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Cooldown period, how is it even helpful?

January 15, 2026 06:20PM
Anyone else frustrated with this cooldown period that schedulers can’t seem to manually override? I have a good rate of completion, I had some health issues the day I had some shops scheduled out of town and promptly contacted all companies requesting a reschedule in 2 days, hoping and expecting that my condition would improve. I am able to do it now today but the best paying one that prompted me to schedule that area won’t manually assign because of the punitive cool down period. I don’t know how this helps them get the shop done since I won’t be back in that area for probably another month, and it certainly doesn’t teach me any lesson because I can’t anticipate when my health problems flare, nor can I really be in public when I can’t breathe and coughing and hacking incessantly.
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January 15, 2026 07:19PM
WIthout the cooldown period, I could schedule shops I know I can't complete in time, and then grab them again the minute they expire, and then repeat the process indefinitely until I have time to get around to them. And then maybe toward the end of the period something comes up and I end up not even doing them. Not necessarily a bad system. But then everyone will start doing it, and eventually the MSC will get fed up with having to pay high fees to get dropped jobs done at the last minute. And it will favor shoppers who are good at gaming the system, and discourage newcomers. Good for me, but not necessarily good for the MSC, who want a larger shopper pool to help drive down fees. And I'm sure the Presto sysem, which requires upfront payment to even list the jobs, make things more complicated.
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January 15, 2026 09:17PM
I completely understand the need for it.

Shopping Arkansas, Louisiana, & Mississippi.
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January 15, 2026 09:44PM
That "cool down" period was necessary because of their "Ishopfirst" program. Folks go in at the beginning of the round and grab all of the shops, and just keep grabbing them until they are bonused and keeping all of the other shoppers from earning money.
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January 16, 2026 07:13PM
Thanks for the insights, moreledzep (oh yes please more zepp!), and mystery2me. I had an inkling it had to do with greedy shoppers but wasn’t sure how that scheme worked. I’m just getting back on the MS horse since everything went online. So far so good since coming back to it in October and jumping in with both feet but there will be things I will have to figure out. Too bad the cooldown penalty punishes even the legit shoppers who aren’t trying to game the system.
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January 16, 2026 10:02PM
This is the first I have heard of cooldown. Please define.
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January 17, 2026 02:41AM
You claim a job but don't submit it on time, you have a 24-hour "cool down" time before you can claim the job again.
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January 17, 2026 01:59PM
I think a smarter system would look at the individual's history and give more flexibility to the shoppers with a low incidence of drops. That protects against predatory blocking while enabling the rare issue.

But I don't think they have enough incentive to be smart.
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January 17, 2026 02:14PM
@Morledzep wrote:

That "cool down" period was necessary because of their "Ishopfirst" program. Folks go in at the beginning of the round and grab all of the shops, and just keep grabbing them until they are bonused and keeping all of the other shoppers from earning money.

If I remember correctly, the "Cool Down Period" is and has been a condition of the "Magic" platform. I can remember when the shops with the letter after "J" in a round figure had this while all of those shops in the big MSC company were absent.
As the big MSC company transitioned to the "Magic" platform, each one of its shops became bound to its "Cool Down" rule.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2026 02:15PM by French Farmer.
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