Follow-Up: 090118-000225

'090103-002818'

Your answer is another dodge. You dodged last month, when I complained that I was improperly placed in the MVP standings / top 16 - far higher than my coins warranted. That complaint was dodged, and finally you just dropped it. Now you are once more trying to dodge the facts - the FACTS - that clearly to all involved, indicate that somehow, somewhere, IWON failed in its duty to accurately and accountably gather and accurately report the numbers for the players. Face it - the basis of the Team Challenge, the promise and the premise, is that you will actually count the coins, as opposed to the practice that seems visible here, of guesstimating, and then dodging. 200000 coins is not a minor matter, and the coins should neither appear from nowhere on the 3rd day of the competition, in such fashion as to propel the recipient to the MVP lead (which by the way is PUBLIC property, visible to all, relied upon by all, and complainable by all - YOU created that problem for yourselves in the very act of posting the information, and legally, you cannot avoid the problem); nor should they vanish from the personal and MVP totals for another player after having been earned, AND partially posted.

Get real, and fix the problems, rather than continuing to attempt double-talk to dodge them. As de facto team leader, it is not only my right, but MY DUTY to call your bluff - you fouled up this month, regardless of what the numbers really are, in posting one time or the other, the wrong numbers for one or more competitors for our top 16; just as you had visibly posted and maintained inaccurate numbers throughout the prior month, while dodging my personal inquiry as to my personal involvement in that inaccuracy relative to my own account; and by extension, you at least appear to have fouled up insofar as the team totals derived from the sum of those guesses you posted. *I* did not post them - YOU did. *I* cannot fix them, and certainly cannot attest to the accuracy of your hidden "computation"s (guesses again) since you also hide all the data whence those are derived.

If you cannot find someone to fix the counting process, and fix the numbers posted, then hire someone whose guesses remain consistent one to the next.

Oh. By the way - if not I, then WHO should complain about that misrepresentation of the member numbers as elements of the team totals? We will be sure to get whomever that might be as angry as am I, prior to allowing them to inquire - and that is VERY angry, since you repeat not only the same errors month after month, but the same dodges when you are called on those errors.


Response (T.G.)
02/04/2009 12:27 PM

Thank you for the well thought out, and detailed letter. It is obvious that you are very passionate about your contribution to your Team and we would like to thank you for your support.

Let me first assure you that we are just as passionate and committed to supporting these wonderful organizations, and to ensuring that all users, and teams, receive the coins and credit they are entitled to. As with anything worth doing, there are going to be a number of hurdles and obstacles to overcome, and we have had our share. Obviously, our system is not without fault. We are intimately aware that some users, and some teams have not received all of the coins they were entitled too. Though this is no comfort, the issue you are reporting does affect the majority of our users, however it is obviously more pronounced for ‘Power Users’ such as yourself.

Please understand that it is of utmost importance to us to resolve these issues, and we are working hard to do so. Unfortunately this has not been an easy task. In addition to closing the gaps which prevent the correct awarding of coins, we also work to correct those shortages that have already occurred. In order to ensure that no one is taking unfair advantage of our system, we must first consult our logs before making any coin corrections. As you can imagine, this is a very time consuming process, which is compounded by the number of users we have on our site.

In the interest of fairness, for those cases where we are unable to verify the users claims, we must unfortunately err on the side of caution, and not issue the coin correction. Obviously this is the worst case scenario and we try to avoid it as much as possible.Ultimately, while we cannot offer you a ‘quick fix’ for the issues you addressed in your letter, we just want to assure you that we have ‘heard’ your frustration and are working to resolve the issues you are experiencing. We continue to ask for your patience and understanding, and we offer our most sincere thanks for your participation and your passion to help others in need.

Coin Counts

It is ever more clear that there are a multitude of problems with the IWON accounting of even individual coins accumulation. That is exacerbated by the absolute certainty that some of the individual coins are not being properly credited in the MVP races, and possibly not to the team for which one plays. I have had a personal case of near-certainty that my first day of play in January did not add to the team total, and wound up leaving, then re-joining Tigers in order to gain the certainty that they were from that point, credited. Although the team feed has improved so greatly that it now has become useful, there is still such a lack of transparency in the individual totals versus the credits awarded the team from those individuals, that I feel a need to push an earlier informal proposal for a solution to this issue.

This proposal has the advantage of allowing individual players to monitor their contributions to the team. That will relieve us, and IWON, of the vast number of complaints about what those contributions are. Better, when there is a problem, if this proposal is carried through to include the daily totals, both the date of the problem, and the extent of the problem, become visible to the individual. That is a detail of vast import in defining the cause of the problem and seeking to resolve it. It would allow the individual to file a useful complaint - errr, "question" with support, and allow them to look at a specific portion of the log for confirmation or explanation.

Following is the text of the question filed to IWON support:

'090108-002647'

Highlighted by recent problems with team credit for individual player coins, we need a new tool from IWON. I suggest on the profile page, near the Team Name link, that those who are members of teams have a gadget added to show the current (MTD) coin credit contributed to the team by that player. Ideally, it would have a popup either showing or offering, a table by date of the days that month, with a coin total contributed for each.

That would relieve your support of the uncertainty of whether an individual's coins were credited for a given day, and would allow the player, upon review, to specify precisely the date in question, together with any supporting evidence (s)he may offer that the total is incorrect. The elimination of numerous ill-founded, or ill-documented, complaints that I know are being filed on this very issue, would offset the work involved in installing that feature.

Since there are most assuredly some of those complaints that are indeed well-founded, whether or not well-documented, those would be visible to address, leading possibly to getting the numbers right, and the process for accumulating the numbers right, for all time. Sorry, that sounds as though it might threaten downsizing the support staff - but there are so many other problems that require focused effort, that there is surely no immediate danger of staff cuts due to this implementation.

My next step is to see if some Team Founders and/or leaders from other teams will join Tigers in pushing this suggestion (unless I find a better suggestion from them, or other reader's comments).