As most have read, the Goldpoints folks are auditing points credited via the ValuMags promotion. I've been told a big part of the audit has been going back and deducting points credited for *not* spending money -- i.e. Gold Points credited for money not spent via the 15% discount many people used. They say people are not going to get 450 or even 150 points per dollar that they didn't spend on magazines.

So that's one of the reasons Gold Points are being deducted from some accounts.

Now the "how" bit is a quite bit more messy. If you think you've already had points deducted for the discount, check the rate they were deducted at. [Don't guess, do the math to figure out if it was really 150 or 450 per dollar discount]. Also check to see if some more points have been deducted over the last week or so.

Apparently what's happened to many accounts is that Goldpoints originally deducted points for the discounts at the rate of 150 per dollar not spent, when those transactions were actually credited at the rate of 450 points per dollar not spent.

So recently they have been going back and "correcting" things to deduct points at the rate of 450 points per dollar not spent via the discounts. Unfortunately, it seems they stuffed up some accounts by putting through a new adjustment transaction deducting 450 points per discount dollar when they already had deducted 150 points per dollar of discount in an earlier transaction. Oops. Net effect is some Valuemag purchases now have 600 (450 + 150) points deducted per dollar not spent using the discounts. From the sounds of it this was an unfortunate mistake, not a vast conspiracy on the part of Goldpoints some make it out to be.

I broke this out under a separate subject line since in the 57 messages (so far) in the "GOLDPOINTS is taking back thread" no one bothered to explain the source of these deductions, only whine about them and/or flame Goldpoints in general.


[This message has been edited by Quokka (edited 03-07-2002).]