Overturned rejections

I have had 2 rejections in my time on Prolific. Both were due to technical issues on the researcher’s end (and the technical issues occurred toward the end of long surveys or games-in one case, the ‘submit’ button didn’t work on a 1.5 hour writing task because the google form was in practice/draft mode as the researcher hadn’t finalized it before releasing the task on Prolific). In both cases, I contacted the researcher to ask if I could return the study instead and received no reply.

I contacted Prolific and both were overturned. I was paid for both. However, in the email from Prolific, I was basically warned that too many rejections can get me banned.

I was under the impression (evidently, incorrectly) that overturned rejections didn’t count against you as they are an acknowledgment that the rejection was not accurate in the first place. Guess I misread the FAQs.

As a policy, this makes very little sense. Either the rejection was correct or it wasn’t based on Prolific’s terms. Punishing users for researcher’s mistakes (especially when they don’t bother to communicate /resolve issues with users themselves) is an odd position to take. I know users have no power or leverage on rhe platform, but this policy needs to be reviewed and changed.