Support
Pink Bird Mahj is a small company, and mail here is read by a person who works on the app. Questions, bug reports and disagreements about rulings are all welcome.
Reporting a problem
If something looks wrong, the most useful things to include are:
- Which screen or drill you were on.
- What you expected to happen, and what happened instead.
- A screenshot, if you can take one.
- Your phone model and OS version.
If you think a hand was judged incorrectly
Please tell us — this is the report we most want to receive. Include the tiles you held and the hand you were going for, and we will check it against the card. Rule correctness is the thing the app has to get right before anything else matters.
Common questions
Do I need a National Mah Jongg League card?
Yes. An official NMJL card is required to play, and must be purchased from the League, an authorized store, or a dealer. The app works alongside your physical card and never displays or replaces it.
What happens when the new card comes out each April?
The app is updated for the new card, and then Same Bones and Color the Hand become your trainer for it. Both are badged New card? Start here for exactly this reason: Same Bones shows you the shapes the new hands are built from, and Color the Hand drills their suit rules. Between them you learn to read this year's card rather than memorise it.
That is also why the work you put in last year is not wasted. The drills train patterns rather than specific hands, so the reading skill carries straight over — it is the shapes that change, not the ability to see them.
Is the app affiliated with the National Mah Jongg League?
No. Pink Bird Mahj: Card Coach is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the NMJL.
Does the tile scanner keep my photos?
No. A photo is sent for tile recognition and then discarded. See the privacy policy for the detail.
When is it available?
Card Coach is in beta testing on iPhone now, ahead of release. Android testing opens right after this round. Join the beta, or email us and we will let you know when it is ready to try.
Deleting your data
There is very little of it, and most of it we never had. Here is exactly where everything lives and how to be rid of it.
- Your practice history, drill progress, statistics, player profile and settings are stored on your phone and never sent to us. Deleting the app deletes all of it. There is no copy anywhere else, because there is no account to attach one to.
- Photos you take with the tile scanner are not kept. A photo is sent for tile recognition and discarded. We do not store them and we do not build a library of them, so there is nothing of yours to delete.
- The IP address your scan arrives with is held for about seventy seconds so the scanner can count how many scans have come from one address and refuse a flood. The record deletes itself. It is never linked to a name or to anything else, because we hold nothing else.
The app has no accounts, no login and no email address on file, so there is no account to close and no profile for us to erase. If you would like any of this confirmed, or you think we are holding something we have not described, write to info@pinkbirdmahj.com and a person will answer you. We aim to reply within two business days.