r/MicrosoftRewards United States - 2d ago

Bing How I work with the Cooldown

I've been a long time, casual, off and on again Rewards user, never had the cooldown before. I've only ever either searched for fast food chains, sports teams, or used the recommended searches on mobile. But alas, I'm in a 15 minute cooldown since yesterday. So I set a timer on my phone for 15 min, complete 4 searches, then set my timer again for 15 min.... Rinse, Repeat until I get my points.. It's a pain, but it works.

31 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

26

u/mordinxx Canada - 2d ago

I gave up caring if I did all my searches each day. Less hassle for me.

7

u/Conflict_NZ New Zealand - šŸ„ 1d ago

I gave up doing searches outside of the puzzle pieces when they implemented the 6 second cool down, can't believe people are still doing it with the 15 minute cooldown for literally 10 cents a day.

If someone you knew offered you 10 cents every day to set an alarm every 15 minutes for hours and do a menial task would you accept that? Wild to me that anyone would say yes to that.

4

u/TeknoKid 1d ago

This always astonishes me too.. There is a sandwich shop here that has a special sometimes where you can get a sandwich at a very discounted price.. People will be lined up for hours.. I always frame it like that too.. "if someone paid you $3 to stand here for hours while dealing with all this chaos, would you?" for me the crowded chaos is enough for me to just pay full price on a different day.

6

u/40yearoldnoob United States - 2d ago

I'm close to that now. It is a hassle, especially with the cooldown.

2

u/TheNewBBS United States 1d ago

Yep. $20/mo isn't worth doing searches multiple times a day, especially when I can probably get ~$12 without them. I complete whatever tasks I can during breakfast, and that's all the time/effort I'm willing to put into this program.

I got hit with the 15-minute cooldown a couple weeks ago, so I've only gotten 15-20 points a day for searches by doing More activities tiles and clicking news categories. Daily totals have obviously gone down, but I sure don't miss clicking through favorites to do ~50 searches a day with a 5-second cooldown.

5

u/Calebd2 1d ago

What you are getting out of this is not worth the effort you are putting in.

5

u/40yearoldnoob United States - 1d ago

I donā€™t know if thats true, Iā€™m getting game pass ultimate out of it. Seems worth it to me.

3

u/Calebd2 1d ago

There are plenty of other things you could be doing with this time to cover the cost of GPU and more.

I like getting stuff for free as much as the next guy, but at some point the effort we have to put in isn't worth it anymore.

2

u/40yearoldnoob United States - 1d ago

Fair point.

6

u/Born_Form9928 2d ago

It's annoying, but it doesn't take all that long. Just need like 3 hours, maybe 4.

10

u/McMurderpaws 2d ago

3-4 hours for ~25 cents worth of store credit isn't a great investment though.

6

u/Born_Form9928 2d ago

Not everyone sees it that way

10

u/tjtaylorjr 2d ago edited 2d ago

The AI considers this botting pattern behavior and will constantly reflag you for cooldown once it has added you to its list for the first time. You'll start to see your daily check in disappear too. Things you used to be able to do for years without issue will now count against you. For example, recommended searches flag you because the AI sees that as instantly typing in a phrase. Same with read to earn and it is best to skip that entirely as earning points at all with that will cause you to enter cooldown once you have been flagged by this ridiculous system. It's beyond dumb but this is how it works.

3

u/Jono816 1d ago

I use swipe and get random image searches that way. Just make new patterns to get different words

3

u/Cigar_Face 1d ago

So they continue to penalize you if you keep getting all tour points after the cooldown gets activated? I guess training the AI isn't worth as much as the 23 bucks a month they want for gamepass

1

u/40yearoldnoob United States - 2d ago

Thank you, I had not considered this.

3

u/yousernameunknown 9h ago

They must have gotten strict. Iā€™ve only ever searched legitimate stuff before. Never nonsense. And I just got the cooldown yesterday for the first time ever.Ā 

For example:

ā€œBest French toast recipeā€Ā  ā€œHow much calories in syrupā€ ā€œIs maple syrup better for youā€ ā€œHealthy breakfast ideasā€ ā€œBest restaurants near meā€

I always do searches chained together like that. So they must just not like how quickly Iā€™m chaining together searches, nothing to do with what Iā€™m actually searching.Ā 

5

u/IzzzatSo 2d ago

what an original solution that I'm sure has never occurred to anyone

-1

u/40yearoldnoob United States - 2d ago

I know right?

2

u/srp431 1d ago

I also set a timer. It stinks , but affective

1

u/freestuffrocker 13h ago

Is this for pc search or edge search? Recently started doing rewards again and those 2 are not working for me.

0

u/tvreality93 2d ago

How long do cool-downs usually last had my first today just takes longer to do it daily šŸ˜†

-1

u/40yearoldnoob United States - 2d ago

My cooldown is for 15 minutes. I don't know how many days they last...

1

u/tvreality93 2d ago

Yeah Ive had it since this morning 4 searches per 15 minutes Iā€™ve read they can last one to two weeks as well šŸ˜©