Rewards Missing

Got into a little conversation over at BestMVNO with Joe Paonessa about the update and he replied as follows:
Joe Paonessa
"Coupon provider changed policy to only pay for coupons redeemed. Other rewards remain in tact. FreeUP tells me they are not aware of any bad updates, but you can contact them with your mobile number and the amount of awards you claim to have been deleted and get credited for them."

I informed him that the rewards had been restored to FreeUp accounts, and I guess the update was good since it only deleted customers' rewards for many hours. I also gave him a link to Nth Circle where members were talking about the update and other experiences with FreeUP Mobile. Perhaps Joe Paonessa contacting FreeUP accelerated the restoration process.

Isamorph wrote:

Also the rewards are back up on FU My account summary site.

Same here! Glad they got things resolved sooner than later.

Now the biggest mystery (at least for me) is to see if our respective current free plans will continue to be "grandfathered" in. No doubt many others' free plans will renew soon, but I'll update to let you know what happens with mine on the 31st (if nobody else has already done so).

mmfacemm wrote:

Well that was a crazy adventure. Sometimes it is better not to know about these things as they eventually sort themselves out.

Agreed! As the saying goes, "Ignorance is bliss", which is probably why I'm so happy so much of the time.

Isamorph wrote:

Joe Paonessa
"Coupon provider changed policy to only pay for coupons redeemed."

Interesting. Must be billaway as coupons.com still pays for clicks.

Diedrich_Duo wrote:

mmfacemm wrote:

Well that was a crazy adventure. Sometimes it is better not to know about these things as they eventually sort themselves out.

Agreed! As the saying goes, "Ignorance is bliss", which is probably why I'm so happy so much of the time.

You seem happy all of the time!

Coupons.com Program Agreement:
brandcaster.coupons.com/home/brandcaster-program-agreement

Here are some excerpts that may or may not be relevant:

"1.4 'Improper Means' means any direct or indirect action (or attempted action) by or at the direction of Publisher or User that generates an interaction with a Promotion or purports to be a Qualifying Transaction but is fraudulent, invalid, unauthorized, illegal, lacking sufficient documentation, generated by a bot, automated program or similar device, or otherwise not bona fide as reasonably determined by Quotient, its third party service providers, or Advertisers. By way of example only, Improper Means include: (a) repeated manual or automated activations of or clicks on Promotions on the Publisher Site; (b) using bots or other automated tools or means to interact with Promotions on the Publisher Site; (c) offering anything of value to Users to interact with Promotions on the Publisher Site; (d) offering to provide anything of value to a third party if Users interact with Promotions on the Publisher Site; (e) circumventing controls on the print limits per Offer per device; and (f) generating, using or distributing unauthorized copies of Offers or any portion thereof.
...

1.10 'Qualifying Transaction' means a transaction with a Promotion for which Quotient is paid by Advertisers that is eligible for a Commission as set forth in Addendum A, as modified by Quotient in its sole discretion from time to time. Qualifying Transactions may vary by Promotion type and must be bona fide transactions that are not generated by Improper Means.
...

Promotion Type: Coupon
Qualifying Transaction*: Eligible User interaction with a Coupon. For example, printing a Coupon is an eligible User interaction.
...

(b) 'Coupon' means an Offer within the Coupons section of the Savings Center on the Publisher Site or a link on the Publisher Site that clicks through to the Coupons section of the Coupons.com website. As used herein, 'Savings Center' means the Offer gallery that is available through the Program.
...

*As set forth in Section 1.10, Qualifying Transactions must be bona fide transactions that are not generated by Improper Means."

I did some poking around yesterday about coupons.com & owner Quotient Technology, too. I looked in a different path than st3fx's interesting link, though.

In a nutshell: it seems that a couple of the largest manufacturers they issue coupons for have cut back considerably on coupon availability. It also appears that Quotient's income may be tied to coupons redeemed, not coupons printed-- and the percentage of coupons redeemed has also fallen lately.

The Coupons.com TOS linked by st3fx has some interesting points-- it appears written, as many TOS are, to allow open-ended enforcement as they see how things are working for them (or not.) I wouldn't be surprised if the enforcement of the TOS is interpreted more in favor of the middle-man (like Billaway) when times are good for Quotient, and stricter when times are not so good.

I might guess that Billaway users likely redeemed a smaller percentage of coupons that average users-- and I know that my redemption percentage went down considerably as the need to print more coupons went up. (With 2 coupons/day, I would usually look for coupons I might actually use.) With declining availability of manufacturer-issued coupons, it makes sense for Quotient to want to direct access to those coupons towards users most likely to redeem them.

We've seen this before when a business model depends on 'payment by others'. It takes a nimble foot to find such a path that is workable, and an even nimbler foot to adjust as things change in the 'by others' chain.

The chain for FreeUP might look like:
Manufacturers (coupons) > Coupons.com (distributor)> Billaway (vendor)>FreeUP> Customers (us).
A change anywhere in that chain impacts us, but it's essentially impossible for us to know with any certainty where, or why, the chain breaks.
(In this case, thanks to the related Billaway sites previously posted by st3fx, it does appear that the chain broke between coupons.com & Billaway. The 'why' is open for speculation.)

(Another interesting tidbit from st3fx's link is information about required tracking data, which might raise issues somewhere along the chain.....since the app is delivered to us via the Google Play store, maybe I should have included them somewhere in the chain.)

All my rewards were posted back today like everyone else. Now just wondering if I'll be forced to pick a new plan or be grandfathered in with my old one. I am on the 15 buck unlimited talk and text with 1 GB of data. Seems the new 15 buck plan is 500mb instead of 1 gb.

Frasier1 wrote:

All my rewards were posted back today like everyone else. Now just wondering if I'll be forced to pick a new plan or be grandfathered in with my old one. I am on the 15 buck unlimited talk and text with 1 GB of data. Seems the new 15 buck plan is 500mb instead of 1 gb.

That's what the site says---but it's also the "global" plan, whereas my, and I assume yours, $15 unlimiteded t&t+1GB plan is the Canada, USA, and Mexico plan. I would like for my plan to be grandfathered in since I have no use for the global plan. I'm departing FU anyway, once I use up my rewards.

Yep, I had a bad feeling about people printing mad coupons and not using any or very few. In our case, we use many but still, many went unused thus our percentage also went down.

As far as the plans, it looks like they are honoring the change to the 1GB for 15 on my end (submitted prior to the changes and shows online as the upcoming plan). Time will tell how long this lasts.