Nielsen Homescan Review

Nielsen is another market research company that will pay you for scanning your shopping. I have been on for quite a long time on ‘Shop and scan’. However, due to some time away from the country in 2019, I paused it. Before resuming I decided to try Nielsen homescan to see if it is any better.

What’s the rewards about?

Panelists that get enrolled in the program scan the barcodes of products they buy each week. That data sent to Nielsen help the company build consumer data. Once you reach the desired amount of points you can swap them for products from Nielsen catalogue:

How to join the Nielsen home scanning program?

Apply for it on https://www.nielseniq-onlinereg.com/?cpid=1C03C3

If you don’t get enrolled straight away – repeat as they sometimes look for people from different than your area.

How do you scan the grocery?

The scanning happens via either a scanner provided by the company or a smartphone app. Nielsen will send you the device and the instructions in their welcome pack.

All points earned can then be exchanged for products, gifts & experience days featured in their catalogue ( electronic equipment, household items, jewellery, toys, experiences etc.)

If you are transmitting the codes weekly and not skipping any weeks you can get extra points for regular uploads.

Furthermore every 4 weeks, your membership number gets automatically entered into a prize draw. You then get a chance of winning extra prizes such as holidays, experiences, the newest gadgets & a brand-new car (once per year).

Is Nielsen a good side hustle?

Not in my opinion as even though I wanted a more seamless scanning experience than Shop and Scan after a year with Nielsen I realised that the old program suits me better than Nielsen’s one…

Why?

Simply because even though I didn’t have to upload my data from the scanner using my PC I still had to scan every item by inputting its price. Yes I had to input every single item and price and specify if it was on a discount or other promotion…

That was taking me longer than simply scanning items when using ‘Shop and Scan‘.

Ok, I could place the bar reader on the charger and transfer my scanned data that way but honestly by the time I did it I was exhausted…

So yeah I would rather scan bar codes using ‘Shop & scan‘ and upload them when connecting their reader to my PC as it is still quicker.

Furthermore, at the rival scheme, I need to shop 6.25x to get £10 worth of vouchers whereas at Nielsen it took me ages to collect an amount that allowed me for a meaningful product exchange….

After about a year (!) – I must say wasn’t scanning every week which prolonged the accumulation of points- I finally gathered 5,000 points and exchanged them for a Babyblis hairdryer:

Considering that this hairdryer is sold for £26-£30 again ‘Shop and Scan‘ seems easier and offers a bit bigger ROI as there I am able to save about £60 per year.

Finally, whenever I didn’t share my bar codes I was getting countless notifications about that including by post! That was a bit too much for me as they made the process rather difficult and timely so yeah I wasn’t probably their best panelist…

With that, I resigned from the program after a year and came back to my old grocery homescan program as that program allows me for much quicker scanning and rewards getting.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• The Nielsen program is easy to understand and use
• free to join
• free welcome pack including the scanner device
• easy to stop the program
• free to return the device 
• extra points for various extra actions
• scanning is required once per week

Cons:

• No monetary reward points are exchanged for products to choose from catalogue, prizes and sweepstakes entries.
• Quite a long time between earning the points and exchanging them
• Customer service nags you quite often if you skip some uploads
• Hard to figure out which rewards are ‘worth it’
• A huge effort for a long time so maybe not worth for all
• Mundane scanning process as each item requires price input, promos, etc.

Honestly head to ‘Shop and scan’ and get a quicker extra £60+ per year if you want to scan your grocery shopping at all.