Surveys will usually be completed online, via the Internet. An e-mail message containing a link to the survey will be delivered to you. Click on the link and you will be taken directly to the survey.

You will never be contacted more than once every two weeks and questionnaires will not take more than 10 minutes to complete.

The Shoppers Team will be used by a number of companies to find out what you think on a variety of topics from cars to clothes to confectionary. For example, you might be asked about new products being considered for a new skincare range or about your favourite brand of chocolate.

The Shoppers Team is run by Tpoll Market Intelligence Ltd, an independent market research company based in London. You can visit the Tpoll website at http://www.tpoll.com

You may wish to tell these companies something other than what we are asking you about on the Shoppers questionnaires. Please visit the relevant company's website and use the ‘Contact Us’ option.

To change any of your details, including your email address, your surname or your home address, simply login as you usually would, then click on ‘My details’ and alter the relevant details. Then click ‘Save’ to update. You will then receive an email confirming that you have changed your details.

If you have forgotten your password, simply enter your email address in the relevant space at the top of the homepage (please make sure you use the email address you registered with), leaving the “password” space blank. Then click login to send yourself an email reminder of your password.

If you wish to cancel your membership, please login as normal and click on the 'Unsubscribe' button

From time to time we may offer prize draws as a thank you to all those taking part in questionnaires. What you tell us is always treated in the strictest of confidence (according to the Data Protection Act 1998), and we never match up your comments with your name. However, we are able to match up your name and email address for the purposes of prize draws.

There is a short code at the end of the link that we send you, which we use to randomly select winners of prizes. We then match this up with your name and email address. This is how we make sure that our winners are always people who have answered a survey!

If you have won a prize, we will contact you by email to ask you for your postal address. You will then receive your prize within 28 days.

Let us assure you that your information will only be used by Tpoll for the purposes of market research. Anything you tell us will be treated anonymously when passed on to any companies commissioning surveys and your responses will never be connected to your name. (For example, results will be presented as ‘25% of respondents have eaten chocolate in the past week.)

The information you have provided in the registration questionnaire or any subsequent questionnaires will not be passed on to any third parties, except in cases where third parties are used to send you information by post that is relevant to the Shoppers Team. In such cases, the third party will agree to abide by the Data Protection Act 1998 which means that they will not pass on your details to anyone else and will not use them to sell or market to you.

Tpoll ensures that your personal details are held in a secure database that cannot be accessed by anyone not directly involved in managing the Shoppers Team. Your personal details on the team website are also protected by a user name and password so that you are the only person who can access them.

No, the information you provide in the registration questionnaire or any subsequent questionnaires will not be used by any party to sell or market to you in any way. If you are currently a customer of these parties, you will of course receive all the normal mailings and offers.

Note: The technical questions often enquire as to what Internet software you are using. To find out, click “help” followed by “about” on your Internet browser. The box that appears will tell you what software you are using.

There are a number of reasons why you may not be able to view one, or even all, of our questionnaires. Some suggestions on how to rectify any problems are listed below:

• Check the link in the e-mail
  In most cases you can simply correct the link that was sent in the email. Put an equals sign (=) after the words “link” and “user_track_id” in the link.
  
  For example:
  http://www.theshoppersteam.co.uk/linkqnnr&user_track_id101
  Would become:
  http://www.theshoppersteam.co.uk/link=qnnr&user_track_id=101
  
  
• Ensure cookies are enabled
  Make sure that you have cookies enabled in your Internet Browser software, as we use cookies to track the status of our questionnaire. For information on checking and enabling your browser cookie settings, click here
  
  If you would like to keep a high security setting, but still be able to participate in Shoppers Team questionnaires, you will need to add http://www.shoppersteam.co.uk to your "Safe" or "Trusted" sites. Please consult your browser documentation for assistance on this.
  
  
• Use of advertising software (Eg: Mailround)
  If you have advertising software attached or inserted into your emails, such as “Mailround”, you may experience problems with the surveys. Some of these programs delete certain characters from our emails, and thus disable the links we send to you. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to control this, but we do advise you to inform your advertising software provider of the problem.
  
  To let Mailround know that you are experiencing difficulties please use the following link: http://www.mailround.com/mailround/contact_us.html
  
  
• Check your Internet Browser
  On some occasions our questionnaire have technical issues with older Netscape browsers (Netscape Version 4) – we are working to resolve these issues. We recommend that if you are using Netscape and are experiencing problems that you make sure you are using the latest version (at the time of writing version 7.1).

Firstly, if you have not already done so, check you are using the correct email address. If you have started using a new email address, but have not updated your details, the system will not recognise your new email address.

Secondly, use the password reminder on the left hand side of the screen to check you are not using a password you have set up on another website!

If you are copying and pasting your password, check that you are not copying any blank spaces before or after your password, as these are treated as extra characters by the system, thus making your password invalid.

If you are typing your password in, make sure that caps lock is not on – the password is case sensitive.

Make sure that you have “cookies” enabled in your browser software; cookies are used in our login process and for tracking questionnaire completion. For information on checking and enabling your browser cookie settings, click here

Firstly please note down as much information you can about the problem(s) you are experiencing, including any error messages you have seen. Secondly find out what Internet Software you are using. Do this by clicking “help” and then “about” – the box that appears will tell you. If you contact us with a technical question (that isn’t answered here) it would be greatly appreciated if you can quote us the information that appears in this about box.

Finally email us this information: help@shoppersteam.co.uk - you can expect a reply as soon as possible.