Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Ganz gate V: More connection problems, and the buck stops somewhere else

After yesterday's attempt by Ganz to reassure its Webkinz customers that things are on the mend, it's pretty clear that normal day-to-day use of Webkinz World is still extremely limited for many people. My daughter's virtual room is still inaccessible, and her attempt to log on at about 7:15 pm EST was greeted with a "Sorry -- cannot connect" message. She tried again about 15 minutes later and was able to log on, but is currently limited to playing Webkinz Flash games.

However, a handful of commenters to my blog have reported a strange new problem: Webkinz.com doesn't display the normal logon screen and other links. This is what they see instead:
We can't even access the Webkinz site! If you type in www.webkinz.com, you get some generic page, just like the webkinz domain name has never even existed. I've even tried accessing the site through search engines, and several other methods but they all send me to this generic site with a picture of a girl in a backpack. Is anyone out there having a similar problem, or can you shed light on this? It's very bizarre!
One other person has confirmed this behavior. It seems to be a symptom of chronic server overload -- attempting to initiate too many connections to a Web server at once tends to result in error messages and other wacky behavior.

At least on the customer service front, Ganz is finally sending personal responses to customers. Unfortunately, the one report we have of a real response from Ganz was not only way overdue, but was completely bogus:
My daughters new webkinz (which is the pet of the month) cannot register. it says the "code has already been used" and they have yet to respond to my email. So my poor daughter is devistated that she is missing the daily prizes that the pet of the month gets. My son cannot get in his room. All the kinzcash and nothing to do with it. Again, webkinz doesn't repond. My daughters other webkinz had everything disappear from her room. All her hard work down the drain. Webkinz did respond 8 days later by saying some very wise words "someone has gotten your password and stolen your stuff". UM NO, no one had, as she still had her money and her clothes. Bizarre and beyond unprofessional. It took 5 days of me constantly trying to get my sons wekinz to register. As much as they charge for a stuffed animal I would think they would be more professional. It is totally frustrating and I am glad to see that we are not the only ones.
That's an interesting way to get angry customers off your back -- rather than seeing reported problem as a symptom of the larger technical issues engulfing the site, blame some unknown, mysterious baddie, give a virtual shrug, and hope that the customer will somehow accept this excuse and leave Ganz alone.

Another commenter, CraigU, brings up an interesting support-related question:
How does a company get away with not having a customer service phone number????
Well, Craig, My guess is that there's no way they'd be able to handle the flood of calls. Remember, there are millions of Webkinz customers and Ganz would be overwhelmed if just a few thousand of them called every day. According to this source, there are just 600 employees, many of them tied up in Ganz's other lines of business -- clothing, holiday and garden items, candles, and picture frames.

But I do know that at least one Ganz employee is aware of what's being said on this blog. This afternoon, my Web traffic logs showed a visitor from Ganz's mail server in Canada. He or she looked at some of the posts for less than three minutes, and then quickly left. There's not much of a reason for Ganz's corporate employees to linger here -- it should already be abundantly clear to them that Ganz has a public relations disaster on its hands.




11 comments:

  1. I have 2 children with webkinz. Both were registered and working fine for weeks. Then, on Dec. 21st one child's room stopped loading. The other one still loads. So - I know it's not a flash plug-in or anything else that needs to be updated. We've tried them both on several computers and the same thing happens on all computers. I sent an email with no response. My child whose room doesn't load is very upset because the other child's works fine. Very frustrating!! But I'm glad to know others are having the same problem. I hope it really is fixed soon.

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  2. Here is something new to add to the list. We were having a number of problems and we went to the form you can submit to customer service for 'Other error messages'. We filled out the form documenting one of our problems and submitted it. After the submission, the form did not reset. We refreshed the page and entered our next problem and submitted it. We repeated this a total of five times, for five different issues. When we checked email shortly thereafter, interestingly only the first form we submitted ever went through. One wonders if there server checks IP addresses and only allows one support submission using that form in a given time period.

    We agree the compensation of 500 KinzCash and a month extension is essentially nothing. KinzCash is virtual. Why not give everyone 10,000? A month extension? Give me a break. That one is more useless than the KinzCash. The free month is useless if you ever buy another Webkinz (which Ganz has done their best to ensure never happens) or if you continue to use the site and never buy another animal. Anyone who will never buy another one will likely quit using the site anyway. In the end what did they give for compensation? Nothing. Zip. Nada.

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  3. Perhaps we should contact the person at the bottom of this Ganz corporate webpage.

    She is asking us too. :D

    http://www.ganz.com/corporate/media/webkinz_about.html

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  4. as for the link (thanks though)...this is the message after leaving my 'comment'

    "Thank you for your interest - your request has been successfully submitted.

    Please note that there will be no responses to submissions using this form until July 9th. We apologize for the inconvenience. "

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  5. My daughter got a Pink Pony Webkinz (that I purchased on Ebay) for Christmas...since Christmas Day we have tried to register this thing...Our first attempt just got us error messages...then when we got through the adoption process it tells us our code has been used! I was ready to go back to the person I bought this from on Ebay, but now that I have read your webpage, I feel much better that it was not my stupidity, but Ganz's...I will continue to check out this site for more up to date info, since I have gotten no such response from the webkinz site...thank you!!

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  6. Im going to try writing...




    Ganz
    #043
    60 Industrial Parkway
    Cheektowaga NY 14227-9903

    1-800-724-5902

    CANADA
    One Pearce Rd.
    Woodbridge, Ont.
    L4L 3T2

    1-800-263-2311

    headoffice@ganz.com

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  7. GANZ should be ashamed and face a class action suit - they took my son's allowance that he saved and now my 8YO can't even log on to adopt his frog - it is disgusting!!!

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  8. We have been doing Webkinz for a year now. My two daughters love them. However, starting in December when all the problems got worse, my 8YO's items in her rooms started disappearing. Over past year she has accumulated over 20 rooms. 90% of them have nothing in them now. Some rooms have all furniture gone. Have tried to email Ganz and have gotten no response. My daughter is so upset. Two days ago she logged in her 11th pet and got a special bed of her choice. Now the bed has disappeared. Anyone else have this problem??? Ganz is so frustrating and does not support their product.

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  9. How do we get into a class action suit for dropping VMK? I had a ton of money tied up in cards for my kids!

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  10. I am the lady who has been posting complaints pn every site I can think of that will get me results.If you care to ,you can find them but my latest outrade is the Christmas tree ornament rip-off,which cost about$220.00 with tax. It was touted as if you purchase all of these ornaments and put them on your tree your child would wake up to the most unimaginable Christmas site they have ever seen.My niece who is my child now was more excited about Webkinz morning than practically Santa Claus!!!! If that isn't outright FRAUD it is one of the most cold hearted ruses(can't find punctuation for French) I have ever seen perpetrated on children. A Arte bomber,an ice cream cone,an arte doll and maybe some other little insignificant trifle. I'm the person who sited unfair practicesd which they put in with their laundry and various other ventures.I did speak with one person who was as wonderful as they could be in their capacity and completely empathetic and helped me out. I will not reveal my source.Here are the numbers for HOWARD GANZ 905-851-6661 andWebkinz Tech. Help(and as the kids say LOL) 866-932-5469. Good luck, they probably disconnected them. If there is to be any class action suit,count me in.Oh,by the way,I'm Grace Jane Dostou. P.S. Pardon the typing.

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  11. MORE COMMENTS? HAVE i GOT THEM FOR YOU! CHECK I.LAMONT 1V AS I MISTAKENLY ADDED MY MOST RECENT RANT TO THAT SECTION. THERE ARE NUMBERS THERE THAT YOU CAN CALL AND LEAVE A MESSAGE. OH AND BY THE WAY,DON'T BE NICE! THEY DON'T RESPOND TO NICE. GIVE THEM YOUR WHOLE NAME,TELEPHONE NUMBER AND LET THEM HAVE IRT WITH YOUR COMPLAINT.uSUALLY THEY GET THE MESSAGE THAT YOU'RE UPSET. GOOD LUCK. G.J.D.WEBKINZ IS CRUELTY TO ADULTS AS WELL AS CHILDREN.

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