Why did I get fewer than 200 welcome credits?

Every new Valid Email Checker account is supposed to receive 200 free credits the moment you confirm your email. If your account shows a different number — usually zero, sometimes a different positive value — there are a small set of explanations and an easy way to tell them apart.

Cause 1: your account is on abuse hold

When signup runs, we score it against an abuse model (see why did my signup fail eligibility checks). Scores in the borderline range create the account but flag it for manual review and withhold the welcome credits. The dashboard loads normally, but the credit balance reads zero and there is no welcome_bonus entry in your Credits History. The fix is to contact support — most holds are released within a business day after a quick check.

Cause 2: you already redeemed welcome credits on a prior account

The welcome bonus is one-time per real user. If you signed up previously, used the 200 credits, and then made a new account with a different email, our abuse system will usually flag the new account and withhold the bonus. We are looking at device fingerprints, IP history, and Gmail-alias patterns rather than just the email address, so creating a fresh account does not reset the bonus.

Cause 3: you are looking at a stale dashboard

The credit-balance widget loads its value at the moment the dashboard mounts. If you signed up, clicked the confirmation link, and immediately had the dashboard already open in another tab, the old tab still shows zero. Refresh the dashboard once and the 200 credits appear. The Credits History page will also show the welcome_bonus row at that point.

Cause 4: rare — the grant call failed server-side

Our welcome-credit grant is a single edge-function call. In the rare case it fails (database hiccup, transient error), the email is still confirmed but the credits never land. There is no automatic retry. If you confirmed your email, your account works, but you have zero credits and no welcome_bonus entry in history, contact support and we will run the grant manually.