So, from what I’m seeing, it looks like a whole load of people are having this issue right now and not just me - clearly their automated system or something caused a problem because I also have not been able to do my daily checkins for 2 days (today 3) and I also can’t redeem any points because my account is listed as “restricted”
Because Rewards Support never replies to me, I contacted Microsoft Support proper, and had a very interesting conversation with them that everyone else having this same problem may also find interesting.
She told me she would forward what I said to the Rewards Support and that they’d get in contact with me directly — but in the meantime, she asked me if I had Two-Factor Authentication turned on. She pushed pretty hard on it, I DID NOT have it turned on - I find it a touch irritating, but she insisted, so I simply told her I’d turn it on for now and if it bothered me I’d turn it off — so I DID turn it on. I figured I could turn it off in a couple weeks if it DOES turn out that it bothers me.

After I confirmed I turned on 2-factor, she messaged me something EXTREMELY interesting. She wrote, “Great. Please know this is done so we may remove restrictions that are seen on your account while trying to access Microsoft Rewards.”
So. She’s telling me that the restriction MAY BE because I didn’t have 2-factor on?? Which is EXTREMELY interesting to me!

My suggestion: If your account is restricted, if you’re throttled to only earning a handful of points every 15 minutes… Maybe turn 2-factor on if you don’t have it on? I doubt the result will be immediate, it may take a day or two to settle - or maybe this is just some kind of malfunction on Microsoft’s end because some update they rolled out broke a bunch of people’s accounts.
But maybe THIS is the problem? Maybe a bunch of us could solve our “restrictions” by turning on 2-factor???

The image I’m posting is a cropped screenshot of the end of my conversation with the support person — in the incredibly off chance the Support person might get in trouble for telling me this, I blocked out their name.

Maybe this means nothing and this was just an excuse to force me to turn on 2-factor, but if this actually solves problems for people I think this might be extremely important information to circulate.

So I had an Interesting Conversation with Microsoft Support about my account being “restricted”…