Referral discount calculation changed yet again!

[#1]

in my case,  it's zero value tokens,  possibly involving a product change (to unlimited fibre) on the referred account.

[#2]

I think you just join the queue. It looks like every Unlimited referral is suffering from this, if we all raised a ticket I think it would bring PlusNets systems to a grinding halt (oh - hang on a minute....)
Anyway it'll definitely be fixed before the end of December January 

[#3]

Just a quick one as I'm rather busy, turns out people like to send lots of e-mails when you are out of the office.
The developer working on the fix regarding the zero values has passed it over for testing now (the "odd" values is currently still being investigated and the clean-up for all those past tokens is being developed).
So over the next couple of days I will be testing that and hopefully it will pass. It will then be bundled in with the January fixes when I'm happy that it generates the correct tokens and credits them correctly off bills.
@kmilburn
No, you won't need to raise a ticket. What gofaster said is spot on regarding it affecting every unlimited referral.

[#4]

Just more out of curiosity (I have been following this topic despite this not involving me, more because I love/know programming) It was mentioned it is old cold that has been bent/twisted and since it is databases. please tell me it isn't Foxpro or Visual Foxpro you're working with... If so, I feel your pain as it is the worse piece of Fubar on the planet and I hated working with it.

[#5]

Nope! Definitely not that bad.
It's MySQL and PHP. It's just the coding for some parts of it goes back a good 10 years back when we were much much smaller.

[#6]

Just out of interest one of my referrals for Unlimited ADSL was made when it was 75p per month, but due to the problem this has always shown as 0.0p in the referrals list, one of the PlusNet team credited me for 3 months (3 X 75p) until hopefully a fix was sorted.
Will I continue to receive this 75p value once the problem has been sorted or will it revert to the new amount of 50p?

[#7]

Quote from: David

Just out of interest one of my referrals for Unlimited ADSL was made when it was 75p per month, but due to the problem this has always shown as 0.0p in the referrals list, ...

Do you happen to know what the date was when the referral value for ADSL 'Unlimited' changed from 75p to 50p?

[#8]

To try and cover both of those...
The 75p unlimited referral value is for the OLD unlimited product. I don't suspect there will be many people left on this as it was £20+ off the top of my head and had all sorts of rate limits associated with it. The new unlimited (which came out December 2012) and has no rate limits (as well as being much cheaper) is the one with the 50p value.
So the values never changed, it was just for a different product (that happens to have the same name). Although I appreciate from a customer point of view, they sound identical.
David, it sounds like whoever you had referred was on the old unlimited product and has moved to the new unlimited product (with the zero value) so they will be paid at 50p.

[#9]

The referral value on both (ADSL and FTTC) new Unlimited products was 75p initially. This is shown in the 15th May 2013 archive courtesy of the Wayback Machine. See referral values link.
My guess is that the 75p referral value for Unlimited ADSL was reduced to 50p when the referral values page was updated on 29th May 2013.

[#10]

Hmmm interesting. I couldn't find anything in past documentation about that.
That page also shows the old unlimited as only being 50p.
That could affect cleanup significantly if there were different prices on the same product on different dates. Let me have a look into it some more and see if I can find a reason.

[#11]

Hi Scott,
This discussion and your investigation seems to have identified a number of issues beyond the one in the current fix plan - zero value tokens on essentials package.

Quote from: Scott

I think I'm going to have another look at the database and see if somehow certain products referral values have been changed to a random amount. If that is what has happened it's nice and easy to fix and can be brought in with what work we are already doing as it is pretty much the same issue. The harder part to that would be finding out how and why it had happened in the first place. If it is something completely different, we'll have to raise a different task for it and investigate further to find out what is happening there. Obviously, that will take some time, I'll check to see if that is already planned in as part of another project with the digicare guys.

Quote from: Scott

For the one product type that is causing the odd values on your account I have found a reference to it in the database at 59p for referrals, which matches up with a lot of referral tokens going back that were generated at 59p. It should actually be 50p, so I can see how someone has accidentally hit a 9 instead of a 0 when inputting it. I have no idea where the 72p on the same referee has come from at the moment though. I won't be surprised if it's an odd value in the database.

Quote from: Scott

Odd that it shows something different on the member centre than what it does on the database. I can't say that I checked this earlier, I assumed it wouldn't pull a number from somewhere completely different. I'm in Birmingham on a training course until Friday meaning I probably won't have anything new to add until I'm back in the office on Monday.

Have you been able to complete your investigation into the various foibles identified through this thread please?  How practical would it be to have the distinct issues listed, with some indication of the plan to resolve please?  As "your starter for 10" here is what I think you've uncovered so far...
1. Zero value tokens on essential products - fix in progress, release forecast Jan 2014
2. Database token values are wrong
3. Token values displayed on the referral page do not reflect those in the data base
4. The product of token values and number of payments in some circumstances do not match the displayed total payment value
5. Month to month total referral value changes by inexplicable amounts
...over to you!
I think you would agree that the issues surrounding referrals is a bigger monster than has been previously perceived and proberly needs some additional tasks scheduling as you hinted previously.
Cheers,
Kevin

[#12]

I would have a guess that the 0.00 value for the current unlimited plan is only showing on referrals  that were done after the (very sneaky change by PN) value change from 75 to 50p?
Regards
Mike

[#13]

Morning Scott/Mike,
This was the unlimited broadband and the lady who took it out is still on the same package, as I set it up for her, and help her with her computer fairly regularly. She hasn't changed from her original package, I appreciate if she does it would drop to 50p.
Phil in support applied a credit to my account, the ticket ref is #72853538 as the value for this was always 0.0p instead of 75p.
I'd be a bit miffed if it wasn't reapplied at 75p once the referrals problem is sorted as this error was at PN's end.
Mike, the 0.0p value of one of my referrals was a 75p one, this is why I imagine it will be reinstated at 50p once they fix the problem.
The line moved over to PN on the 21/6/13 and unlimited broadband was still paying 75p at this time.
Cheers,
David

[#14]

The value of the token, will be what it was at the point of sign up, i would assume , not the date activated. David did you sign the person up for unlimited broadband, David did you sign the person up before 29th May 2013 ?
Regards
Mike

[#15]

Hi Mike,
I'm not 100% sure when I did the sign up, but I am sure it was before the end of May, yes it was unlimited broadband. The order moved broadband and phone from BT to PlusNet.
I definitely checked at the time and the 75p referral was still valid. Phil in support applied a credit of 3 X 75p to my account saying that the "issue "should be fixed within that 3 month period.
Cheers,
David