Great news -- as of this morning, my gold has been restored! (And to be safe, I'm passing on CN referral codes from now on. :)) Thanks to all for your suggestions and moral support and happy swiping to all!
Great news indeed! Glad it all worked out!
Yes, I asked if it would be OK to have my referral rewards "flow both ways" before I embarked on all this, but as I just posted above, all's well that ends well, and from now on I will be more than content to swipe, sans referrals (unless anybody would like my referral code... if you would, please feel free to PM me).
Yaay!
I understand your fear of referral codes at this point, but I'm still of the opinion that the closed loop was the issue. An account glitching out like this seems very rare, and there are plenty of referral codes being used.
Thanks, @Kent! You are probably correct about the referral codes -- hey, you're 99.99% correct of the time in your diagnostics and prognostications on this forum! -- but with more than 6 months' worth of gold accrued on two separate accounts, I am going to be content with swiping for myself and not get greedy (unless, like I posted above, someone would like to PM me for my referral code, in which case I would be glad to oblige 
).
I never understood why closed loop would be an issue, but I was told not to do it and have not.
I think this was brought up before, but with all the focus on referrals, is there anything announced on whether referral bonus will continue in 2019?
Not for me.
I guess I should have asked about that on this forum before I tried it. Lesson learned!
I asked Tom a month ago. Does not seem to continue.
What I mean is the bonus that Tom gave for a year where we could choose 25% for 3 months or 10% for a year
The regular refferal s. Continue
I never thought for a moment you would lose your 180 gold. Unfortunately it takes support a week to get it done
But let's say your family has 4 phones. A round loop works
1 to 2
2 to 3
3 to 4
4 to 1 for example.
What do you get on regular referral?
So using a refferal code is what I call a regular referral
The Tom bonus was a one-time thing is seems
I believe the norm is 10% of whatever rewards the referee accrues in any given month, applied to the referral code's "owner". That's what I was getting prior to my latest antics.
Always 10%
"Prior to my latest antics" -- I love how self-deprecating you are, D_Duo!
Great that you got your Gold restored! And thanks for sharing the whole experience. I tend to be very, very cautious (aka chicken!), so with all the talk about a CellNuvo app update, I have made sure the app does NOT auto-update accidentally, before giving me a chance to cash out my hard-earned CN Gold! And will remember to take frequent screenshots of my Gold.
Great idea! You know what they say: "A picture's worth a thousand Gold." Also, thank you for your kind reply. I am at the learning end of forum exchanges much more often than the advising end, but if my recent CN experience helps anyone else, it was worth it. (Of course I can say that now, seeing as how my Gold was restored.)
And now, back to swiping!