It would be nice to be able to participate in the bidders challenge

[smerriman]

Earlier this year, I posted a comment on one of the BBO news articles (by Roman Weil). The next day it was published, as have been other comments in the past, and I think Roman had even replied to it. A few days later, I look again to see if anyone else commented, and the comment is gone entirely. Odd, but OK.

 

A few times over the next couple of months, I post other comments on other topics, including one asking a question about how the bidder's challenge works. Comments by other people show up, but never mine. Being a WordPress developer myself, I start to wonder if my earlier comment got accidentally marked as spam, meaning all my others are going directly into spam. Meh, not a big deal.

 

After 7 months in the BBO bidder's challenge, I was in 11th place overall.

 

BBO then shifted the submissions to the same website that runs the blog.

 

At exactly 3:29pm NZST, July 24 according to my browser history, I submitted my bids. The submission went through, though I did note that it was a bit odd that it didn't send me a confirmation. But, the rules make it clear that resubmitting means you get disqualified, so I left things as is.

 

When the panel results came out later, I calculated my total - my best ever, 77 points IIRC. But the results come out, and I'm given 0, and completely off the leaderboard. Now I'm certain all my submission to the website are being marked as spam.

 

Emailed BBO support on 4 August, including all details, including that I have proof of my submission through browser history. Got a brief response 4 days later saying that I didn't submit my bids, and some message about spam and duplicate comments that made no sense. So I followed up on August 9 asking them to check again.

 

August 27, still no response. Expecting issues, I make a video recording of my submission process. This time I get an error that I had already submitted (I hadn't), and a message saying that "Your entry appears to be spam", confirming exactly what I suspected. To ensure my results got counted in the meantime, I include them in the email (and the video).

 

Results come out - I get 0.

 

Ask for an update August 30. No response.

 

Ask for an update September 11. No response.

 

I'm now posting here under the assumption that my emails to them are getting marked as spam too. Since that sounds preferable to just not being ignored :) But I know based on others' experiences of the support email address that BBO doesn't have many available resources on that end. So it doesn't bother me too much if I don't get an instant reply, as long as I get my scores back in the end.. and maybe posting here will help that.

[smerriman]

Third month in a row of not being able to submit bids :( I don't think the support email address is monitored at all anymore.

[thorvald]

Third month in a row of not being able to submit bids :( I don't think the support email address is monitored at all anymore.

 

What about trying with a new account?

[smerriman]

What about trying with a new account?

Already ran a test under a dummy username (and it worked) to prove to BBO that the issue was specific to my account being marked as spam and not other details like browser settings etc. But that obviously isn't a solution to my lost scores / global leaderboard position.

[smerriman]

And unsurprisingly I got 0 points again when the results came out, despite my bids being sent to support well in advance of the cut-off (again). Super stuff.