Thank you for the ‘extras’

13th April, 2011

Loved the story this morning from the Census people about the ‘extras’ they have received in their questionnaire post bag.

Among them, a picture of the Queen, family photographs, passports and copies of birth certificates and the like. I’m not really surprised – in amongst 20 million envelopes there’s bound to be the odd surprise.

I’m not surprised because in our own questionnaire returns postbag over the years, mainly from running public opinion surveys on behalf of local government, we’ve received a wonderful array of non-conforming replies, such as:

• Our questionnaire torn up into lots of tiny bits
• Other peoples questionnaires (presumably, MORI got ours?!)
• Other random junk mail and messages torn out of magazines
• Letters as long as the channel tunnel (thank you – we love to hear from you…)
• Requests to get the bins emptied
• Photographs (lovely – they go on our hall of fame of special survey respondents)
• Questionnaires smeared with… err, rather not say

And the best of all?! That was the time we opened our postbag and found £540 in cash… Well, if you will use our envelope as a temporary piggy bank to save up for your car repairs!

P.S. If you’re one of the 7 million who have yet to fill in your census questionnaire, there’s still time! Click here