The bots break sometimes. Only thing you can do is wait. Perhaps wait a day and then first check if you're still registered by registering again in the register channel. And if not bots confirm that you are... try upvoting a post that is older than 20 minutes in the upvote channel. Make sure you don't try upvoting again within 12 hours, otherwise you'll just extend your cooldown period.
I cannot use it consistently either. Today It worked again for me after two or three days of not working. Hopefully I can have a new post upvoted tomorrow again.
You can try to contact one of the mods as well and explain your issue with them.
Appreciate the feedback, thanks, will try that! Sounds a bit janky, not the most user friendly experience. Plus the whole process of signing up for it, sending the .001 steem or sbd, then going back and confirming... was super time consuming and seemed very "old school" 90's internet, surprising in the days of smooth UI / customer experience a la Facebook, Twitter, etc. Oh well, guess it still is in Beta after all!
Discord and all these channels and tools being build are not Steemit. They are simply extra tools that have been created to leverage the Steemit system into more advantage...
Sure, that makes sense - nevertheless, it's still a cumbersome experience. All good though, I'm open to learning new things and I'm sure it will be all worth it in the end.