Not receiving lives

What is going on? I have heaps of friends, when I run out of lives I request lives I get only a few sent to me! Then every once in a while boom! I'll get like 200! I suspect king are controlling behind the scenes how many requests are actually being received... I won't pay for lives, but am regularly paying for bars for extra moves and boosters etc. So I guess at the end of the day if I can't access lives I can't spend my money buying the extras!!! Annoyed