SocialSpark Post Payout Snafu

If you’re active in our GetSatisfaction community you may have noticed a bulletin we put out earlier today notifying users that the cashout functionality in SocialSpark has been disabled temporarily. This is to prevent an issue we recently discovered from becoming exacerbated, and we hope to restore that functionality before close of business today.

Without getting into too much of the nitty-gritty, there was a bug in our automatic payout system that allowed some posts to get paid multiple times. If you’re a blogger and you see multiple payouts for a single post in your Transaction History, you’re one of those affected. It’s important to note that no blogger was paid more money than he or she was already owed for posts made (after the 30 day waiting period between post submission and payout). Most of the overpayment transactions have been reversed already. For those bloggers who cashed out the extra money, our finance/dev guru is manually adjusting your accounts as I write this.

If you have any questions about your specific account after the adjustments are finalized and cashout is turned back on, please submit a ticket to our Customer Love team. They are happy to assist you.

UPDATE (07/07/09 4:36PM EST): The SocialSpark team worked through the night last night to get the overpayments resolved so that cashout could be turned back on. However, we discovered some additional overpayments this morning that need to be carefully reversed before you will be able to cash out money from your account. Once again I sincerely apologize for the delay. Our priority has to be protecting the interests of both bloggers and advertisers in the system, and we are nearly 100% back to normal and ready to re-enable cashout. Thank you for your patience.

UPDATE (07/08/09 1:14PM EST): I am SO excited to announce that cashout has been turned back on! Any overpayments that were cashed out were applied toward unpaid posts. If you were one of the bloggers who cashed out the overpaid funds, you will see some posts get paid early to cover those extra funds. You will not be paid twice (sorry!) Thanks to all of our valued bloggers who were so patient over the last few days!