Are Webkinz One Year Subscriptions An Unethical Ploy To Sell More Toys?
Reader Christopher bought his daughter a Webkinz stuffed animal — for those of your who are not familiar with these toys — with each animal you receive a code that is good for a one year subscription to a virtual version of the toy. After a year — you need to buy another toy or you lose access to your previous pets. Buying more than one toy per year doesn't extend your subscription, you have to buy one each year to keep it going. Christopher thinks this is unethical.
Christopher writes:
Recently, my daughter (age 7) and I discovered the strategy employed by the makers of Webkinz to perpetuate their sales, by taking advantage of kids' desires to maintain their virtual pets by having to purchase more and more Webkinz stuffed animals.
Webkinz, of course, are cute stuffed animals that allow kids to create an online version of their pet, then roam around in a virtual Webkinz world. You buy the stuffed animal in a store, and receive a code to logon to their website and see your pet "come to life" in the virtual Webkinz world.
What is buried in the user's agreement is that the log on is only good for one year, at which time you have to buy another pet to keep access to your previous pets. Buying 2 pets at the same time only gives you a year, as the time is not additive; it begins when you register your pet.
After my daughter discovered she could not log on, and I looked within the user's agreement, and found the problem, and their "solution." Of course, my daughter immediately wanted to go and buy another animal. I emailed the company expressing my dismay at their strategy, and received a standard email back regarding purchasing another toy to log in.
I am hoping that other consumers write you about this unethical strategy.
What do you think? Are Webkinz a form of evil? Or is a year's subscription fair?
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Comments:
I think the 1 year subscription is fair but I think that the time should be additive. If you buy a ton of their toys you get all the time associated with each toy.
How much are these things? I'm imagining $6.99 or so like beanie babies. I would say the year subscription would be fair if they offered a low-cost renewel of like $1.99 or something. Otherwise I am assuming that most kids log in twice and then never again.
My sister and her friends are into Webkinz.
I don't think it's unethical, but I do think it's a great business strategy. A Webkin is $10 and that is good for one year of online play and a lifetime of real play (with the critter itself). That's a pretty fair price, in my opinion.
Luckily my daughter, 5, lost interest in her online pet after a week or so.
However, now knowing this 1 year limit I would be reticent to buy another webkinz for my kids.
@calquist: That's exactly what I was thinking. Don't force the customers to buy more crap to maintain the virtual account. A lower maintenance fee would be fair, but forcing the purchase of toys is not.
The service is included in the purchase of the toy. It doesn't say it's a lifetime subscription. Sometimes parents just need to say NO to their children. They still have the physical toy anyway.
I think that there ought to be a renewal opportunity rather than being required to purchase another toy.
The OP has got it backwards. The concept is that you get a year of a free service when you buy the toy. You can either pay for another year, or opt to buy another toy, and get both a toy and another year.
This isn't deceptive because its very clear on the packaging, and its extremely common knowledge among parents (I only have nieces, and even I know).
The toy is meant to be viewed more like a beanie baby than a toy. It's something you collect, you group together. One stuffed animal by itself has no value, the online service is what is truly being sold. How often do you see you're child play with the stuffed animal? compared to the VAST amounts of time spent playing Goober's Lab with the webkinz on the computer.
My wife got my daughte rinto Webkinz probably 3 years ago and since then due to birthdays, holidays and rewards she's amassed a colelction of more than 60 of these dust collectors. We knew from the first time we bought them that the account was only good for a year but I guess we didn't realize that it wasn't expiring because she kept registering new pets. You can't fault the company for the strategy. They offer a good service and it's safe for kids to use and far more educational that Club Penguin which is another elementary school age kid mainstay.
Webkinz is not a bad site. My 6 and 11 year old enjoy the activities and there are even a few learning activities and games. The marketing on the site itself is not as intrusive as some other free kid game sites like candystand. Compared to Jumpstart World which is quite pricey, a small stuffed animal per year subscription is pretty reasonable for what you get. The terms are spelled out when you register.
I bought some Webkinz once, when I had a gift certificate to a toy store. They aren't evil, just weird. If you're a parent looking for a virtual world for a kid, Try Whyville ( [www.whyville.net] ) I found it about 4 years ago, completely free, and educational, but they do have a virtual item that needs to be paid for (though not required, adds more features to the website for buyers.)
This isn't unethical in the least. Webkinz has simply discovered the strategy that Blizzard is using to make millions from World of Warcraft - subscription based content. With WOW, your subscription is a monthly fee. With Webkinz, your subscription is one toy purchase per year. Whether or not you allow your child to "subscribe" to the Webkinz service or not is entirely up to you. Webkinz, for their part, disclosed their terms of service in a completely legal way, and seem to have kept up their end of the bargain. That sounds pretty ethical to me.
@mechfluff: depending on the animal (like beanies, some are "rare") there 8-20 dollars. But you're really buying the service and the collectible that goes with it. No one buys the toy to have a stuffed animal.
I disagree. They're not in the business of providing your child ongoing, free, entertainment. How do you expect they'd pay for maintaining the website? They could charge you for web access but instead their model is to encourage you to buy another toy and get the access for no additionaly fee. Expecting web access for nothing is silly.
Sheer evil. If it were an adult product I'd call it merely wasteful, but marketing to kids? And parents who are going to have to deal with potentially teary or tantrumy children who've just suddenly lost a beloved (if only virtual) toy?
So very glad I don't have to experience this myself...
Think of it as a perfect opportunity to educate your child about the ways of marketers - and how to avoid them.
My daughter noticed some time ago that My Little Ponies are all near enough identical with just a different sticker on their arse, so she stopped buying them and they're now called "My Little Cash Cow".
Why do you need a virtual version if you already have the physical version ?
It's not unethical, it's a business model. Just don't buy it! Recession, much?
@tedyc03: Is each code specific for each animal? Like if I buy a panda, use the code for a year and then want to renew, do I have to buy another panda or can I buy a duck and just decide to use the code towards the panda or the duck?
$12.99 to get a year subscription to a safe site online with no ads - AND a stuffed animal?
Dude - my kids spend hours a week playing this online and more importantly NOT bugging the crap out of me.
WORTH. EVERY. PENNY.
Webkinz is a great racket. I wish I'd thought of this simple, but genius, idea. My daughter and her friends love them. Now my wife, of all people, is into them. She has several and plays the online games regularly. I can't even believe it.
The 1 year limit doesn't bother me, but I'd always assumed the online pets could be "reactivated" for a small fee without actually buying another physical one. I don't mind the small yearly fee, if it's available, but I won't be buying more copies of the physical item just so the online game can continue to be played.
These things are the new Beanie Babies. Ridiculous, if you ask me. One of my daughter's friends has 70 of them. That's over a grand worth of stupid stuffed animals (~$15/each). She said she'd like that many - I told her to go find a job because it will never happen as long as I'm footing the bill.
It's not unethical at all. What they really sell is a service. you buy the plush toy and it comes with a year of their service. Once it runs out you have to buy it again, plain and simple. It's like a cable subscription except you actually have to go and buy the service every time to renew it instead of automatically paying them for a subscription every year and then going through endless hassle to cancel
This seems quite fair to me. I did a quick search, and the most expensive ones seem to be less than $25. Considered as a yearly subscription charge to the online service, that is exceedingly minimal. You are talking about the cost of opperationg data lines to handle the connections, harddrive space to store the application itself and the database, database maintinance, data center colocation fees if you don't own the facility, or maintinace on the AC units, water chillers, air handlers, power distribution units, generators, and the list goes on. I'm not saying that they incur all of these cost, just that they exist, and can be quite substantial. Probably most important however is the fact that they are still required to comply to SOX, and maintain Propritary Customer Information (PCI). I don't mean they are a likly target for identity thieves or stalkers, but they still have to protect that information by law. All said and done, a one-year access period, from date of registration, per actual (non-virtual) purchase seems exceedingly fair to me. Considering the attiont spans of the young, I'd say that it is astounding Christopher was able to both keep her interested in the service for an entire year, and to keep her happy with just the single account/toy.
Rant/
How about this:
Instead of buying a toy that your kids can play with online...play with your kid!
I'm not blaming the OP, but what I don't understand is why a seven year old needs to be online at all, educational or not. Children under 13 have no business being online, they have business playing in dirt outside, lol. Parents need to play with their kids more!
/rant over
@J. Gov: I don't have to experience this myself, either, even though I have two daughters who like Webkinz.
They learned long ago that teariness and tantruminess doesn't work and will be counterproductive. If parents have given in to such behavior and rewarded it, they have themselves to blame, not Webkinz.
My daughters know their options for getting Webkinz: ask for one as a Christmas or birthday gift (which may or may not work and probably isn't a short term solution) or spend their allowance on one.
They get a reasonable amount of entertainment during the time they are allowed to use the site. There's nothing sneaky or, lol, evil about it. It would be nice if each registration extended the subscription by a year, but the situation is fine without that.
@Raekwon: It doesn't have to be additive. But the clock should reset to 0 every time you register a new toy. If it does that, there is nothing wrong with this. It means you do get at least 1 year with each new toy and technically get more time with past toys.
Plus it looks like you can get these things for about 15 bucks. That seems like a good deal for a year of service and the stuffed animal.
I find it interesting that people would not look askance at paying $15/month for World of Warcraft, but $15/year for Webkinz makes the company "evil" somehow. Perhaps the point is the lack of disclosure, but it seems to me the uproar is "how dare you make me pay more to continue accessing this virtual world!" And that, my friends of Azeroth, is hypocritical.
@Andrea Viera: There's no harm in structured computer time for a seven year old. As long as it is structured and monitored carefully, it can be a great educational experience.
It helps raise well-balanced geeks, if you do it right. And the geek shall inherit the Earth, right?
How is this unethical?! My kids love Webkinz. We know beforehand that the internet service only lasts a year. We know we'll have to renew or buy again to continue it. I also know that after two years my kids will be bored of it and I'll be off the hook. (Actually, I doubt if they'll make it past a year.)
This is like buying a car and then bitching when it runs out of gas. "Selling cars that need refueling is unethical."
Can you guys please stick to real scams instead of made up ones?! We really need this site to fight the good fight. And publishing junk like this only diminishes your impact because it makes you look loopy.
This sounds hardly unethical. They're offering a service you can choose to take advantage of, or not. Saying that the Webkinz business plan is unethical is like saying you shouldn't have to pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft because you already bought the game discs.
Much ado about nothing. The toys range from $6-$14 bucks, for a years worth of online play. I figure its a bargain compared to what I'm paying for WOW per month.
Well, I appreciate the heads-up, at any rate - my daughter just started asking for Webkinz, and I'd have guessed that the subscriptions were additive, so it's good to know they're not.
It's not really *scammy* - just sort of yuk. On the other hand, the whole reason I give my kid an allowance is so I can teach her about spending money in an informed way, so hey, it's a toy, a year of online gaming, AND a life lesson, all in one! What a bargain!
@Corporate_guy: The clock IS reset to zero each time you add a toy. If you add 2 at the same time, obviously that's going to give you a year. But, if you add one then wait 6 months and add the second, you will get 18 months total out of the deal.
Webkinz doesn't hide this fact at all, so I'm kind of wondering where this guy is coming from, or why he thought he'd get a lifetime subscription to an online service for the purchase of a $10 toy.
@The Gigante: You'r right, I don't have any kids.
However, I work at a daycare and it kills me to see all these children who whine when it's time to play outside and whine when their Gameboys and such get taken away.
If a kid is getting on your nerves and you need time to yourself...what is the harm in giving them a bike and telling them to go outside? Childhood only happens once, and surely you don't want your kids best memory to be the time they got 534,876 points on an online game?
Unless the codes that come with the toys have an expiration date, I don't see how this would be unethical. If you want to buy more than one Webkinz a year, then save the code for when your current subscription expires. I don't see a problem here.
I think that people forget that it costs a lot of money for a company to provide the kind of services Webkinz provides. It's no minimum wage salary running on a Pentium 2 with 16MB of RAM.
Again, if the codes have an expiration date, then that's bull. If they don't, then you have absolutely nothing to complain about. At the end of the day, you still have a stuffed animal/toy your kid can play with. Also, I've seen them on clearance a few times too.
@Andrea Viera: Computer games got me interested in programming, which somehow morphed into a possibly pathological obsession with mathematics, and led to me on a path towards what I'm in college for now--electrical engineering.
If not for Jazz Jackrabbit (and tons of paternal involvement in fostering my curiosity), I would probably not be a geek today. Give Webkinz a break, man.
We have real economic problems right now. My daughter is hooked on these things for now but in a month or two this site will be free sign up or renewal cause the kids will move on. Which is exatly what Christopher may consider doing.
We have like thirty plus Webkins my daughter has acquired. Are you saying WebKins needs to garuntee their URL is up and active in 30 years? Get a grip....
@Andrea Viera: I think you are projecting the parenting skills of the parents of your whiners onto all parents.
It's quite possible to have kids who play outside, and ride bikes, and play sports, and who play with their parents but who also spend some time on the computer, both to learn and to have fun. It's not an either/or situation.
@Andrea Viera: webkinz are not for kids that are old enough to jump on a bike and go play by themselves. Kids under 8 aren't allowed outside on the street without an adult (it's the law here in MD) and as to your earlier comment about playing in the dirt, at least here in February the 'dirt' is white fluffy snow. My kids get lots of out door playtime, and reading, and indoor imaginative play and crafts, but there 168 hours in week and I don't have a problem with them spending 3-4 of those hours playing (mostly) educational computer games, or another 3-4 hours per week watching TV.
As to the Webkinz user agreement - I too was unaware that the time wasn't cumulative. I do think the $15 for a one year subscription is well worth it, but multiples of that would not be. each new animal should add a year to the account, or at least some set minimum - maybe 6 months if they are activated together.
We have learned to delay the "adoptions" of our pets when we receive more than one for birthdays, Christmas, etc. That way you can wait and see if your pet will be pet of the month, and also extend the subscription. Webkinz has been great fun for me, the mom, and our 2 girls...I have had no qualms letting our kids play, and feel that price is worth it. BTW, Walgreen's has cheap Webkinz, and you can also get them very reasonably on eBay, less than in the stores. Individual gift shops seem to be the very highest priced.
I think that after buying one and the 1 year runs out, people should be able to renew without buying an animal, which would mean a discounted price. That would make the most sense. Subscriptions usually don't involve buying something physical like that.
@calquist: You buy the duck and you get the duck added to your account plus a year of play time, you get to keep the panda.
In all honesty this makes buying birthday presents for my little sister a lot easier because she needs a new webkinz every year so I never have to worry about what to buy her.
@OmniZero:
As a matter of fact you can renew without actually buying the stuffed toy. The price isn't discounted, but considering it is a years worth of online time, for 10-15 bucks, I think it's a good deal.
You mean as opposed to McDonald's giving out movie-related toys with Happy Meals? Or cartoons that advertise their action figures? Kids' shows whose advertisers are cereals with more sugar than anything?