Dolls' Houses Past & Present

Can anyone see any of the photos in the photo albums? 

I haven't been able to access them for more than two days now. I lost them mid-album on Friday evening. Several people have commented in other threads that they can't open them. No-one has so far said that they can. This looks as if it could be the loss of the archive, Zoe...

I really hope not. That would be too painful at this stage in proceedings.

Do we need to take action with Webs and if so, how? We need to demand that they do something about this crucial archive and major element of our site, to tide us over until we get the new site.

Does anyone have any ideas how we can get any leverage against them if they continue to be uncooperative? Given the money our members and supporters have raised, could we try to raise a stink in the media in any way? Any ideas welcome!

Do we know where they advertise? Or where their head office is? Or who their parent company is? Or if they have a presence on social media? I have discovered the quickest way to get anything done these days is to go to a company's facebook page and kick up a fuss. We need to know more about them and where they are vulnerable to get leverage on them. I would also suggest a consumers' rights publication or site and prominent IT sites are good places to complain about them.

Okay, Webs is now owned by Vistaprint. https://www.webs.com/about-webs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistaprint ; "Vistaprint is a Dutch global, e-commerce brand that produces physical and digital marketing products for small and micro businesses. It was one of the first businesses to offer its customers the capabilities of desktop publishing through the internet when it first launched in 1999. Vistaprint is wholly owned by Cimpress N.V., a publicly traded company based in the Netherlands." I suggest we first get Rebecca to approach the parent company and then, if no satisfaction, we start blitzing them on social media to get attention.

Vistaprint has an fb page for the US. We can make our complaints to them pretty loudly and continuously if we choose. They also have a website, www.vistaprint.com, which also has to take complaints. And we can make use of Twitter.

Did we know this about Webs? A class legal action is being pursued against them: "After failing to provide its customers with a fix to the multitude of technical faults, Webs closed their Twitter and Facebook support centres. Customers being charged for a service no longer available have had no route of redress, and have had to pursue Webs with a legal class action." Wikipedia

Thanks, Jane! I have just emailed Webs Support, as a first step.

I am very concerned that not only can we not see the photo gallery through the front end of the website, but the administrators and I can't see it through the back end either.

We may need to contact Cimpress and Vistaprint (their facebook pages do allow comments, so that is an excellent way to start complaining - the Webs facebook page disabled comments and messages some time ago).

It is not at all encouraging that the Webs blog and facebook page have not been updated at all for over a year. That really suggests that they are not investing any time into Webs at all. If that's the case, I cannot see how they can justify refusing access to the back back end of our website, so that we can copy all our files! And yes, I think we will have to make a noise publicly. I had no response at all to my email to Cimpress earlier this year, so I could try again, but I think they don't really care anymore.

If nothing else, we can make a loud and continuous nuisance of ourselves and also let others know through social media of the appalling service they can expect through the Cimpress/Vistaprint company Webs, they know it takes a lot of effort to combat bad social media reviews. I am appalled they may have lost us our precious photo archives.

Photos have just reappeared for me. I was experimenting by going into Zoe's profile and clicking on her photo page to see if I could get into her pictures that way (I could) when suddenly the whole lot appeared. 

Hooray! for now ....

Photos are back for me today too - yay!

And me!! Hooray!

Phew! Now to keep everything crossed.Thanks for all that info, Jane. I didn’t know that about the legal action. 

Jane at September 17, 2018 at 7:31 AM

Did we know this about Webs? A class legal action is being pursued against them: "After failing to provide its customers with a fix to the multitude of technical faults, Webs closed their Twitter and Facebook support centres. Customers being charged for a service no longer available have had no route of redress, and have had to pursue Webs with a legal class action." Wikipedia

Wow! No, I did not know that - and that has been added to the Wikipedia entry this month! Someone is very angry

Did you see this bit too, at the beginning of the History section:

"Still using the now defunct captcha test version one, and therefore unable to process new members"

That may explain why new members can't get through the registration process! Actually, reading a Webs Community forum about being unable to process new members, some website owners have found work-arounds. I don't think it's really worth trying, when so much of the website doesn't work ......

I haven't yet found anything more about the possible class action, except a mention in passing in that Webs community forum.