So I love Bambu Labs. I love their printers, their software, the points system in maker world. They truly seem like an Ideal company. A perfect balance of profitable and community support. I thought the boost program was cool. I’ve convinced my brother, 2 cousins and a friend to buy Bambu printers. Between all of us, we have an X1C with AMS, 3 P1Ss with AMS, an A1 and 2 A1 minis. Naturally, we’ve all been boosting models on makerworld and some of those models are uploads from friends and family. I have 2 models that were boosted by my brother. I’ve never used points before but I accumulated enough points for a $40 giftcard. I’ve been very active on makerworld, uploading lots of models and print profiles, so I was excited to cash in those points. When attempting to redeem the points, I was alerted that my account and point history would be reviewed. This was no problem, because I’ve been following the rules. Today I had a system notification that 2 of my models were being removed, the points I received from those models were being revoked and I was being banned from using points for a whole week. I found this very confusing, and with a deeper look, it seems the issue is with my brothers account. He doesn’t post models, he only prints. He has a P1S with AMS and an A1 mini. The 2 models I uploaded that were boosted by my brother are the 2 models that were removed and penalized. I’m thinking because my brothers account is new and he hasn’t completed his profile yet, it seems suspicious. I do understand that fraud prevention is important. But I feel like they’re a little trigger happy. I’m honestly not going to participate in the boosting and points programs anymore. I won’t be sharing models or profiles anymore. It doesn’t seem worth it if they’re just going to revoke the points. I’ve never used any points, so I’m not that invested. It just makes me sad because I thought Bambu was the ideal business. They’re still not bad, just not as perfect as I thought they were.
I actually see this as a good sign. Bambu is taking scammers seriously and protecting the makerworld ecosystem. I would highly recommend NOT boosting your “families” makerworld accounts. There’s enough boost love to go around, go share it with strangers on the internet. Bambu makes great printers that are worth purchasing even without makeworld and the points system. Best of luck to you.
Appeal the actions against you.
It may not work, but, if you explain you are an innocent party rather than someone trying to harvest points.
I agree with @JJTechPrints, it gives the appearance of scamming the system, even if it is innocent.
There are too many rules on boosts, I have boosted one designer 6 times because I like their models. Now the boost buttons on that designer are disabled.
My recommendation is to forget about points, forget about boosts, and enjoy the hobby in a more ‘pure’ state. Create and upload because you want to contribute and that being the reward itself.
IMO, these point incentive programs introduce a negative/noise element. I get MakerWorld needs content, so totally get why Bambu does the incentives. My hope is they can eventually phase those out, if MakerWorld ever gets established as one of the goto sources for models, as MakerWorld is nice for Bambu users.
Update:
After filing an appeal, I spoke with support. They were great. They didn’t overturn the penalty, but they did answer all my questions and explain everything. I’m pretty content with how they handled it and my appreciation for Bambu has been restored. lol. They didn’t do an excellent job explaining the rules of the boosts in the first place, but I know realize their intention. It’s not $1 gift cards to give to your favorite designers. They are giving out tons of boosts, so it clearly makes sense. I just misunderstood what they wanted us to do with them. Anyway, lesson learned, don’t boost someone that boosted you, don’t boost the same designer multiple times and If someone boosts you, don’t count on redeeming it if their profile is new and blank.
If you live together you share the same IP address so everything done by your brother could be associated to you, I would avoid this kind of actions.