Redemption Declined - irregular behavior during the content

Hi everyone,

I need some advice please. From what I’ve read, a few of you have been in similar situations before. The sale is on and I wanted to redeem some points for a few (six to be precise) EUR 40 gift cards. I also have two contest wins for which the cards give a 404 Page Cannot Be Found error, but that’s a separate issue.

So, clicked the button… goes into review. Fair enough, it’s been a couple of months since the last card. First couple I’ve ever had went into review and the third one finally I got immediately. If they need to review now for the fourth card again, I have no problem with that of course. Today, I receive this message from @MakerWorld though…

We regret to inform you that your product redemption request has been declined due to anomalies detected in your points acquisition data. Consequently, the points used for this redemption will not be refunded to you. According to our risk control system, and following manual review, your account has exhibited irregular behavior during the content download process, in violation of our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. To uphold the fairness of the platform’s points system and protect the rights of all users, we are compelled to take action on this matter.

First of all, I’m not impressed by their “risk control system”… my store is set to Europe, my system language is set to English…

We strongly advise you to thoroughly review: 1. The relevant clauses pertaining to the Rewards Programs in our User Agreement (使用协议 - MakerWorld) 2. The sections on Violations and General Guidelines in our Community Guidelines (社区守则 - MakerWorld).

…however, the system tries to send me to Chinese pages. Be that as it may, what in the world is “irregular behavior during the content download process”?!? I am not doing any “if you download mine, I’ll download yours” stuff nor do I have multiple accounts to download my own designs. Besides, I can count on one hand the number of models that have more than 100 (not 1,000, not 10,000, but 100) downloads.

The only thing I can imagine is that it is, more or less, always the same people downloading my designs. That’s a bit of a given though, because two months ago, I started uploading Rococo/Baroque designs that work similar to Lego pieces, so if you want to add more to whatever DIY project to have to make your furniture or whatever look nice, you’ll probably stop by again and download some more of my designs.

I created a separate collection for these models (link) and uploaded about 40 models over the last couple of months. The collection has 60+ followers. At the same time, my followers went up by 200+ from 39 followers on May 1 to 265 followers as of today. I find nothing irregular here, and I am in fact very happy that I seem to have found my niche in a way. You can understand that this little message is ruining my day a bit. Maybe at @MalcTheOracle can share some wisdom, because I feel like my uploads page starts to look a bit like his. By which I mean “found your niche” models instead of random model this, followed by random model that, etc. but no cohesive whole.

I also don’t see how anything has been resolved. I just submitted for the next EUR 40 card. Am I just gonna receive the same message until I run out of points to redeem? Frankly, I cannot influence the download behavior of THEIR users!!! So I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now. I see no irregularities in downloads on my end when looking into the “Creator Center” stats… goes up a bit sure, but like I said, followers are up by 200+ as well.

Funny thing is, I only seriously started uploading after @MakerWorld put one of my models (link) into their featured collection for Physics Education (link). Then I win two contests (not top 3 though) and under the model (link) submitted for the first win, I receive this message from @MakerWorld

…so naturally, I think that @MakerWorld and I are on good terms. Next contest win, goes into the Music Box Collection (link) …great, getting some exposure. Both models are still today #3 and #4 under “Trending” on their respective contest pages. My Coffee Goes Places is #18 “Trending” on the contest page.

Of course all I know, is that it’s “Browse” traffic when looking at the Creator Center Stats. At least that’s what I’d classify it under. These are the stats for my Music Box Model (link)

…4,000 views, 61 downloads… looks hardly like gaming the system to me. It has the detailed description they ask for… the BOL… there’s a nice picture of a make in the comments section. The thing has 8 boosts for crying out loud… what in the world is irregular about any of this?!?

The only thing I find irregular is that the two gift cards for the contests I’ve won give me a “404 page not found” error when I click on them!!! But you got two of my models featured in your collections, give me two contests wins… and somehow I’m supposed to know what’s irregular about my traffic??? I don’t even have stats detailed enough to check which contest page of featured collection page my traffic comes from!!!

Do me a favor, tell me WHO is stopping by my page so irregularly and I’ll put a disclaimer on my models, telling that person (or plural) not to download my models… so that I can IN FACT receive actual gift cards for the points I have.

I’ll stop writing now, thanks for listening everyone. Dunno, probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that’s just because I’m really not sure what I’m fighting here. Zero detail given… like a judge telling you, you broke the law according to the law book. Ok, which one…? The law, in general. Guess you guys know what I mean…

Okay, one more… comments section for this model (link). User asks for an “ocean themed” design… a few days later I release a sea horse and a koi design and let them know about it in the comments… how is that not exactly the kind of interaction they ask for of us designers… didn’t have to do that… thought it was a nice idea though and did them a favor.

I mean, honestly…

…do I sound like a bot, would you like me to click on all the pictures that look like a “motorcycle”…??? Am I point farming??? What in the world, did I do wrong???

ps: full disclosure the "what in the world"s above are euphemisms for the F-word of course. Was certainly not good for my blood pressure that little message today!

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That sucks. I hope this gets resolved and you get the gift cards you earned or Bamhu will provide you with detailed explanation of whatvthey think you did wrong.

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Thanks.

Exactly, I’d be happy not to receive the gift cards but receive an actually explanation instead. Then we can talk if I can even influence any of the download(era) behavior and then they can give me the cards.

So, open a ticket then?

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I’ve never been in this situation but if I were, I would open a ticket. I don’t think opening a ticket asking for an insight into the matter would hurt your chances of resolving this.

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Just looked around, Nice work. And NOPE, I don’t see nuttin that would be a cause of concern to Bambu. But Hey, it happens. I would say that when you earn enough points for a coupon, redeem it. I had a model that was taken down due to an infraction of IP (lego) was in the description. I’d been redeeming all along and I’m working through a -4K points deduction. I might be at zero by year’s end. But such is life.

Because those are the links in the template, just open a bug report and they can update it, someone probably just borked a copy and paste somewhere

Sure, but they will look where those downloads originate, what sort of timeframe those downloads happened, what sort of historical data exists for your other models etc

So if for example they see that 95% of the interactions with a model all come in a very short amount of time and it basically got no engagement after that, it would look suspicious

That would also seem a little suspicious to any automated checks

You do not mention if you have opened an actual support ticket or not

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And I’m one of them. Just wanted to say that these models are great and I will definitely use them for some bigger project in the future.
I’m sorry about your situation, if I were you I would open a ticket. I hope it will be resolved quickly (and successfully of course).

Sure is, but I’m not their Quality Assurance department. I’ve reported to them before that it should be phrased “a winner in the contest” rather than “you won the contest” and they haven’t changed that notification yet either, even though they said they’d take care of it. Nevertheless, I am familiar with their terms and I know where to find them… so let’s have a quick look

Terms of use…

We have objective grounds to reasonably believe that you have taken fraudulent activity includes any action that is deceptive or an attempt to gain points not in accordance with these Terms of Use and includes but is not limited to, circumventing, disabling, or fraudulently receiving points through any means or interfering with any part of the Services (or attempting to do so);

We have reasonable grounds to believe that you have obtained points repeatedly or unfairly through means such as repeatedly uploading models, exploiting system vulnerabilities, tampering with the process or the operation of a program and so on;

We have reasonable grounds to believe that you have caused or encouraged inaccurate measurements of genuine user engagement with the Services, such as by paying people or providing incentives to increase a user content’s views, likes, ratings, or to increase subscribers, downloads, otherwise manipulate metrics in any manner;

Community Guidelines

The following rules apply to all content on MakerWorld, including models, print profiles, community posts, comments, ratings, etc. Violations of these rules will result in the removal of the relevant content.

1. Spam & deceptive practices such as:

  • Fake engagement
  • Impersonation
  • Duplicate content
  • Spam, deceptive practices and scams

as mentioned… not doing any boost for boost or download for download, nor am I providing any other incentive to people. So, unless they think that these designs are duplicate uploads because whoever reviewed it doesn’t know what these appliqués are and just thinks “oh, another Versailles ornament thing… looks like all the others to me, must be a duplicate.”

Can’t be the latter though because that’s grounds for model takedown. So basically what I said about the number of followers in general and the followers for the collection. Plus, what you said

Well, we got this little “Community post” button right there on the upload page and that gets posted straight away. Then you go onto whatever social media telling people you have a new upload… obviously, just that and not in a download for download fashion and all the other things they mention above. On top of that, in the models it says… you can go to this collection (sic) to find other matching pieces that you can combine this one with.

…and I fully agree, to any automated check; however, they write

so it’s one thing if an automated check gets triggered, but if that “following manual review” then also finds issues… they need to be a bit more precise than “your account has exhibited irregular behavior during the content download process, in violation of our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use”

…which part of the Community Guidelines and Terms of Use have I so indecently violated? That’d be helpful information. Also, will my next gift card also be rejected now or has the problem been resolved? They didn’t take all the points I have on whatever models violated whatever, so this seems like a job half done to me… specially since they went through the trouble a manual review.

But, no model takedowns, no point deduction… just keeping the points for this transaction without issuing a gift card for the most vague reason ever.

Not yet, I’m submitting the two for my contest wins first because the link in their email goes to a 404 page not found. I doubt that in the meantime they’ve decided that I was only imagining that I’ve won those two, so that’ll be a quicker way of getting a couple of gift cards (that I already had) and buy at least something during the sale.

You don’t have to be on their QA team to report a bug

And nobody said you were, just that the engagement with that model might have tripped automated checks, and we aren’t likely to know exactly what it was that was flagged this time around

I am aware, and they will be able to see where any given engagement is from, part of the HTTP request to the model page includes the referring URL, so its unlikely they would include links from within their own platform as suspicious unless they also match known problematic patterns

But for the most part links from within MW itself are probably rated as very low on the potential risk list

Yes and no, on the one hand it gives you an answer, on the other hand for people who are actually trying to exploit the system it gives them a “this is the reason you got flagged” in order to try and avoid those automated flags next time around

So in most cases they have to be careful with how much information they give out

That would normally be the first thing you do when you have an issue, bambu can’t resolve it if you’re not telling them about it and posting here is unlikely to get it resolved

Just so we don’t accidentally get off on the wrong foot here, let me preface this by saying that I do agree with most of what you say and if it doesn’t sound like that to you, please consider the situation I’m in today, my answers will have a slightly annoyed undertone which has nothing to do with you.

So, presumption of innocence is out the window is what you are telling me? Guilty until proven innocent. Fine, I’ll entertain that thought for a hot minute… wow, they’d have to get so much better at their false positives… minute over.

True, but your point was…

…and there is no option to do a delayed post. Options that Facebook and YouTube by the way both have… so maybe they should start working on that if it triggers their, if that is how it works, very “basic” automated fraud detection algorithm.

Don’t get me wrong, I do understand where you’re coming from… and whether it’s devil’s advocate or you just want to provide a different viewpoint (I’ve taken Bambu’s side on a few occasions on this forum myself), it’s simply not reasonable to on the one hand give somebody two contest wins, feature two of their models… ignore the fact that followers went up by almost 1,000% in two month and then blame me (which we only assume because no details are given) to manipulate the downloads somehow.

When I wrote the original post, and re-read it, I had to change the number of followers from 264 to 265… now, 8 hours later, I’m at 268… you want to extrapolate this number? I’m gonna have a featured developer badge come Black Friday.

I ain’t doing nothing to make that number go up!!! Not my fault that the rest of the baroque appliqués are ■■■■■■ 2D pull-ups. The only other person on MakerWorld with decent models is Wile E. 3D (link), so I’m not surprise that I gain followers like crazy… at least given the niche this is in… pretty sure flex legs or fidget spinners would do better with a lot of the audience.

And again, this is only going up like crazy for the little niche this is… we’re talking numbers of magnitude with people that do Pokemon stuff or whatnot. What’s a thousand downloads to them? Nothing.

Well, I got them tagged in the original post above… and I could add “at-Tanklet”… which I’m not going to… but that’s a person, if you’re familiar with the forum, will reply to you here. I’ll write a ticket as soon as I get the two contest wins resolved. Also wanted to hear people’s opinions first in case they had the same issue before.

Closing thought, I really don’t care about the gift cards… I can buy a P1 combo without it… just not sure anymore if I want to, because I’m not suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Money is not the issue, the way things are handled is… and this right now is a treatment I don’t much appreciate.

…and to close this one as well… much like pointing out that my contest win gift cards land on a broken link… that was just to point out, how much this is eff-ing amateur hour and really not worth my time.

…and maybe you’re reading too much into it anyways… because who’s to say that I have any issue with reading or writing Chinese to begin with? Maybe it’s all just about giving and taking face when I link this post to the ticket… bored now, @MakerWorld 你好吗?…yeah, breaking the 4th wall… sorry about that.

Sadly, in instances where they are handing out free money the general rule is be extra strict and then deal with the outliers when they happen, the issue is getting your case in front of the right person, you might find that once you open a ticket and a rep looks at it they might resolve the issue there and then

It costs them in manpower having to deal with false positives manually but i’m sure they would rather deal with that than have people find out how to avoid getting caught in the first place

Yeah they will dial them in to the point that they are willing to deal with the manual reviews required to sort out the edge cases like yourself, they won’t ever automate it perfectly and as above, better to err on the side of caution where money is involved

Sorry i think there was a miscommunication with that part

When i said the timeframe, i was referring to the time between downloads and if they all happened to just randomly happen at the same time

For example if only a handful of people download it one day then 100 people download it the next for only a handful to download it on the 3rd etc

They are looking for odd spikes in engagement, yes they know most engagement will happen shortly after launch, but its more about the regularity that the downloads happen, something that gets 2 downloads a day over a long period is less likely to flag anything than something getting a random 50 download spike out of the blue etc

Apologies for that confusion

Like i said its one of those edge cases that any kind of automated check is going to flag and if the person doing the initial review isn’t looking properly they will just notice the massive spike and agree with the check, its not an ideal scenario, but then again there really isn’t a perfect setup to entirely avoid false positives, they will always happen

I apologise if it came across that i was suggesting that you had done anything, wasn’t my intent, it was just to point out the possible reasons why you might have gotten caught in the crossfire

Sure, but they aren’t going to only be here and the fastest and most efficient way is via support, not sure what tanklet’s role at bambu is specifically but not all employees will have access to the tools required to investigate and fix your problem

Even professional multi billion dollar companies make mistakes, and if people who find them don’t report them they are unlikely to get fixed, its got nothing to do with “amateur hour” as every single person on the planet makes mistakes

Well you complained that it was redirecting you to a chinese site, implying that was not the expected or desired outcome, even if you can read chinese that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a bug so it would still need to be fixed to correctly send people to the correct language page, i would expect my users to do the same if they ended up on the wrong language version of the site i run

A support ticket will likely get it resolved or atleast answered so i wish you the best of luck with it :slight_smile:

Well, of course it would and I’m glad you managed to read between the lines despite my p-off-ness. Like I said, I wanted to hear from people who faced similar issues recently because changing things on the fly is also a thing. I did appreciate your input in this matter, but at the same time it seems you clearly understand where I’m coming from.

Frankly, unlike other people who’ll say… I’ll just take my design over to this or that place… I simply don’t care… sorry to be this honest. I found a nice niche and that’s stuff I use at home myself… figured, share it… free money for filament. Got a community to engage with and whatnot… case in point…

…I see stuff on here that is Patreon… like Marvel models from Wicked 3D… just straight copies; MW doesn’t even check when the submission happens… I’m sorry, my stuff is 10% of what their’s like… that’s what I print and paint. That is what should get taken down immediately. I’m glad I found an audience… and people familiar with the prices for these appliques will very much appreciate the option to print them.

In case you don’t know… an H2 will get half your living room decorated if you get the woodcarving version. That it’s not everyone’s cup of tea is obvious as well and the fact that automated check with raise flags is a given… but if you do a manual review… the person has two contest wins and you got two of his designs in your featured collections… just use your brains for crying out loud.

Anyways, yes… ticket will be raised.

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You don’t know that the issue is due to the contest wins and featured models. If that’s the case, everyone who get a win or featured model would have the same problem.

How about sending in a ticket? It takes much less time, energy and typing to create one. It’s not like if this post gets 5 positive votes from other users then MW will reverse their decision. Users on this forum can’t see what MW can and have no clue what’s going on.

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Oh i’ve seen the cleaning guide for the laser edition of the H2D, yeah its not something i’m going to deal with >.<

I’m not saying that the issue is due to the contest wins or being in featured collections (not featured models)… I’m saying that I don’t like the 180 they pulled after leaving this comment under one of my models…

Now, how many designers do you know that got a comment from @MakerWorld under one of their designs? Do you have one? You got 19.2k downloads… I only got 1.5k downloads. Talking order of magnitude here… you got almost 13x as many downloads as I do. At the same time you’re Level 21 and I’m Level 22. You got a popular modal award… I don’t even have enough prints for that in total for that… things we know and don’t know… who knows…

What I can tell you is that I got “Member” status on this forum… because your level 21 and my level 22 is pretty much meaningless… but which scammer (i.e., allegedly ME) would go through all this effort to fake his numbers? Effort being the level here… making a whole whoop of it on top of it… and the level 22… which unfortunately you can get with just a bunch of downloads as well.

Lol, sorry… not what I meant, but I love your reply… what I was trying to say… buying the woodworking version of the onlays (appliqués) I’ve been uploading costs as much as an H2 to get half your living room decorated. Trust me, the people who like to put up this stuff know what it’s worth… and the way it’s printed, you can do it with a simple A1 Mini without AMS for under $200… and got your return of investment after about five prints. It’s actually that bad.

…as far as the H2… I was considering it for a little bit, but only the version without the laser. The two nozzles would be more of a feature for me than what I could otherwise do with xtools without doing a mix-and-mash in this odd way. But seeing how I’ve become persona non grata today… that’s just philosophy anyways. :wink: P1 Combo if I’m ever getting my gift cards… did I tell you, got issues with getting my points redeemed. :wink:

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I don’t see a contradiction between MW giving one of your models a complimentary comment and the issue that you have. If anything, this is a good sign that their risk control system treats everyone the same and wisely so.

I am not sure if all these posts help in your favor. A ticket is the way to go in this situation. I wish you the best luck.

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I am a noob here, but I saw your post and thought I would chime in. I, too, had a recent points redemption denied and points removed from my account and I received essentially the same initial message as you.

Needless to say, I have not engaged in any points manipulation. I don’t even know how that would be done. I just had a model in the candy contest trend for a week and accumulate a bunch of downloads and boosts and I decided to cash in some points for a couple gift cards. Instead, I have had my points removed and been accused of cheating.

I have opened a ticket, and that effort has been more frustrating and full of automated responses that provide no information, such as:

“Thank you for your patience and understanding, The system has detected an abnormality in your account points data. We recommend that you check the points rules to see if you have violated any rules. Points cheating may include cheating on points and so on.”

I have repeatedly asked for what rule I purportedly violated but I have only received nonsense responses like “review the community guidelines and see if you are in compliance.”

I have asked for a manual review. So far, no progress. I am assuming they just tweaked something recently to raise more automated red flags and maybe since my account is relatively new, any downloads raise red flags. I don’t know. I am hoping the situation works itself out. This has been a fun new hobby for me, but dealing with repeated false accusations by what I assume is an AI robot, and seeing them take points out of my account without so much as mentioning what they think I have done wrong, is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

I hope it works out for both of us. Good luck.

I am not sure, if this stupid rule is still active: Did you download your own print profiles to check, if they are correct?
In the past you could read several users reporting that MW has claimed this as cheating.
As every designer should be able to check what the user will get, MW should finally implemented the simple rule: Downloading/Printing own models/profiles does not count at all. Please!

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I don’t think this is possible and that downloads like those can be an issue. I just downloaded one of my models as well as print profile and counter did not change.