Harris Poll Online Bait & Switch: online survey rewards New York City, New York

To "Seeks Justice," of Seattle, Washington:

Although I'm answering this just over 4 years since your initial complaint, it seems I should respond to it as no one else has bothered to set you straight.

I hate to inform you of this, but your complaint about Harris Poll doing a "bait and switch" on you is not what you seem to think it is. Bait and switch only applies when you go to actually buy the product, and the company tells you the product is no longer available at all, but hey, here's a different one you can have instead that is nothing like the original product in which you were interested. Apparently, from your complaint, you wanted to earn points towards a particular product, and were "working toward" an item in the shop. However, by your own admission, before you got your full points for the item, they upped the requirement to get the item you wanted. This may be disappointing, but it's not bait and switch. It's a price change, pure and simple, and it's perfectly legal. The same item was still available, just at a different price than you had planned on paying. You wouldn't go to the grocery store and expect to call it bait and switch if the upped the price of a gallon of milk, would you? Of course not! You'd consider it as a price of their doing business, which is all this example of yours is. You certainly wouldn't complain if they'd LOWERED the price, I'm sure of that!

The fact that they don't cover the postage for their rewards is not bait and switch, either. It's another example of the cost of their doing business. The business model has to change to refelct their costs, and sadly, over the last decade or so, more and more compannies are doing less and less for free. 

You mention that says you can't find a link saying what you can buy with the icard for $10. "I can select something from Macy's with this $10 but what?" you asked. Well, basically, anything Macy's has available to purchase. If it's over $10, you'll have to pay the difference, but that's what a gift card is for - to gift you a little bit towards your future purchases somewhere. It isn't to specificially tell you what you can get. That is up to you to determine.

You then go on to say that these:

"If you select an Amazon.com or iCard certificate and use it to purchase an item higher in value then the denomination of the gift certificate you will need to pay the remaining balance of the purchase, including any shipping and handling.