Ursula S.

While a good percentage of the work on Amazon Mechanical Turk is legitimate, although low-paying, I've been encountering scams on the site more frequently as of late. I have noticed patterns of behavior by the individuals submitting the HITs which allows them to get a lot of effort out of people for nothing or next to nothing. And if you do end up in a dispute with a Requester, you can forget about getting any assistance from Amazon. They won't lift a finger to help you; you'll be on your own. So here are the things I've noticed which you should watch out for or avoid altogether.

Be very careful about accepting HITs where the base pay/reward is low (usually 25 cents or less) but which promise significant bonuses upon completion. I did this one HIT for a Requester called Geneva Resort (the same HIT has also been posted under the name, L-PAL). It involved writing an essay and taking a vocabulary test. All told, it took between an hour and an hour and a half to complete. The base pay was only a penny, but I did it because a bonus of nearly $12 was promised. Well, Geneva Resort approved the HIT and paid the penny, but they never paid the bonus. I contacted them multiple times; they never bothered to respond to me. And as far as Amazon support goes, they say they don't "mediate any issues between Workers and Requesters." They do enforce payment of the base pay/reward if a HIT is approved, but they don't make Requesters uphold their promise to pay out a bonus. So I'm just going to have to write off getting paid for all of the work I did on that HIT.

Another way Requesters get out of paying for work done on their HITs is to allot an extremely short amount of time to complete the HIT. You see, you have to complete the work, get your completion code and submit that before the allotted time expires. Because once a HIT expires, you can't submit it to get paid. There was this one instance where I accepted a HIT from a Requester, called Suan C, without paying attention to the time requirement. I completed the HIT in one sitting (10-15 minutes, max), got my completion code and went back to the MTurk site to submit it, but the timer had expired. I contacted Suan C, and like Geneva Resort, they never responded. And again, Amazon did nothing. So always keep a close eye on the timer and skip HITs which have a ridiculously low completion time set on them.

Here's the last thing I've noticed Requesters do. A lot of HITs will state the estimated completion time right in the title. That is nice, since you can compare the estimated time to the allotted time. However, many Requesters lowball the estimate. I've lost count of the number of times it's taken me 2-3 times longer to complete a HIT than what I was anticipating. And while the Requesters did allot sufficient time for me to complete the HITs (which means I got paid), I ended up doing a LOT more work than I was expecting to have to do for the advertised pay.

Overall, I'd say Amazon Mechanical Turk is a convenient way to make some pocket money, but be prepared to not always get paid (or get paid much) for the work you do. I'd view this as an option of last resort, more than anything else.

Edit: I just wanted to add one quick update. Matt See is another Requester whose HITs you should avoid. He also doesn't respond when you try to contact him, and he DIDN'T PAY for work done on one of his HITs.