Help with SimplyPerms

Hey guys. I'm having some problems with SimplyPerms after changing from PermissionsBukkit due to all the times it would clear the nodes I would recently add.

Here are the problems I'm having with SimplyPerms:
The 1st problem is the spawns. I have two spawns, one for default (which is for a quiz they need to complete in order to get the group - user) and one for user. When they complete the quiz, they use /rank <username> user. It works, I've even tested it. And so with my two spawns that I set with essentials (/setspawn default, /setspawn user), whenever someone in the group 'user' says /spawn it takes them to the default spawn and not the user spawn.
The second problem is changing peoples groups. I have different groups - donors, admins, moderators, architects etc. And so when I change someone to donor (and I have different donor ranks - Chicken, Pig, Ghast), it says it changed their group, and it even says in the config.yml that they are in that group, but they don't have access to the permissions I gave that group. It's almost as if the permissions plugin doesn't detect the groups or doesn't successfully add them to the groups.
Could you please help me? It's really frustrating!
Thanks.