Got this message from a HIT:
Note on Payment and Amazon Fee Increases
As some of you may know, on July 22nd, 2015 Amazon effectively quadrupled its fees for high-volume requesters. Before that day, Amazon charged 10% of whatever we paid to workers, but now it takes a full 40% of what is paid to workers. While the reasons for this price increase are unclear, its effects are crystal clear: because we are in a time of limited research funding, this will lead to a reduction in either 1) the number of HITs created by academics, 2) the level of pay workers receive, or 3) both of these things. In order to continue running these short studies on MTurk at all, Amazon has forced me to reduce the pay associated with them by a few cents (and I'm still paying more overall than I used to!). If you can,
please take a moment to tell Amazon to roll back its fee increase, or at least introduce an academic discount for researchers, since that would only mean more HITs and more money per HIT for the valuable work you do. Thanks!
