Nielsen Research Group
Complaint 97284 Details

Today, April 2, 2012, I received a letter in the mail that was postmarked from Canada. It had no adress of where it was being sent from exactly. I opened it, saw a check for $2,400. The letter came from "Nielsen Research Group" and the check from "Bremer Bank, National Association" and "Century College." You only had 48 hours to complete this survey, which consisted of cashing the check, transfering $1800 through western union to who "my coordinator will provide me with computer generated receiver name as well as a destination, receiver and country." The transfer will cost $150. Next, it said to visit a retail store (Best Buy, K-Mart or Walmart) and make a purchase worth $150 and I would get to keep what I purchased. Finally I would get a participation wage of $300.

I went online to research because it just did not seem right as to why they would send so much money for a simple survey. After doing some research I found this website "http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/contact.html" which claims to be the "real" Nielsen Reseach Group. Here they have this message:

"Nielsen has been made aware of unauthorized third parties attempting to use Nielsen's name fraudulently. If you should happen to be contacted, be it by phone, email, letter, or other means, offered a check from “Nielsen” and advised to cash it in order to use some of the proceeds to test a service (for example: testing a Western Union wire transfer), please disregard and report it to your local authorities immediately. You may also be advised that you may retain the balance from the cashed check as payment, however, the check later bounces."

Luckily I did not fall for this scam and thank everyone who has reported this company for helping me understand what was going on. Please do not fall for these types of scams, and always think twice or atleast do some reaserch before even thinking about accepting something like this.

I read that some people have become victims of this "company" and have lost over $2400, lets just hope that someone else sees our messeges before deciding to complete this "survey" and does as it says here, to contact our local authorities so these scams can be avoided.