Very annoying survey from RCL / Azamara / Celebrity

[jb008]

A quick cautionary note to forum members that I received a survey this morning from Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. that I took the time to do the survey and right at the end they ask demographic questions and then notified me that my responses would not be included because sufficient responses from my category had already been received. Consider yourself warned that if you do the survey you may be wasting your time.

 

The survey came from Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. <noreply@qemailserver.com> with the following message:

 

Dear Valued Guest,

 

We are inviting a select group of guests to participate in a survey. W e are always striving to improve our products and services and y our participation in this survey will help us to enhance the Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Azamara Club Cruises vacation experience.

 

This survey will take no more than 10 minutes to complete. We hope you'll make your opinion count as your feedback is very important to us.

[Knolmom]

I took the time to deliver honest and compelling answers. Same here. I suggest you disregard the survey.

[allentownahoy]

And it took way longer than they said it would.

[martinchem]

Thanks for the foresight. I received it yesterday as well and now I'll just delete it.

[PCWalton1]

It did the same for me. Thanks for wasting my time

 

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[DrD]

That is very poor. Usually these types of surveys have the qualifying questions first.

[BillOh]

That is very poor. Usually these types of surveys have the qualifying questions first.

Exactly, another Royal IT blunder.

[jb008]

Exactly, another Royal IT blunder.

 

In defense of RCL, it's a third party contractor administering the survey. So not 100% blame to the cruise lines (Royal/Azamara/X) but obviously reflects poorly on RCL.

[easyboy]

Thanks for the heads up.

[MrYellowDuck]

In defense of RCL, it's a third party contractor administering the survey. So not 100% blame to the cruise lines (Royal/Azamara/X) but obviously reflects poorly on RCL.

 

It's no defence since RCL will have signed off the questions.

[bUU]

A quick cautionary note to forum members that I received a survey this morning from Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. that I took the time to do the survey and right at the end they ask demographic questions and then notified me that my responses would not be included because sufficient responses from my category had already been received. Consider yourself warned that if you do the survey you may be wasting your time.

I feel that that's a counterproductive attitude. What the notification at the end is referring to is a critical aspect of surveying, specifically the normalization of data such that the population of the surveys included in the results is reasonably reflective of the population that is being surveyed. If 50% of your customers come from Florida but 90% of those replying to your survey invitation come from Florida then your survey results are going to be skewed. They're going to be invalid.

 

It would be nice I suppose for them to ask the demographic questions first and then inform you that your survey responses are not needed because that segment has already provided sufficient survey submissions. However there might be a reason why they're doing it the way they're doing it ... specifically while they may not be including your quantitative submissions in the survey results they may make use of whatever narrative responses you provided *or would have provided* had you responded to certain questions with certain numerical responses.

 

 

 

 

 

This message may have been entered using voice recognition. Please excuse any typos.

[danv3]

It accepted my answers, but it certainly took longer than 10 minutes.

[bUU]

It's no defence since RCL will have signed off the questions.

Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what their relationship is with the survey firm. It's academic though: I haven't heard any complaints in this thread about the questions.

[nelblu]

In defense of RCL, it's a third party contractor administering the survey. So not 100% blame to the cruise lines (Royal/Azamara/X) but obviously reflects poorly on RCL.

 

Yeah, but I'm sure it had some sort of approval & input.

[cello56]

Same thing happened to me. A lot more then ten minutes, and then they said my answers would not be included.

Why not just say "Thank you for your participation!" and cull the unneeded surveys behind the scenes?

[jb008]

I feel that that's a counterproductive attitude. What the notification at the end is referring to is a critical aspect of surveying, specifically the normalization of data such that the population of the surveys included in the results is reasonably reflective of the population that is being surveyed. If 50% of your customers come from Florida but 90% of those replying to your survey invitation come from Florida then your survey results are going to be skewed. They're going to be invalid.

 

It would be nice I suppose for them to ask the demographic questions first and then inform you that your survey responses are not needed because that segment has already provided sufficient survey submissions. However there might be a reason why they're doing it the way they're doing it ... specifically while they may not be including your quantitative submissions in the survey results they may make use of whatever narrative responses you provided *or would have provided* had you responded to certain questions with certain numerical responses.

 

 

This message may have been entered using voice recognition. Please excuse any typos.

 

Fair point, however simply changing up the message at the end to something better than that certain demographics survey input was not being collected due to excessive responses would be a better way to handle this. As someone who has formal training and some experience with conducting surveys, IMO this was a badly designed and poorly executed one.

 

 

Although I didn't detail it in my original post, I believe they have a fundamental and major flaw in a subset of the survey questions (representing about 20-25% of the questions asked). I detailed both the demographics Q issue and the 2nd survey design flaw (let's call it an imprecise language issue?) in an email and sent it to RCCL - and also offered to communicate further with them if they want additional observations/comments/suggestions.

 

I'm not trying to turn people off to providing feedback in general, but just wanted to share my experience so others can make a better educated decision whether to participate in this survey.

[CruisinBarb63]

I also took this survey that took much longer than the 10 minutes they advised in the beginning. If they are looking for certain demographics, they should ask those questions in the beginning so you don't take the entire survey only to find out they don't need your opinion. I won't be answering these again.

[FLACRUISER99]

FYI! https://www.scamadviser.com/is-qemailserver.com-safe.html

[Big_G]

FYI! https://www.scamadviser.com/is-qemailserver.com-safe.html

 

https://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/royalcaribbean.com

[jb008]

FYI! https://www.scamadviser.com/is-qemailserver.com-safe.html

 

https://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/royalcaribbean.com

 

If it's not an authorized survey then the company using RCCL's trademarks is risking legal action. Also to what end? The survey doesn't ask personally identifying information, so the best a scammer could hope for is connecting approx. demographic data with my email address (e.g., gender, age range of 5-10 years, household income in 25-50k buckets, education level)

[bUU]

Although I didn't detail it in my original post, I believe they have a fundamental and major flaw in a subset of the survey questions (representing about 20-25% of the questions asked). I detailed both the demographics Q issue and the 2nd survey design flaw (let's call it an imprecise language issue?) in an email and sent it to RCCL - and also offered to communicate further with them if they want additional observations/comments/suggestions.

Thanks for the additional detail!

 

This message may have been entered using voice recognition. Please excuse any typos.

[bobmacliberty]

If it's not an authorized survey then the company using RCCL's trademarks is risking legal action. Also to what end? The survey doesn't ask personally identifying information, so the best a scammer could hope for is connecting approx. demographic data with my email address (e.g., gender, age range of 5-10 years, household income in 25-50k buckets, education level)

 

No idea if the survey is legit or not, but having your email address with associated demographic info is definitely worth money to many spammers.

[traveler279]

Our survey came from RoyalCaribbean@express.medallia.com. The actual survey was hosted at http://survey.medallia.com.

 

This site had a very high, safe rating on the scam rating website.

 

Our survey dangled the possibility of winning a 7-day cruise. And 10 minutes was about what it took.

 

 

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[luckyinpa]

i'm curious as to why they dont just say thanks at the end of the survey. period. no one would be the wiser and you could feel better!

[easyboy]

No idea if the survey is legit or not, but having your email address with associated demographic info is definitely worth money to many spammers.

I once fell into the trap of joining such "survey". Thereafter, I regularly got a daily barrage of spam emails. Took some time before I individually blocked the email senders. Such an annoyance.