Jan 13 2008
Webkinz World - To Enter or Not to Enter?
The blog has been resurrected. And it is much prettier and easier to use. So I no longer have an excuse for not blogging. therefore I am sitting in bed writing this entry and trying to decide what it should be about…
• The demise of customer service in Corporate America?
• The wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) world of Webkinz?
• How you really shouldn’t rent Death Sentence?
Ahh, the possibilities. But ok, since technically I started to write this an hour ago and got distracted with Webkinz I think that Webkinz is a good place to start.
Webkinz are stuffed animals that come with a “secret code” attached. Once you have a Webkinz you take the secret code and adopt your pet on Webkinz.com. When that is finished, you now have a cyber pet version of the plush animal you just purchased and that cyber pet has a whole little virtual world available to play in. Santa brought two Webkinz for Christmas (a duck, “Rosy” and beagle, “Eliza”) and she has been addicted to the toy ever since. Of course, seeing how excited was and for technical and mental health purposes (you’ll see the explanation below), mom ran out to get herself a Webkinz so we now also have a Dalmation, “Spotsford”.
The Webkinz website is quite the virtual world with a significant retail tie in. After a Webkinz is adopted the account pops up with a room that contains only the pet and $1,000 in KinzCash. It is at this point that the Webkinz mommy (or daddy) must spend KinzCash to furnish the room, or take care of the pet which requires food and clothes and an occasional visit to the doctor’s office. As you might expect there is an awful lot more cyber stuff to buy than the amount of cash that is initially available. Thus the Webkinz site offers a variety of Arcade style games and Daily activities to earn KinzCash to buy more stuff. Unfortunately, it does seem like it takes an awful lot of time to play these games when there is typically very little KinzCash that gets awarded.
Now on to the “Significant retail tie in…” KinzCash is not the only way that a Webkinz can acquire stuff such as clothes or accessories. The same shops that sell Webkinz dolls tend to sell Webkinz accessories and when one purchases an accessory such as clothes, they get yet another secret code. This code allows the Webkinz owner to essentially download the same outfit or accessory into their Webkinz account for the virtual pet to wear as well. Additionally, I have just discovered from trying to play some of the games today and having yell “You can’t go there because you don’t have X” that there are games that require you purchase some accessory in the real world before you can use them. Ugh. OH well. At least I know what to get for her birthdays and special occasions for the next several years.
The only complaint that I have regarding the Webkinz product is that their customer support/speed of their technical fix it ability is kind of atrocious. After got her accounts set up and had been playing for a few days, her pets rooms would no longer load. The system kept getting stuck and said the account was missing a component. Being a helpful parent who knows when she can fix something and when she needs to contact someone at a company to fix it for her, I searched the website for a help desk phone number. I wasn’t able to find it. So I searched for the second most helpful thing – an email. Still couldn’t find it exactly. They only appear to have a sort of pre-written question form that you can submit. Then I fiddled around and finally got to a form that had something to do with rooms getting stuck, filled it out and sent in. I received an automated response in my inbox that someone should contact me within about 48 hours - this was Dec. 28. Yup, that contact sure didn’t happen.
1 week passed and facing a daughter that was becoming increasingly distraught that she couldn’t actually get to her little new pets, I searched on the internet to discover that a whole ton of other people were experiencing the same problem. One of these others had posted the Gantz/webkinz customer support email that I had not been able to find so I emailed directly this time. I also went to Target and got the Dalmation, and set up a new account in my name so that could at least get to the room for one pet while she waited for hers to get unlocked. Neither email resulted in direct contact from a customer service rep or any technical support whatsoever that involved someone actually acknowledging we had experienced this problem or they’d received my emails. However, miraculously Ekrina’s account appeared to have recovered this past week – FINALLY so she is happily able to play in her little Webkinz world again.
I have to admit that playing with the Webkinz is really fun. If you can deal with the technical problems and the possibility that those problems can (probably will) arise and that when they do your child will drive you nuts until they are fixed – then I highly recommend you check them out.
Rating: 
