January Start-Up Complaint

As is now a tradition, I have begun the month (and year) by sumbitting a complaint about the veracity of the IWON coin counting. This time, I even have a personal issue involved (the first coins I suspect missing from the team totals are mine!

Text of the complaint follows.


Is it possible to verify credit to the team for coins won this month?

I played Jan 01, despite the glitchy site, to total 999,9xx coins for the day. For whatever reason, the casino maxed me at that figure - but small matter. However, during the entire day, I never hit the team feed, despite being far from the top 16. So, the following morning, I became suspicious that my coins were not being credited to the team; and began by watching for the million-coin milestone. That never appeared. Concurrently, since I was at that time one of very few players online, I watched the team coin total. That proved distressing, since during one of the few smooth periods of play experienced since December, I racked just over 200,000 coins in about 24 or 25 minutes. The team total, even refreshed, showed an increment of only 40,000 (roughly - I did not use the calculator). That seemed to me to be verification of some problem with credit of my coins.

I stopped play, then, and went looking around other teams for complaints of similar problems. Lo, A Fresh Start not only had many complaints similar to mine, but also that extraneous billion-coin head start for January. After reading a few other teams, and waiting a while, I found a suggestion that the best way to check or solve the problem with credit, would be to leave the team momentarily, then rejoin. I tried that, and behold: suddenly, I got feed credit of each milestone, the 10ks, the 100ks and ultimately (next day) the million. Plus, although the site was getting so much better that it became difficult to "see" my coins, the team total did begin to reflect what I felt must include mine, other than that initial 1.2 million.

Others with similar problems and suspicions (from members of Tigers Against Diabetes) include gypsysnow (possibly partially cloaked by her place in the top 16), thegoodmommy, fivehole, and bubbles_71.

I feel that the complaint last month about shorting the team more than 5 million coins in the start-up mess was too quickly marked solved. Perhaps that was my own fault, for replying to your email, rather than coming here to re-up the complaint; however, I still do not believe that we (the team) were ever credited for those coins, and I KNOW that the MVP / top-16 included at least 3 players who endured that shortfall right to the final standings in the MVP race. I was not one of those, but rather beneficiary of your boo-boo. I wound up at least three positions higher in that ranking than my coins would have warranted. However, we were more than 11 million coins out of the money, so five million more or less did not and does not greatly matter.

This time, please get it right. Actually DO the verifications, and DO the adjustments where necessary. Do not expect to get away totally with simply sloughing me off this time, for I will not hesitate to complain publicly and loudly should I not get more than the traditional "we are sure we got it right, but we will look into the matter" response that you issue so freely. The premise of the Team Challenge is that you will provide accurate counts, and accurate totals. And that if those counts or totals are questioned, that you will reliably investigate the issues, and reliably report the results.

Please do so this time.

The reference number for your submission is '090103-002818'


An amendment or addendum for complaint '090103-002818' :

The counting system continues to do mysterious and blatantly inaccurate things to both the individual totals (MVP race / top 16) and to the team totals. One very strong contender for MVP, chris1743, has just been bumped from the top slot, and in fact fell to 3rd for a while, despite having maxed every category every day. There is the chance that one of the players may have exceeded her take on Spin2Win, or PrizeMachine - but hardly likely that it made the 200k difference that we think existed at the end of day 1. Since that was start-up day for January, and the worst day of the current site problems, we had one other of our stronger players who did NOT max that day. In fact, we think that chris1743 was our only player to max casino, non-casino, and search that day. Nonetheless, both players passed chris1743 at one point, although for strange reasons, one fell back 2 hours after completing play. The other, the one who was at one time, shown as 200k short of chris1743, has not fallen back.

This is the second month in a row that IWON has demonstrably misreported the MVP statistics. Last month, the error persisted throughout the month, and was reflected in the final standings. I know, for I was (one of) the beneficiary(s). It should not persist this month, for you should actually check, and adjust accordingly.

Only by doing so can you demostrate that you do not simply apply whatever numbers you imagine will keep us playing, and quiet.

More, and more a team issue, we still also need the verification that those players listed earlier in the complaint had all their coins credited to the team. The same should be done for chris1743, since that is one very strong possible reason for her to have failed to hold that lead for MVP. There appear to chris1743, to be two separate problems, in that some - not all - of the coins won, reflect in her profile accounting; but even then, not enough to lead to the loss of position; and separately, the loss of position per se, implying a failure to credit the team even all those coins shown as accumulated on her profile page.

Some of the facts listed here I personally observed in the daily posting of MVP totals - right through this morning, chris1743 showed the maximum obtainable, except for Sell-a-friend. As of January 02, the player succeeding chris1743 in the MVP position (irankin64) was 200,000 coins off the pace. How did he gain those coins?

If you could please attempt to verify your numbers, perhaps you can accomplish TWO critical things: find the explanation of these apparently inexplicable events; and restore some faith that you do supply numbers, not merely guesses.

Conley T. Gwinn

The reference number for your submission is '090104-002809'