Survey Monkey legit?

I recently got a request by SW to complete a Survey run by surveymonkey.
When I clicked on the page the first question asked was for me to tell them
my serial number.

Given all the spamming and phonie redirect links going around, I stopped
there and just deleted the message. Is SW really telling you to give them
your serial number to an independent party and doing it with a bulk email?

Doesn't sound like "best practices" since anyone can data mine this
listserve for addresses. I get phonie bank requests all the time saying, "We
need to confirm your bank number. Please tell us what it is!" Right.

Bob, Toronto

 

I remember a couple years ago someone made a fake page to get people's CC
#'s too. I wouldn't bother with that.

JAY

 

You can go to the SW website to get on most of the survey's they send
out by email.

 

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/customersurveys.html
No current surveys are listed...

This does not look legit. Why would they need your country and SWX
version if they also have the serial number? I would not respond to
this survey.

 

There are currently two listed here:

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/subscription/index.html?

Of course you have to log in with your subscription number to access
the surveys this way.

 

That is exactly the point. The survey which asks for your serial
number is NOT on the SWX page on the subscription section. The surveys
which are listed on the SWX site do not ask for serial number and never
have.

 

Working with my VAR to clarify this issue I received the following
response:

SolidWorks Marketing confirms that this IS a legitimate survey.

You might want to run this through your VAR to confirm this as well.
But I'll admit the more I look at it the flakier it looks. Do you
suppose SW has lost track of serial numbers and VAR correlations?

 

why not just give a fake sub number, and any other info you want to keep
private, if you want to provide feedback ? surely swx needs only statistical
info.

Incidentally, we recently had a phone call from our credit card co asking
for a few minutes for customer satisfaction survey, my wife said ok and
handed the phone to me (so I got stuck with it), it seemed legit because I
was asked to confirm some info, at the end the girl asked in a by-the-way
manner, for the number on my card----whoa! I asked her what survey company
she was with and the phone number there, which google confirmed as correct
( I don't have caller ID ). At any rate, I contacted security at my card and
they had no ongoing surveys I was told. I don't know what happened after
that. But, the point is, you have to be careful these days.

Laz

 

If you don't think it is legit why give a fake number or respond at
all? Maybe marketing is paranoid about individuals stuffing the box if
they don't do this.

Anyway my VAR asked SW to be more aware of appearances. I think SW
should have the email refer to the SW site and we go from there.

 

Naturally. I usually don't waste my time- but, there are those that might
want to submit their opinions, provide feedback in order to make the product
they use better.

Laz

 

Thanks for all the investigation.

I agree, I also don't usually have time to answer these surveys. My point is
that I paid money for my license which is represented by the serial number.
If SW is asking me and others to hand it out whenever it is requested, it
makes my investment less valuable. If SW wants to keep serial numbers out of
the wrong hands they should stop asking us to casually handout this
extremely valuable information.
Bob

 

SW has apparently removed the request for Serial Number. They had a
legitimate reason to ask it and it was pretty innocuous.