Updated: March 6, 2011 1:00 AM PST
Zinio services are currently unavailable. We expect to have them up sometime in the afternoon (or earlier) on Sunday March 6, 2011. We met our original target to successfully restore service for a number of hours on Saturday, March 5, 2011. During this time, we identified a slow down in access for some parts of the world. To ensure our customers around the globe are able to enjoy a positive Zinio experience, we have taken the site down for final adjustments.
We expect to be running again in the next several hours. We wish we could be more specific but do not want to mis-set expectations. Once again, thank you for your patience.
Our customer service team is staffed around the clock and can be reached at site-support@zinio.com if you have any questions.
This 1% fine-tune has lasted for almost a day! It’s totally a disappointment I have to say! and you guys could still dare to say “We met our original target”?!
I’ll bet that everyone at Zinio will be glad when this is over, and your usual excellent service is resumed! Given that the mighty Google still hasn’t fixed their latest Gmail problem, I think you people are doing pretty well!
I called them this evening right around the time they were up for a bit. Not only did someone answer before the 3rd ring, he was very apologetic.
These guys are working extremely hard and trying their very best to restore service to the thousands that lost service. They also wanna make sure that something like this never happens to them ever again.
Every large “.com” today has been through 72+ hour crashes(twitter & facebook included). They know they messed up… more than all of us will receive something free for our troubles… MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL ——> ZINIO WILL LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE and be able to provide a service 10 times better than the already great one they have.
on a last note… i do need my SNT and my economist…. so please Zinio, do hurry… I STILL LOVE YOU THOUGH
I can certainly understand that bad things happen even to good people’s servers, but I too must add that zinio did not handled the mess the correct way. For days the iPad app was telling me something like “check your Internet connection” and the shop was about to “return shortly”.
Even though I had the sense to not delete and re-download the app when it started acting all weird, (not to say that I wasn’t temped) I can only imagine how people who did must feel the last few days.
Now this 99%ready is only adding insult to injury.
It would have been much more honest to say, we’ll be back Monday, and surprise is with an early comeback than to keep us hanging on checking repeatedly for signs of life.
After all it seems that Monday will be the day (at least I hope so) that the zinio platform will be working again, as “hours” seem to turn into days this last painful week.
I’ve been happy with my zinio experience up to now, all my problems in the past have been resolved quickly and efficiently, but this has been a major let down. Especially since the customers have been left in the dark for too long about what’s been happening and then given promises about things returning to normal that were simply unrealistic.
In addition to having a clear technology problem (seriously, no redundancy?) you guys have a serious communication problem. First customers go days with no communication beyond a splash screen akin to a homemade website’s “under construction” page, then the messages zinio issue are inaccurate, misleading and full of nothing informative.
“99% there”? Like crude a Flash loader, that last 1% took nearly as long at the 99% before it. Hardly as close to done as the message would infer. “Met our original goal”? So you wrapped duct tape around a leak then turned the valve back on long enough for the leak to return and call that meeting a goal? Congratulations. You must be proud of yourselves. And a few hours of uptime (I’m being generous) over a week is totally unacceptable these days, particularly for a content provider of PAID services. If you were my satellite company, I’d have switched. If you were netflix or hulu+ or whatever paid streaming service around the globe, tech news would be all over this; I’m actually quite surprised this isn’t making headlines given all the publicity lately around subscription services, iTunes, etc.
While customers should be your biggest concern, I have to imagine publishers are pretty ticked as well. Digital magazine subscription data has showed a significant decline in purchases/downloads recently. If zinio, as a pioneer, doesn’t have a stable enough platform to provide their product reliably … they can’t expect that trend to change any time soon.
Hope your plans to rectify this and generate goodwill with impacted customers is better than how the problem has been managed to date. I’ve promoted zinio heavily with friends and family since signing up, but can’t let this outage go when making recommendations in the future.
Well said! I think the way this was dealt with is completely unacceptable and unprofessional and they really damaged the way I viewed this company and the services it provides.
This is totally unacceptable to be down for nearly a week! We are clearly dealing with a Mickey Mouse company.
Anybody think the future of paper magazine is dead today?
Your already mis-set expectations yesterday when you didn’t restore the service as you said you would. If you miss today, I will be asking for a refund of my subcriptions and going back to the paper publications.
It would have been nice to get an email BEFORE you started all of this. I didn’t know what was wrong with my ipad app so I signed out of my account to try and sign back in, of course I wasn’t able to and because of that missed out on reading my magazines on a 3 and a half hour flight. Thanks a lot.
I think the most frustrating part of all was not putting something informative on the iPad to let us know why it wasn’t working! I thought my iPad was having problems and was really concerned. Then it would say try back in a short time…well it has been over a week!
I wish they would still have reader3.x, not a fan of the new version with Adobe Air. Not portable with My old U3 drive anymore. I hate that new issues of some titles are available only on the new version!
Hi- we have lots of future plans. First priority is to restore service. Please email me at jmullen@zinio.com so i can make sure you receive the priority list of upcoming updates.
Thanks
I agree that a different message should appear than the “maintenance” page – I chanced upon this blog when I was trying to find out if Zinio had gone out of business. Since I missed the short window between outages when you were up and running, it seems like I haven’t had access to my magazines in a couple of weeks. I hope you plan on some sort of financial refund for your remaining loyal customers.
Ridiculous , should have notified us via email, I could have downloaded my subscriptions before the maintenance. Poorly executed, and 99%? What do you think we are all stupid?
You cannot run a business of this caliber based on a few free JSP Tomcat servers and a database with no failover or replication. Your tech people set up a totally amateur environment. You should be ashamed. Or maybe your IT department did not get the budget to build a professional environment and data center. Either way, you should fire your IT head and replace the current solution with professional tools and seek extert help. Many people at your campany should be replaced.
Re-thinking eliminating all my print magazines. This outage was not handled well, in fact got a bill notice in the middle of it. I hope they get it ALL together very very soon…
Christine- really? I am so sorry – can you forward it to me at jmullen@zinio.com. We will certainly take care of that for you. thanks.
I will put this incident in all my DRP and IT classes. This is the first service company that I have paid for years but has been down for week without a single mail or notice from them.
Really disappointed.
Hope you learn for this lesson.
1. Hire professional technical help. You seem to have very incompetent people handling what is purportedly a “global” operation. Hint: They should know something about hardware and software.
2. Your customer does not care for technical mumbo jumbo. If the service does not work as promised, you have no reason to be in existence. The gall to say it is 99% complete and then act as if you have voluntarily pulled off the site…..even Mickey Mouse would do it better.
3. Do not list Zinio on your resume when you are looking for another job (as you will shortly!). That will be a dead giveaway indicating your ineptitude.
4. Take a few courses in customer service, especially the foundation courses. They will teach you how not to set expectations high and manage downwards.
5. Refund our money so that we can seek other alternatives to your silly apology for a service that seems to use a lot of spit and baling wire. The entire weekend is gone and we could not read any of the magazines. You are a shame to the world of online services.
Wow, it’s incredible how some people can overreact. While I agree it’s not pleasing, the truth is things like that can happen and it doesn’t make the people at Zinio the shame of online services. You just can do something else with your free time. Try to have sex, it might cool you down:)
Comment like yours won’t help the people working 24/24 on this technical issue. Zinio will learn from what happened. Remember, what doesn’t break you makes you stronger….
This is a ridiculous response to a legitimate, albeit frustrated response to an extended outage for a paid service. I could be wrong, but to me it suggests that the author is likely to have a stake in Zinio of some sort, probably as a hapless tech employee who feels slighted because no one seems to be understanding ‘how hard it is to make the site work’.
Truth of the matter is that if I pay for a service I expect it to be delivered. Period. When my paper doesn’t show up on Sunday, I’m pissed and expect it by that afternoon. My local newspaper (and even the NYT) is able to make that happen – despite the inefficiencies involved in dropping a stack of papers on my doorstep (twice). You have been completely unable to mirror that level of service. Thus in this respect, if you were aiming to be print media ‘plus’ as your marketing materials claim, then you have failed. Quit making excuses for yourself and fix it. Anything less is just arguing that you really are just as inefficient as print media, and worse, in need of special consideration in order to perform at the same level of consistency.
Anyone not satisfied with this service ( and i’m sure one of them) should not forget to go in the Apple’s App store and leave a comment to let future customers know how we feel.
I enjoy the service from Zinio, but obviously the company has a lot to learn to grow up. Very unfortunate for these guys to have gone through this, and my thanks for working hard to restore service. I am sure quite a few guys are under intense pressure. However, please learn from this:
1/ Infrastructure
As you have now grown and are not an early stage startup, you must ensure that you have availability built-in in your operations. This is not an option nowadays and (unless you are google or facebook) is not so hard to accomplish. Yes, it costs money, but that’s a business choice: being down or not.
I’ll be more than glad to offer my expertise in this area if you wish.
2/ PR/Communications
As others have said, some things were done well, others could have done better.
Good luck on completing the restore and hope to see you online soon.
Pierre
You people are funny.
If the biggest issue of your weekend in not being able to read a magazine….there’s major problems, not just with Zinio but with you! Here’s some alternatives folks:
1. Spend some time with your significant other.
2. Take your kids to the park.
3. Give your parents a phone call
4. Go shopping (aka get out of the house)
You whiny people sound like a 3 year old who can’t get their way. The service is (most of the time) great. There’s an IT issue and they’re down for the weekend. Get over it. Read your magazines on your break/lunches this week while at work.
After you dropped a call on your cell phone, you stopped service with your carrier right? When the dish lost signal, your axed your satellite cable TV provider too right?
If you couldn’t make phone calls with your mobile phone for a week, will you stop service with your carrier? If you couldn’t watch paid cable TV for a week, will you ask for a refund from the provider?
Thank you! A+ comment
Eddie, not all of us are using Zinio for leisure. Many of us have information sources such as newspapers that we need for business on Zinio.
Eddie – thanks for the pithy unhelpful comments about why people shouldn’t complain about not getting what they paid for and should instead ‘enjoy life’.
Now can you end your foray into moonlighting for the PR team get back to fixing the service?
Called customer support for a refund and spoke to a very nice and very stressed man. Unfortunately he couldn’t process my request for a full refund until the site is back up. Apparently ALL information is inaccessible. So i can’t have access to my paid subscriptions, nor can i have access to the money i paid for these inaccessible subscriptons. On top of that EVERY published goal of being back online has been missed.
Either they’re going out of business, or they have hired the most incompetent head of IT that money can buy. Either way, i’ve lost complete faith in this company. Very embarassed that i recommended this app to lots of people.
I don’t think people are being whiny. The lack of communication and complete, no, 99% disregard for us is what has gradually infuriated many of us over the days. There are many people who have made some excellent statements before me but I must bring one up again.
The zinio maintenance page. I forget who made the recommendation first, but SEVERAL of you have reiterated it. Zinio, Ms. Mullen, CMO – you gotta give us something. The 99% fixed blog post was utter BS, but I have to get over it. Update the zinio maintenance page as well. I understand Facebook and this blog which I somehow stumbled upon. Go old school as well with the zinio page. This can’t be too hard. It will show that you are a caring organization.
Placing a periodically updated status on the page will at least be some measurable concern (I won’t say progress) for the customer. Give us something.
And please, at this stage, enough with the corporate-speak responses. Many of us who have posted are managers at some level and get it. But we are at the point where you need to tell us like it is and step from behind your armor. You appreciate the positive comments. Where are they? They must have been from last weekend, or they have been emailed.
I have been with Zinio since 2004. Never an outage like this during that period, but that does not give your company a free pass for falling asleep at the wheel for so long.
I ask you Zinio, what measurable progress are you going to provide for us today? Take a step.
If this were an isolated problem I would be forgiving but Zinio has these outages fairly regularly since at least 2004 (I can’t track it farther back than that on various forums) maybe longer. It is obvious they have yet to learn from their mistakes for 7 years or more. This along with no access to my subscription, even when the site is up, sketchy software on my PC, Mac and iPhone and no notification of the issues have caused me to have zero faith in Zinio. My one subscription was a test since I am very wary of online subscriptions to any reading source and it was not pretty to say the least. Back to paper for this subscriber. Please don’t bother enticing me with a free whatever, unless its a full refund, since I most likely will have no access to that material either.
Come on. Please be fair. Nobody expects a small company to have an up-rate of more than 95% per year. This is not a Bank site nor a Email site like Gmail. Give them a break. I think the bigger concern is if Zinio can stay in the iPad game with all the new rules. Now that is the real concern with a small company. I love that Zinio is slowly becoming a legit portal for magazines. I wish and dream that Zinio and Apple can work out something. It will definitely fly if they can have Apple’s blessing (Apple don’t recreate a Zinio like business for magazine).
It’s 2011 – no matter what size your company is, anything less than 99% uptime is unacceptable to most people
5% is 18 days. I definitely expect that even small companies like Zinio have downtimes of 18 days per year. I fully expect that highly technical companies such as Zinio have better redundancy and damage control. Four days of downtime is beyond ridiculous, short of their building burning down.
For the number of customers they have, they absolutely have a separate site with full backup, and the ability to redirect requests to it while they bring the main site back up.
However, the worst of this situation is the total lack of communication.
An email on Friday would’ve been nice. I understand, if all of their servers are down, maybe they don’t have access to their email list.
Their webpage, then, instead of saying, “Zinio is performing maintenance. We will be back up shortly.” (which sounds like a couple not downtime) should have had full disclosure, and a very conspicuous link to this blog.
Maybe they’ll learn from this weekend’s disaster, maybe they won’t. Either way they just lost a lot of credibility, and potentially a lot of business.
Which sucks … I liked Zinio. Their app is awesome, I have about five different subscriptions through them, and was planning on getting more. Now I’m not so sure.
I hear Amazon is selling magazine subscriptions through the Kindle now, and they definitely don’t have this sort of ridiculous downtime.
I cannot see how people look at 95 or 99 percent uptime as acceptable. In our business unplanned outages in the 99 percent range would cause customers to go to the competition. At 95 percent we would not have a business. We have virtually 0 percent unplanned downtime in our business and we have scheduled maintenance which takes down systems for approximately 3 hours once every 3-4 months. In the past 5 years we have only had one unplanned serious outage and it lasted for approximately 6 hours. This is a company with 6000 employess. Zinio is clueless on how to manage customer expectations and how to have backup sevice provisions. Terrible mismanagement going on at this time. The management and communication is a joke.
Noon in the east, how about a no b.s. update?
Hi Oliver-
This is Colin, blog administrator and a designer at Zinio. I’ve been told we will be releasing an explanation to the service outage through the blog today. I don’t know exactly when this will be, but the second I have it, it will be posted.
Does releasing an explanation also mean restoring full service?
I believe we’re working to get a statement out regardless of the status of service, as most feedback we’ve been receiving across channels is to keep people more informed of the outage, the cause/s of it, and current estimates of service return. Of course, the downtime remains the primary focus of all the technology crew and will be up as soon as it will be possible to assure equal access internationally.
O.K. Colin, fair enough.
I have been waiting to download one of my weekly subscriptions for 4 days and still nothing!!!!
So what?
Nobody died, nobody got harmed, I can live without a magazine for a few days. Really.
So Zinio team, good luck in solving the issue and hope you get us back online asap!
The stress and effort of the Zinio team are fully appreciated. Zinio has been offering a very excellent service so far, and I believe that they have already been trying their best to resume the service asap.
Seriously? This is how Zinio is dealing with this crisis? Does anyone think it worrisome the the CMO of the company is responding to a refund request in a buried blogspot regarding the collapse of their company…forget about Rome burning from where I see things Zinio is Toast!
Downtime measuring in the days is unacceptable when you’ve got content you’ve paid for that’s inaccessible. It’s not whiny, it’s stuff you bought.
Has Zinio not been investing in tech upgrades to keep up with the volume they have been selling? Why is there no redundancy?
I hate to say it, but I think we’re attending the funeral for digital magazines.
Pffff still not working, it’s really unacceptable guys!
LoL
We are such stuff as technology is made on; and our little life
Is rounded with the need for it.
Bleh!
As much as I would like to criticize them, I must remind myself that I chose this green alternative to killing trees. And for that, I willingly accept the imperfections and problems that may arise from using this technology.
We are at the dawn of a new age; it’s not like we’ve been at it for years. So how about we give these pioneers some slack, and appreciate what progress we’ve accomplished so far. For not so long ago we, primitive species, were still reading from paper…
Amen
So, I was OK (not happy, but OK) with the servers being offline and not being able to access NEW content, since I had a couple of issues I hadn’t yet read. Last night, however, both of my computers lost their login info (I’m guessing something got reset at the server), so now I only get the login screen and since the server is offline I can’t log in. Note that *I* didn’t log myself out, it happened on both computers simultaneously without any action from me. This is unacceptable. Not only can I not get the new issues, I can’t even access my existing library.
Come on crybabies,I mean really….what is so crucial about this site that makes most of you want to get your drawers in a wad? I could understand if it had been the “Who shot J.R.?” on Dallas episode,& the cable goes off right at the crucial answertime,but a magazine/book website? People never cease to amaze me.