What to do once you’ve checked those reports:
1. Mark those you consider “suspect” as Suspects (status 16), in PanelCare (EMEA) (USA).
If you are marking more than 10 panelists suspect, email the pmxids to Alex Greenwood (alex.greenwood@yougov.com).
Plus, if you see panellists already marked as suspect in the “referrer” column, notify Alex Greenwood so that he can add them to a master blacklist.
2. Mark those who you have checked, and consider NOT to be suspect as Suspect_cleared=1 in the PDL. (This will prevent you from seeing the same people in TopReferrers repeatedly – any subsequent referrals will be treated as “new”, so – don’t worry – suspicious behaviour will trigger the re-addition of any exonerated panelist to the report.) Do this using the PanMan PDL upload facility (EMEA) (USA).
What to do if a Suspect panelist contacts us:
If a panelist writes in to complain about not receiving invitations, or being unable to redeem, respond first with a generic message like the one below. This is to dissuade further contact without revealing any specific check that the panelist may have failed (which might allow them to alter their behaviour and evade checks in future), but also to allow for the possibility that we are genuinely mistaken:
“Thank you for contacting us. We run a number of regular automated quality checks to guarantee the quality of our panel, and to ensure that panellists are adhering to YouGov’s Terms and Conditions. Our system has flagged your account as failing one or more of these checks, and as a result your account is suspended. If you think that your account has been flagged incorrectly, please accept our apologies and email us at [insert panel support address]; we will look into it as soon as we can.”