out???

I have other rants about surveys, too – not putting enough thought into your questions, making them so loaded that I have to choose between extremes, even just expecting me to fill out 15 pages of radio buttons ranking every single thing your staff members do on a scale of 1 to 10 – but interrupting me mid-survey to say, “Meh – nevermind…” is definitely the best way to get me to never bother with your questionnaires ever again…

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