I've gotten a spike in traffic over the last week or so to this blog, caused by hundreds of people searching for help for their Webkinz accounts. They enter phrases like "webkinz problems," "webkinz still not loading," etc. into Google and Yahoo, and my blog shows up on the first page of results. Why? About 10-11 months ago -- right around Christmas 2007 -- I documented a huge failure in the kids-oriented virtual world that prevented many Webkinz owners from logging on and accessing their rooms. Scores of other readers also had the same problem. My blog became a makeshift community for the people who had been locked out. We commiserated and shared tips, and railed at the Ganz Corporation, which obviously didn't design a system that could scale to handle the Christmas rush. It was like the early days of Second Life or Twitter, except the people most impacted by the outage were small children. Ganz' terrible customer service compounded the problem. Eventually the problem went away -- or frustrated customers (including my daughthter) just drifted away.
But something is once again driving readers to my blog. It could be that Google's algorithm has been tweaked and more people searching for those terms are being sent my way. Or, it could be another scaling issue, which is once again locking thousands of kids out of their rooms. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you. Other readers offered Webkinz tips earlier this year that seemed to help, but I don't know if they'll work now. Post here if you have found any solution to the current (October 2008) outage.
I'm definitely experiencing problems. It started about 2 weeks ago, I'll be playing games and get disconnected in the middle. Several times I've been up in the $300 KC playing Zingoz Pop or Word Challenge and then it just totally kicks me out. So frustrating!!
ReplyDeleteSame here! EXACT same problems, and now just since this past weekend I'm seeing all of the daily activities still showing like we visited them already and the Gem Hunt & Wheel of WOW are coming back as though someone had already done them. SO glad to see I'm not alone (or simply losing my mind!) :)
ReplyDeleteThe same is going on here. One good thing is we had one charm and one figure that would not let us enter them in however yesterday we logged both of them in after weeks of not being able to. Ganz is adding again to their site. I also have a problem with items that are stuck in the room. It is a good site for any child young or old don't let the problems chase you away. They are always updating.
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