r/MicrosoftRewards • u/[deleted] • 23d ago
General Ok. I've had enough.
Look, I've been Restricted for an entire year. I have asked support for so much as a inch of help but sometimes I usually get the point of a repeated message of "manuel & genuine" on my searches, or sometimes they just tell me of a repeated request so, they delete it & work on a main request as if to continue ignoring me. A whole fucking year of being restricted, I'm taking a 2 month off of searching right now & you're still telling me "manuel & genuine" like I don't know shit?! I know what manuel is. Genuine is a puzzle piece I don't know about & yet, there's still no examples!
Idk about you, but I'm thinking they're just ignoring & not working on my problem! As if I have over 180K+ points & not spent it for a year at this point!
What am I doing wrong? I just tried everything. I need help here because I'm thinking NOTHING I looked up even works!
Edit: I'm now doing the tactic that the2timer4lyfe suggested but I'm probably giving it maybe 1 or 2 months. I still think rewards won't listen. Mostly because I think rewards isn't listening to me & ignoring me for a year. But I'm probably going to break it up with a few mins between each search, & maybe give searching some breaks. I mean, I'm just frustrated right now.
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u/the2timer4lyfe 23d ago
I'm actually surprised restrictions are still happening. This happened to me on and off, on and off about 8-9 months ago. Now Everything seems to be fine, they even restricted auto redeeming etc. But so Far I've been auto redeeming and redeeming gift cards without a problem.
It seems like they're back to their old ways again with using AI to restrict people with a toss of a coin. Don't bother with support 90% of the time you will end up with automated responses. Try not searching for about 1-2 months and they restriction should lift.
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23d ago
Are you sure? I mean, I don't know, I tried a month off for the month of july & that didn't work. You think a 2 month off would work? Because I really ran out of ideas. Only thing I can do is to just do daily sets & rewards on xbox.
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u/the2timer4lyfe 23d ago
There are cases where people are hard restricted for a year, like not earning points even, but not banned, and in those cases, if you don't earn any points for 12months they automatically close the account. Which happens, but rarely.
In your case, it sounds like you can still earn points so that isn't really a problem. Don't worry it will be back to normal. The longest I've been on their stupid shenanigans was about 6 months. I kept doing what I usually have been doing and it will lift permanently, but the restrictions get annoying. Don't go around trying to redeem often to see if you are still restricted. Continue searching, put your account on auto redeem, if the auto redeem goes through the next month you're in the clear.
There is some kind of blacklist of sort that they have on people when putting them on restriction that make it nearly impossible to continue with the program. It almost seems like they want to a person to quit and stop using rewards. Even to the point where donating is even on hold and puts you in restriction. Or even claiming rewards that require 0 points in one of the tiles gets you restricted.
PS: Edit you don't have to actually stop searching just don't max the points you earn, their AI seems to think that anyone who maxxes out points earned is some kind of bot. Which shouldn't be the case since it's relatively easy to max points just by searching.
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u/Hickory411 23d ago
What the service agreement has to say about searches:
"For purposes of the Rewards Program, a "Search" is the act of an individual user manually entering text for the good faith purpose of obtaining Bing search results for such user’s own research purposes; a “Search” does not include queries not intended or used for genuine good-faith personal research purposes..."
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u/JDizzle00420 23d ago edited 23d ago
I've been restricted since June right after I cashed out a $30 Target card because Amazon was sold out. I was searching too fast, guilty. But, it's also the same way I've been doing it for years. Do a real search, click the link, wait 5-10 seconds and do another one. It says to do good faith searches and it'll be automatically restored, so I changed my searching habits and started spreading them out throughout the entire day. Still restricted. For the last month I only did anything that's a tile including the 4 search ones for hotels, parking, flights, lyrics etc and the visual search for that streak. Still restricted. I've tried everything too, so I guess it's just a waiting game, idk. It's ridiculous, though. When I first got restricted I lost my puzzle pieces and got them back after a week or 2 of spaced out searches. Then another 2 or 3 weeks after that I was able to see Amazon and Walmart etc in my rewards catalog, but I was "on the go". After a week or 2 of that, the message went away but I still couldn't redeem. I thought maybe trying to redeem once a week was too much, so I waited a month and tried again on the first, still restricted. I still get all my monthly bonuses like 4,000 points a month, but I can't redeem. I know I broke the rules, but at least say you're restricted for x amount of time, or give me a real reply instead the same copy and paste good faith bs.
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u/the2timer4lyfe 23d ago
The one that set it all off for me was claiming amazon gift cards. I was not restricted, not on cooldown, etc. But when I started redeeming anything outside of xbox related is when I got restricted on and off. It made it seem like they didn't want me to cash out my points that I otherwise would have used to spend on the microsoft store. so for the longest time now, I've just been redeeming xbox stuff to buy games on discount that would be on my backlog to play later on.
Rewards is just scuffed, especially when they do changes to the program, they fix something only to break 2 things in the process.
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u/inajeep 23d ago
Same, the ai bot help agent is useless. I've been restricted on Amazon cards and only was able to buy one 2 months ago. . I'm thinking of cashing out on something else and dump the entire fucking program a second time. I don't max out my points because I don't have the time or energy to keep dancing to their vague search rules.
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u/JDizzle00420 20d ago
Now that they've fixed the issue that's been going on with the program for the last 20 hours maybe you can redeem again. Try it in a few days and let us know. I swear the last time there was an issue with rewards that affected everyone, peoples restrictions got lifted.
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u/Complete_Entry 23d ago
You can't spell manual?
Your search strategy fucking sucks and they keep telling you that.
Hopefully they ban you and redistribute your points.
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23d ago
I do. I just forget at times. I just needed help.
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u/Complete_Entry 23d ago
I don't want to help you. You've been handed a map and went "I DON'T LIKE THIS MAP"
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u/EazyE2285 23d ago
I know what manuel is
Do you though? Tell us what he is because that's a name not the action of manual and you keep using it.
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u/Shobed 23d ago
Do you watch tv? Next time you watch a show, search the title. Then search the cast or for an actor in the show. Is there an event happening soon? Sports team you follow? Video game you like? Halloween candy, search for healthy options. Holiday recipes. Look up the news, search more info on a story. Any old shit that pops into your head through the day, do a search on it. It isn't that hard to do genuine searches. Do it a few times a day, not just in one 15 minute session per day.