Volks USA Site Downtime Dec 28-??

AKA: "Volks USA, what are you DOING?"

 

Figured we ought to have a separate thread for this, rather than continue hijaking the latest Dolpa thread.

 

Short version: The Volks USA site will be down/closed from December 28, 2015 for several months, which they say is for "server upgrades and host migration."

 

Relevant announcement videos/links:

 

Video, English:

Video, Japanese with Subtitles:

Volks this was a terrible idea. Just let me give you my money!! D:

They should give all of those who entered for Rin-the doll (and uniform). I have no idea how this is gonna play out. >.>. Sigh. What about the Miku Siren outfit for mid-January?!?

I really haven't the foggiest what's going on over there. >.< Though, considering the site was 100%, unequivocally busted for like four days during the DD Gathering/October Collection release in November, I presume something in the back end needs fixing badly. . .I just can't fathom how it could be "months plural" badly. :/

.I just can't fathom how it could be "months plural" badly. :/

 

 

Ditto...

 

I can't see any other way of dealing with these events other than to postpone them honestly. I asked a question on their facebook but I doubt I'll get an answer.

 

On a side note this may be rude but the Engrish made me laugh a lot. I think part of it had to do with the fact that he basically yelled through the whole video.

Well...

 

On the one hand, this may be a positive sign. Didn't Volks USA upgrade to it's current storefront at the beginning of this year or 2014? That's not very long ago, and it has become extremely clear their hosting solution is completely inadequate to the requirements their business has during peak times. It seems like they are adressing this by revamping the store.

 

You can also read into that they intend to do more events. It does seem the USA end of things is a lot more lively in the past months than it has ever been. Maybe I'm just imagining, but Volks USA seems to be accellerating, and this development seems to support that accelleration.

 

Closing down their store for months at a time sounds extremely bad, but it probably makes some degree of sense for them to do so. They don't ever really have a lot of stock. The months after the Christmas holidays will probably be fairly dead. The probably don't have any events planned for a few months, which is when all their business would happen.

 

If they want to make the store a suitable venue for their business, then the next couple of months are THE time to make the correction while business would otherwise be dead.

 

Still, it seems pretty amateurish to shut down their business for several months while they do this. Even the most unprofessional hobby company I ever dealt with wouldn't have done that.

 

On a personal note, I'm afraid this means they'll probably go to clickwars for everything. I fear that means I'll never be able to get anything again, unless their numbers are really scaling up.

I love the dramatic angle changes in the video hehe

Just wow. Japanese companies certainly work in mysterious ways. Do they really want people to rather consider Choo as their first stop when shopping for dolls and items? It certainly seems like it. If there's an actual technical reason for them to do this then they're just completely and utterly incompetent, so I have to assume that this is some kind of business decision. Either way, it's completely evident to all that they still treat US/Canada as a second class citizen, they would never do this with the Japanese webstore.

Like gabriel said, This is going to be the time period in which they have the least business and they may be switching to a different server provider instead of just an upgrade which does complicate things. I do think there's some things they should do better but this may be more or less the result of something urgent that happened. You'd think if this was the plan for a while there would have been more advanced notice on something so major. This seems like it happened suddenly so there may be good reason for it. I'm glad they'll be getting better servers. That was long overdue. In some ways we do get sucky treatment and sadly it's because we are their smaller market. We're not their target demographic so the effort to please doesn't go to us. That doesn't make it okay, but it's not like it happens for no reason.

[nerd-modus]

It sounds kind of odd to me... it's very easy to switch servers within a few hours, hell it's even possible to do it on the fly. I don't think this is done from a technical viewpoint.

[/nerd-modues]

So I suppose there will be no November Collection for Volks USA?

Having performed web service upgrades for my employer on a number of occasions over the last 20 years I can say it certainly should easily be possible to remain online while they create the new site. Flipping over to the new systems with a DNS or firewall rule change takes about 30 seconds.

 

If they have chosen to take the site down for a long period I am inclined to think the reasons aren't technical, but instead are driven by some other business need. Basically they have decided that giving up the revenue from their USA webstore makes more sense than some other alternative unknown to us. The collapse of their relationship with their current hosting service could certainly be a strong possibility, but I wouldn't necessarily expect them to disclose that publicly.

 

There is also the fact that volks.co.jp remains available for US customers to purchase from, so its not like Volks products are going to become totally unavailable to the US market for 3 months as a result of a local website outage.

So I suppose there will be no November Collection for Volks USA?

 

I believe this is similar to last time when they change webstores and closed their old website for months, the collections that Japan released were still given to the US and they still put those collections up after they open their new webstore. Just be patient.

 

As for Rin and the lottery, Volks can still send the payment information to the customer's email (like with what happened with Miku). Unless their facebook or their newsletter officially said that they will delay the announcement of the winners or payments, don't worry about it. I'm pretty sure they made the decision of closing their webstore for awhile so they know what they are doing in the terms of the event and payments.

 

Let's just take this as a positive note and that they are listening to the customers and changing their flaws.

Unless they contracted with a really inexperienced or crappy web developer, I would guess their reasoning isn't technological.

 

It's not like Volks is closing their entire business down, just one of their sales channels. And maybe that's the point... Maybe the US site doesn't do enough business, so it doesn't hurt them if they don't keep it open consistently. One of the other comments mentioned that right after Christmas is a time when they would be slow anyway, so Volks reduces their operating costs by reducing staff, etc. Plus, by closing down, there aren't any outgoing or incoming orders or anything like that for them to have to mess with. (Or there are incoming orders and they're just doing a really thorough inventory.)

Looking at the Dolpa schedule, there aren't usually events in Jan and Feb so if they're going to reorganize it's the best time to do so. It's also possible they are over-estimating the time needed to switch systems, and assuming everything goes smoothly we'll be pleasantly surprised when they are back early

Personally, I've ordered from their site a few times recently and had major technical problems with their accounts. Luckily I talked to one of the girls that works there and she was super helpful in figuring out a different way for me to place my orders. But like everyone else has mentioned I don't think website issues would take several months to fix..

 

Bummer too since I just found out their store is within a half hour driving distance to me >_< ah well.

I saw the video link but from the blurb on their facebook page I figured.. "welp, here we go agaaaaaaaaaaain" It's so baffling from a business standpoint why they go offline for so long each time because if they have stock they are presumably just sitting on product that could bring in revenue while they do the migration. Why not do email orders for those that want something in the mean time and do a paypal invoice? There's work arounds that could at least keep money coming in.

 

I guess Christmas Day or the day after if anyone gets any present money, buy what you need now before the outtage -- ZM Spray will be on my list if I can make myself remember b/c that stuff you can't get off volks.co.jp if I remember correctly (b/c its flammable/explodable)

Volks this was a terrible idea. Just let me give you my money!! D:

 

take mine too!

 

If they want to make the store a suitable venue for their business, then the next couple of months are THE time to make the correction while business would otherwise be dead.

 

Never been to their store front in California. I'm sure it's wasn't like an American Girl, Build A Bear, or Disney store. Hopefully, their new store will have the inventory.

 

Having performed web service upgrades for my employer on a number of occasions over the last 20 years I can say it certainly should easily be possible to remain online while they create the new site. Flipping over to the new systems with a DNS or firewall rule change takes about 30 seconds.

 

WOW! it was nightmare train wreck, trying to do this @ pervious employment

WOW! it was nightmare train wreck, trying to do this @ pervious employment

 

We did this with our Sharepoint Portal upgrade from 2010 - 2013. We built the new 2013 farm in parallel with the old one, and ran the upgrade without taking the old one down. The Sharepoint upgrade itself was a monster, but the cutover just involved duplicating the app firewall rule we used to publish Sharepoint, creating a new load balancing rule for the new Sharepoint farm, assign the load balancer to the new rule, turn off the old rule and enable the new one. We were offline for at most 30 seconds, but any users in the system at 2 am had to re-authenticate.

 

Now it did take several passes to get the Sharepoint upgrade where we wanted it in test before we did production. That took months of work.

Never been to their store front in California. I'm sure it's wasn't like an American Girl, Build A Bear, or Disney store. Hopefully, their new store will have the inventory.

They no longer have a storefront, it closed a few years ago. Volks USA is only a webstore.

WOW! it was nightmare train wreck, trying to do this @ pervious employment

 

We did this with our Sharepoint Portal upgrade from 2010 - 2013. We built the new 2013 farm in parallel with the old one, and ran the upgrade without taking the old one down. The Sharepoint upgrade itself was a monster, but the cutover just involved duplicating the app firewall rule we used to publish Sharepoint, creating a new load balancing rule for the new Sharepoint farm, assign the load balancer to the new rule, turn off the old rule and enable the new one. We were offline for at most 30 seconds, but any users in the system at 2 am had to re-authenticate.

 

Now it did take several passes to get the Sharepoint upgrade where we wanted it in test before we did production. That took months of work.

 

 

Ugh, you guys had Sharepoint? I'm sorry. D: (One of my previous employers had Sharepoint, and we all hated it. My current employer uses Ignite instead, which I much prefer, personally.)

 

But yes, the gist of it rings true: I too got roped into updating a website at a previous employer, and we also left the old site up while we did the redesign and testing offline and/or in hidden corners of the server. That way there was still content up while we worked.

 

So, it seems sort of. . . strange that they're taking the Volks site down completely while they do. . . . whatever it is they're doing. :/

Yeah their site being down (and volks intl being sold out) is what drove my wallet to parabox vs them for a doll body. I dont understand the business model. Japan will always be their prime concern market but yeeeesh what ceo/president willingly wants to close down shop for their NA customers in a hobby that is niche and that people willingly want to give them money?

 

I hope they come up soon Bc I wanted some more zm spray since I got preoccupied over the holiday and forgot about them closing

Ugh, you guys had Sharepoint? I'm sorry. D: (One of my previous employers had Sharepoint, and we all hated it. My current employer uses Ignite instead, which I much prefer, personally.)

 

Our Sharepoint portal is integrated in with the ERP system that runs our entire business. Since it's an integrated solution it made the upgrade harder. We had to run scripts to upgrade the sharepoint data and then scripts to upgrade the ERP elements and then configure all the new web parts.

Ugh, you guys had Sharepoint? I'm sorry. D: (One of my previous employers had Sharepoint, and we all hated it. My current employer uses Ignite instead, which I much prefer, personally.)

 

Our Sharepoint portal is integrated in with the ERP system that runs our entire business. Since it's an integrated solution it made the upgrade harder. We had to run scripts to upgrade the sharepoint data and then scripts to upgrade the ERP elements and then configure all the new web parts.

 

That sounds, quite frankly, like an utter nightmare on all fronts. Yikes!

 

. . .and yet, despite having such a stupidly complicated system, you kept a site up while working on the upgrade. Wolf, maybe you need to tell Volks USA that they need you! =P