Pink Poogle Toy Forum

That's true, and the longer this thread gets, the more people seem to forget that. But in all fairness, shroomy was "clearing up misconceptions" that did not deal with her department in the first place. If she wants to start a rant on the freeze-bot issue, then she's going to get replies about the freeze-bot issue.

This paragraph caught my attention mainly because I run the computer lab for our local elementary school, as well as an after-school computer club/hangout. About a year and a half ago, I was frozen due to some flash game glitch I wasn't even aware of. I never did receive any type of personal response to my inquiries, so I'm not even sure to this day what exactly happened.

To make a long story short, after much assessment and discussion with teachers and parents, I decided to block Neopets from our school's computers. Up until that time, I loved using Neopets as a way to introduce kids to the Internet in a supervised capacity. It also sharpened some of their skills. But I just couldn't take the chance that some poor little kid would get frozen for absolutely no reason. I hated making this choice because many of our children don't have computers in their homes. (I live in a very tiny rural area, where the per capita income is very low.) But I just couldn't stand the thought of seeing some poor kid in tears....

I can understand how frustrating all the negativity can be, Shroomy. Seriously, I worked in customer service for three years at a company that provided a free service to millions. At least you can take comfort in knowing that as an artist who has produced work of excellent quality, I hardly think anyone here is upset at you.

People do need to vent and gripe, though. And how can a company know there's a problem that needs to be fixed if the customers don't complain? The alternative is having your customers fall away without saying a word. And the people who pointed out that there isn't an unlimited supply of customers are correct. Most companies do eventually hit a roof. Then customer retention becomes important, and I don't know how Neopets is going to handle that.

I won't be boycotting, but that's because I hardly play anymore anyhow. Too many issues already mentioned, additional items I would add to my galleries are all r99 or r100 and people are asking millions, and I spent a good part of the last months I played attempting to get a r101 stamp as a gift for a friend. Seriously, does TNT think it's fun to deal with people who are asking 10mil for a stamp? The game stopped being fun, so I stopped playing. I also am having serious doubts about a site that provides a venue for children so young to learn how to steal and scam and cheat.

Yes, i remember Adam, we discussed going drinking together sometime. Im also well-aware of his involvement in creating the site. My point is, given that everyone in the office knows about the DoA, even if they arent at all worried about it, if adam had come here he could have mediated the situation, and tried to ease some of the unrest that exists at the moment.

Ouch, that must have been hard, but you probably made the right decision. I did something like that on a lower level. MY aunt wanted me to show my cousin around on the computer and I thought Neopets would be a great place to start. Theday before I went to his house to show him, my sisters account was frozen for "scaming". How she did that I don't know because I'm always with her on Neopets and she doesn't even have access to the neoboards. So I decided to save my cousin the possible pain but in doing so I also had to take away the fun.

Yo guys amaze me. Your talking like being frozen is going to affect you for the rest of your lives. Who are you to prevent people from doing something just because they 'might' get hurt? It's only a game, and besides, that doesn't seem like a very good philosophy for life.

But if a little kid is never introduced to neopets, it won't hurt him. But if a little kid is introduced to neopets, there's a chance he'll get hurt, so why take the risk? I know I wish I had never known about neopets... the day that I was frozen like 2 minutes after I had earned my first million np at one time, I was puking for a half an hour... And ahead of time, before I get the "It's just a game" responce, it's not that I lost over a million NP, it's that a year of my life had been used on this game and then TNT are too careless to make better freezing decisions.

its not like were going to commit suicide over getting frozen(hopefully)... But people DO get upset when they lose their account and neopet. In my case i lost three expensive painted pets, a (fourth pet)very good battler, and 22million NP networth on top of that(that i got with my own bare hands!!). im upset and ill complain but im not going to go on about this forever. Me and lots of other customers will just leave neopets, never buy another plushie, because they know anything they get on the site just gets them froze.

Wow, have I missed a lot in the two weeks I was off.

Shroomy, I do hope that after posting what you did, you then came back to read what we have written. And even though this is lengthy, that you will read my comments as well.

Let me preface by saying that I love Neopets. We all do--or we wouldn't be wasting our time writing about it. And we wouldn't be wasting our time playing it. When I first joined a year and a half ago, I thought it was the best thing since "sliced bread."

For me, it's like taking a trip to Disneyworld. The artwork is fantastic and the number of different games to play is astounding. For the most part, it is a safe site that you can feel comfortable letting your kids play. And, after getting a nasty virus on my computer from a pop-up ad that I got while surfing the web, I can really appreciate the fact that it is pop-up and virus free.

The game is extremely well thought out so that it appeals to people from all walks of life and all ages--and so that anyone can be successful at it. My 11 year-old daughter plays the game just as well as my husband, who is the COO of a company. And because of the variety of things that you can do on the site, you can easily find your own little niche--whether it be chatting, battling, collecting, restocking, art contests, games, HTML on your pet's pages--the list of things to do goes on and on.

But I also have complaints about Neopets. It's not the advertising. That doesn't bother me in the least. It's a necessary evil--just like TV and radio, the sponsor ads pay the bills. And, it isn't the staff. You guys work your butts off and deserve a round of applause.

But shapu hit it right on the head:



It's not the artists, mods, support staff, receptionists or even the programmers that i am upset with. It's the "suits"--i.e., the head honchos of Neopets. They are the ones who make all of the decisions about how Neopets is run and they are the ones who are making all of the money. And, they really give the appearance that they care more about their sponsors and the money they are getting from them than they do about their players.

First off, the suits decide what kind of computer hardware and software to install. And, it seems with all of the glitches that have arisen in the past year, that they are skimping on both software/hardware and programmers. There should be enough servers to handle all of the players and anytime you anticipate getting new players, like from the McDonald's promotion, you should have enough servers installed in place before the promotion begins.

And, there should be a fail safe program on the system to catch the errors that occur when an item doesn't make it to its destination. The technology is there to be able to do this--financial institutions have it, human resource and financial management programs have it, on-line merchants like ebay have it, on-line stock trading programs have it. Neopets should have it too. Don't we deserve this?

There should be technical staff on 24/7--we shouldn't have to wait until 9 am California time for a glitch to be fixed, which often appears to be the case.

And there should be communication between the technical staff and the support staff--so when your system's "scammer" programs are incorrectly set and people are erroneously frozen due to these incorrect settings, your support staff knows to automatically unfreeze these people. And, please don't say there are no "bots." You know darned well that you have programs on your system to catch people who use automated programs to cheat at games and at restocking and to see the number of times an IP address obtains a freebie, such as the Advent Calendar. Maybe the computer doesn't do the actual freezing, but it sends a report to a staff member, who then pushes the freeze button.

Secondly, the suits have decided to keep the site running while installing new hardware/software rather than take the site down completely for that amount of time required to do the installation. Anytime, my company's CIO needs to do anything with respect to our site, he warns us ahead of time, gives us the exact time it will be taking place, and takes the site down. It should be the same for Neopets. Warn us ahead of time (you used to do so in the news when the site was new) and take the site down when you are monkeying with it.

But you don't do that and you have had major glitches in the past few months that have affected a great number of players. I can only wonder if it has something to do with the sponsors. Putting a warning in writing would give the sponsors a whiff of reality, eh? That all is not right in Neopia? And Downtime = no sponsor ads during that downtime = no money from those sponsors during that downtime. And when the glitches occur we don't even get the whole story anywhere in writing, let alone a sincere apology. Why? Is it possible that Neopets doesn't admit to anything because any written admission of a problem with the site could cause the sponsors to get nervous and pull their ads? See, Shroomy, where people might get the idea that the owners of Neopets care more about their sponsors than they do about their players?

Third, the suits decide its customer service policies. They have decided to have poorly written, vague rules about what is allowed on the site--instead of a complete set of clear, concise rules to cover every situation. They have decided to freeze people's accounts for any violation of these vague rules--instead of instituting a warning system for lesser offenses. Yes, I agree that anyone who puts porn on your site should be frozen and IP banned (and I think you should go one step farther and arrest him or her). But, should that same type of punishment also be applied to the 10 year-old who just started to play, who doesn't know all of the rules because most of the rules are unwritten, and who innocently sends a chain letter or posts off-topic on the chat boards. And if one kid in a family scams, should you really institute an IP ban that affects his innocent brothers and sisters?

The suits also have decided to have a policy of not returning any items lost during their computer glitches. This alone makes them look like they care little about their players. And, though I feel for your loss, I can't accept your argument that you are in the same boat as the rest of us about lost items (you aren't--you work for the company so you really have to support the game regardless of the glitches). Nor does it matter that that the items are not real or that the site is free.

The point is that the item or nps lost represents a portion of a user's time. It took the user x hours to make y nps to buy a certain item. If that item is then lost to the glitch, that person has, in essence, lost x hours of time. And that time is valuable. And the suits should respect the user who devotes his valuable time to this game, which in turn puts food on the suit's dinner table. In return for giving your company our valuable time when we could be watching TV or playing a Nintendo game, we should have the assurance that the game is reliable and glitch-free--or if not, glitch-free, the assurance that anything lost during the glitches will be returned to us.

The fact that the suits won't even contemplate returning a user's lost items or nps to that user makes them really look like they don't give a hoot about their players. The roll-back glitch that occurred two weeks ago affected at least 1/6th of the players and if you were unlucky enough to have a user name on that line of the shop wiz you were affected. But, we are just supposed to suck it up, deal with it, get over it, and return to the game. And keep looking at the ads which in turn put food on the suit's dinner table. Shroomy, are you able to see why people might be a little upset? Everyone in this world wants to feel valued and, as players, we don't get that feeling from Neopets' owners.

If Neopets can't or won't install the proper computer programs to automatically catch the lost item glitches, why can't they at least institute a system where a person can report all of the details regarding a lost item and then a staff member goes through the log of error messages to investigate this and, if the log checks out, returns the item to the user. And, if you are afraid of people filing false claims, institute a policy of freezing people for false reporting.

Fourth, the suits decide how many people to hire. And it is pretty obvious that you need more people:

You need someone to write out the rules so that they are clear and concise. You have no idea how helpful that would be the your staff in the long run. If the rules are clear and detailed about what exactly can and cannot be done, there would be less people frozen, less people writing you about being frozen, less letters for your staff to review, etc.

You need more people to review the emails and reports to you about wrongful freezings, missing petpets, lost items, etc. and perhaps, if there were a few more people around, some of the staff members would feel less stressed and be a bit nicer to the users who do write. Not everyone who writes you is a liar and a cheat. Not everyone is a sophisticated English-speaking adult who can write well. And, maybe your staff ought to realize that.

And, I must admit that I have nothing but good service from the staff members that I have dealt with. I have had two family members that have had their accounts wrongfully frozen. And, luckily, both got them back--but only after my husband and I wrote detailed letters to your staff about it and basically argued our cases. And, personally, I think the unfreezings had a lot of do with the fact that we are well-educated middle-aged adults with the ability to write well and with somewhat impressive backgrounds (my husband signed his letter as the COO of his company on company letterhead and I wrote that I had gone to Northwestern Law School). I don't think the "average joe" has much of a chance in getting his account back.

And, you need a lot more people to monitor the boards and any place people can put html--particularly during those times when there are a lot of people playing--like the weekends and any time the snowager is asleep.

Last weekend, I saw something in a new member's guild that shocked the bejesus out of me--and even though I and countless others wrote support about it--it sat for at least an hour before someone finally froze this guy's account and his guild. And, I mean it was extremely graphic porn that I saw and I can only thank my lucky stars that my daughter didn't see it. If this kind of stuff had been shown on TV, the TV station's owners would have been arrested. And, Neopets should be very careful about this kind of porn being shown on their website because sooner or later it could adversely affect them--if you get my drift. If a sponsor happened to catch sight of that guild's page, you'd have one less sponsor.

I don't know anything about this Day of Action or the article, but I do see why people could get so upset with Neopets that they would want to take some type of action.

Obviously from the responses to this topic, not everyone on PPT thinks alike. But we are all allowed to express our opinions--fully and freely. Which makes PPT a really great place to be! I wouldn't still be playing Neopets if PPT wasn't around.

I agree with every word you just said, Morningstar, but this paragraph I really appreciated and was glad to see, because this is what I hate the most about glitches and freezings and is what I tell people when they say it's just a game...

By the way, I'm very pleased to see you are back! I can't tell you how much I missed you and you're big interesting posts! Just look at my sig!

( I wasn't being sarcastic about the last part!)

No offense taken in the least. I should have been a writer--of really long, long novels.

I'd be a PPT Super God right now if they based it on number of words instead of number of posts.

I think it's really great for a staff mamber to post here and clear up some truths and half truths.
That said now I am quite angry knowing that some PERSON actually froze my Dianalyn00 account months ago without putting in a reason. "Our automated system does not know why you were frozen". I am also angry knowing that all my e-mails were actually over looked by people and not responded to on purpose. It was much easier to think that I was lost in the system.
I am still frozen and I still don't know why. I quit writing months ago after I got no reply to e-mails and a hand written letter. Neopets also didn't respond to the BBB, writing on my behalf. My account was over 3 years old and I had just sold a rare book, so I had a sudden gain of 20 million neopoints, the next day I am frozen. I followed toss and never ever even got a warning.
I am still supporting the day of action and will ask all my friends to do so too.

yeah, that's true...And that site is just awesome! What do I do when Im bored? neopets. Neopets. neopets all over again.

Oh yeah, You'll be a godess! you post so long messages!

You know what? I agree! If people are actually reading the emails, then why haven't I gotten some kind of response? I mean, I too have been frozen for a while on an account that I never even recieved a WARNING on! I think I was gotten by a glitch and when the auto form is equally useless for writing to staff! Saving time, eh? Right, remind me of that when YOU get frozen for something that you had no control over!

Now, I am still in support of DoA, because it seems it will be the only way that players will be able to make any sort of contact with the "suits". Yeah, I've worked with a corporation, so I do know what it's like. Bottom of the food chain rarely sees what those at the top see and visa versa.

Before my original account, raudf was frozen for cheating at the flashgames, which I know I didn't and have mailed them several times on it, I enjoyed the game very much, because it met my fun quota.. now I play on my alt account, miss my old pets and the time/memories I had of the fun! But, every game I play now, I am very much aware that I can be wrongfully frozen for a glitch.. and if it happens with this alt account, I'm walking away and my child will never know the word "Neopets", because I won't allow him to go through the loss of an account.

For those who said that we are wrong to protect children from loss, get over it. I'm very glad your parents have protected you from the losses that you might have otherwise suffered at a young kid, otherwise, you wouldn't say anything about my desire to protect my own offspring from something that's just a game..