Problem 1: Poor choice of where to start -- They answered an ad and jumped in, not realizing that they were dealing with a sales company trying to look like a paid online survey company, but just wanted to sell them things. Or they tried to go the "free" route and got tangled up with marginal, unscrupulous companies. Their contact info got sold to others, the company took kickbacks from survey makers to send them gullible survey takers and finally they got "paid" with lottery tickets, or didn''t get paid at all.
Solution 1: Deal only with reputable paid guide companies. You want to be paying your guide company, so it looks out for your interests. A "free" guide is being paid by someone else to guide you into places to which you would rather not go!