Vindale Research: Is it a Scam?

I hate to disappoint you folks, but Vindale Research is a scam site.

Here is how it works:

They pull you into a professionally designed site. Looks legit, right?
They offer what seems to be what other legit companies offer. No sign of a scam yet.
You sign up. Ah, yes, there it is…they are tricky.
After you sign up and they put $2.00 in your Vindale account, you are offered a survey for $5. This survey (which they call an accelerated training tutorial) requires you to sign up with a "free" credit report site. Listen, this looks professional, I can easily see why people would keep going.

Do they pay?
I do not know for sure. Truth is that they probably do, but they are misleading on what you have to do to earn the money.

Why?
This is a classic "pay to complete offer" scheme. They join programs like the "free" credit report site. These programs pay them when someone joins or makes a purchase from entering from the Vindale site. The $5 they will pay you is a small portion of that the credit report site is paying them for your sign up. Ever heard of leads or lead marketing? In this case, you are the lead.

So what, they pay right? What will it hurt to complete offers for cash?
Here is the problem. Most of these offers require you to give a credit card number. Actually, all of them do. It's just a "free trial", I can cancel the charge, right? Wrong. There are many cases where these "free" trials ended up costing the person a lot more than Vindale charged them.
Example: Sally was paid $5 by Vindale to complete an offer for a "free" trial credit monitoring service. The terms of service stated that Sally could cancel within 14 days with no charge to her credit card. Sally cancels in 5 days. She was told there would be no charge. Sally is feeling pretty good. It is a clear $5 earned. That is until she gets a call from her credit card company asking if her card had been stolen. Seems as though a certain "free" credit monitoring service charged her card not only once, but three times in one month. Sally calls the number that was provided to her. She get transferred over and over until she is disconnected. Sally is still trying to fix this mess. $5 cost sally over $200 and a really bad headache. Sad part is that this is a true story. (the name has been changed to protect the identity of the victim, well what's left of it anyway)

I will end on this note. There are legit survey companies. They are really hard to find, but they are out there.

TIP: A legit survey company will NEVER require you to complete an offer! Know that if a credit card, bank account numbers or social security numbers are needed to "complete" a survey, you are dealing with scammers!