Accepted terms stay attached
Changes to future offers do not rewrite a customer’s accepted review or referral offer. Eligibility and fulfillment still need to pass the saved conditions.
Rewards: settings and recovery
A reward offer, an issued benefit and a spendable balance are different things. This guide explains what happens when settings change, a request is repeated or an order is refunded. Policy checked against the implementation: 3 November 2026.
A refund has several parts
Cash returned, credit restored, credit withheld for recovery and points reversed are separate results. Check the order and reward histories together.
Settings changed while work is waiting
| Workflow | What is preserved | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Direct review incentive | Accepted rule, value, content requirements, customer cap and offer deadline | A valid invitation offers ₹100 credit. Reducing new offers to ₹50 does not change that invitation before its deadline. |
| Loyalty points for a review | Accepted program/rule version, base points, media bonus, eligibility rules and delay | A submitted review accepted at 150 points keeps that amount after new offers change to 10. A program pause does not turn the accepted obligation into a completed zero-point award. |
| Referral accepted at checkout | The accepted checkout’s offer, identity and terms, even if order creation happens after payment | A checkout accepts ₹50 for the advocate. Raising new offers to ₹90 or pausing new referrals before payment confirmation does not rewrite the accepted ₹50 offer. |
| Completed coupon self-refund | The original completed reversal for its authenticated owner and store | The first request returns 100 points but its response is lost. Repeating it after loyalty or self-refunds are disabled returns the existing completed result; it does not return another 100 points. |
A referral link visit is attribution, not acceptance of a financial offer. Checkout acceptance binds the offer to that checkout and buyer. Replacing the code, changing the buyer or changing the checkout can require a new acceptance; an old claim must not fund another person’s purchase. Company purchases do not qualify for personal rewards.
A review invitation and its incentive can have different deadlines. Review incentives are held for at most 30 days and can end sooner. A form whose offer changed before submission asks the buyer to refresh and review the terms. An invitation saved without an incentive does not gain one because a promotion starts later.
Pausing stops new program participation according to its settings and blocks new points redemptions. Already accepted obligations retain their terms. Pending media or authenticity checks still need to finish; a pause or a retry is not permission to bypass them.
Customer limits and repeated requests
A direct rule’s once-per-customer setting applies across that customer’s orders for that rule. Two reviews evaluated together or by different workers do not create two capped rewards. The issuance step checks the entitlement again, including when it resumes after an interruption. Expiring or revoking an old benefit does not reset the customer’s entitlement.
Example: Meena reviews two different orders under the same capped ₹100 rule. One reward can be issued for that rule. She may submit both reviews; the second submission does not promise another incentive. Independently, the direct and loyalty review engines share one financial incentive per order.
Changing the cap affects new accepted offers. Previously accepted uncapped offers are not silently changed into capped offers. Check the accepted offer and existing reward history when explaining a result after a settings change.
When a response is lost, retry or check the existing action. A completed financial record is reused; a new manual grant is a separate financial action and can overcompensate the customer.
Waiting, ineligible and failed claims
| Situation | Expected handling |
|---|---|
| Payment or a required purchase event has not arrived | Keep the claim pending and check again later; the waiting claim does not monopolize processing. |
| Temporary processing failure | Retry with a delay using the same accepted claim. Check its existing result before issuing compensation. |
| Permanently ineligible company, test or invalid purchase | Record a terminal reason and stop retrying that claim. Other eligible claims can continue. |
| Old referral claim or loyalty review without recoverable accepted terms | Do not invent today’s offer as its historical promise. Staff need to review the recorded reason. |
| Referral risk review is needed | Hold the advocate’s benefit for the documented review process; a shared household is not automatically fraud. |
Background recovery is not an immediate-delivery guarantee. If an action stays pending or failed, contact support with its order, customer, time and displayed message. Do not send payment secrets or repeatedly create replacement rewards.
Expiry and promotional-credit recovery
Expiry is determined by the credit’s promised boundary, not by when a scheduled job happens to run. Native date-based credit remains valid through the store’s local expiry day; an imported exact expiry uses its saved instant.
Example: ₹100 promotional credit expired yesterday, and its qualifying purchase is invalidated today. That unused ₹100 is classified as expired, not newly recovered, even if the expiry job has not run yet. The result is the same when the expiry job runs first. If only ₹40 remained and ₹60 had already been spent, ₹40 expires and ₹60 can remain outstanding recovery.
A checkout reservation created before expiry protects only its reserved amount for its short authorization lifetime. Invalidation can wait until that checkout settles or releases its reservation. It does not take an unrelated cash refund or purchased gift-card balance to settle the source.
The store-credit guide shows a ₹1,000 order paid with ₹800 through a gateway and ₹200 promotional credit. If the credit’s source was invalidated after spending, a full refund returns the ₹800 gateway part and withholds the returning ₹200 credit to settle that source’s recovery. ₹0 becomes fresh spendable credit.
A merchant waiver closes the selected outstanding recovery. It does not issue cash, restore an expired promotion or alter an unrelated balance. Historical reward totals must not be read as the customer’s current wallet balance.
Amounts and purchase qualification
Points are whole promotional units, not paise. Large earning calculations use checked arithmetic; an amount or resulting counter that cannot be represented is rejected without partially issuing an award. Set practical point values and rehearse the exact rule with representative orders before opening a promotion.
For a merchandise-based referral minimum, an allocated merchandise refund can reduce qualifying spend. A separate amount-only goodwill adjustment does not invent returned merchandise. A fully refunded or otherwise ineligible purchase can still disqualify the referral.
An authentic review is different from a purchase reward. A low rating, hiding it from display or an ordinary product return does not by itself invalidate its incentive. Fraud, deletion or removal of required qualifying content can require reconciliation. See Review requests & rewards.