Pirate seas hard levels gem quest

EA/PopCap on a (gems) cut back.  This happened in a one of recent data push 2 days ago.

I think players are no longer welcome to do the extra hard levels.  New players might have also noticed the 100 free gems for registering your email has also been reduced to 20, so players have not done this before will now at a disadvantage. 

1. I don't know where else to find out the answer to my problem. I've been playing Plants vs Zombies 2 on my Android smart phone. Now I am trying to do the extra hard Pirate Seas levels gem quest to earn 25 gems. It's been tough to pass some of the levels and I used my coins to purchase some boosts during the games. I passed most of the levels. I think I passed 6 levels, but whenever I look at the game log, it shows I am at level 1. In other words, it had not tracked or recorded the levels I completed and I'm back to square 1. This is the first time I've noticed such a glitch or bug. There is only about one day remaining to play this gem quest. I'm really angry because I spent thousands of coins without making any progress, yet I completed most of the levels.

I guess many players can understand and share your frustration.  

This bug has been reported before (when the reward was still at 80 gems) from players running an out-of-date PVZ2 version (me included) for whatever reasons.  

May i ask what version of PVZ2 you are running? if you are on 11.0.1, I suggest  keep it for now as it does not have a bug where the locked and loaded plants are set to level 1.  If you are on earlier version, than I suggest update to the latest level 11.1.1.

Alternatively, if you do not wish to update but want to get the rewards, the workaround is to play all 8 levels in one session.