Bot test won't let me into my account. Press and hold didn't work.

[Mecpublications]

Today I was looking at a lot of products and it brought up a bot test. It said to press ad hold to prove I wasn't a bot. This happened a couple times. The last time I pressed it , it showed a checkmark but then turned into three dots that wouldn't go away. I refreshed several times. No help. I couldn't even open an email link to get an answer. I turned off phone, cleared cache, and still no help. I am locked out of my account on my phone and can only work on Zazzle if I'm home and use my computer.  I understand we don't want bots viewing stuff at hyper speeds or whatever else they do but I'm not that fast. And I wasn't just viewing, I deleted some things, modified a few, stopped and looked at another person's products because I liked them. And it's always my finger pressing the d**m button and it fails. 

Okay, rant over. I'm home and will be working on my computer to make up for lost time. I'll be up till three in the morning but I'm not letting the turkeys get me down. See? I'm exhausted and using 1970s expressions. Oh well I'll just hang in there. Ugh. 

[Connie]

It would be easy enough to weed out the bogus accounts compared to our Pro accounts that we've had for years! Even if they have to pay somebody for a week to manually approve all our real accounts and whitelist them so that the bot doesn't disrupt us. 

I'd far rather see the spam in the marketplace, which would soon be pushed to the very back by the algorithms, than deal with this nonsense. Can you imagine how frustrated customers are when they get kicked out while trying to purchase something? If I was a customer, I'd never even bother coming back! And that is far worse than just having to wade through pages of spam.
Another solution would be to start charging for new stores and new accounts, like Etsy does. AND manually approve the new stores. They could always return that fee with your first payout, so that Zazzle essentially remains "free" for creators. But no spammer is going to want to pay that fee on multiple fake stores.

[plumb4me]

I finally gave up several times this week trying to work in the design area.

This is so frustating and time consuming, kicking you out of the design area, reverting to the product page and not saving any of the changes you made.

[NHW]

This has happened a few times before and, if I remember correctly, it was a bug. I'm sure it will be sorted out on Monday. But yes, it is annoying.

[Connie]

I'm pretty sure this time it's a feature, not a bug.

[jophb]

I hadn't designed in a few days... did not see the bot checker at all, until I re-entered the design tool.

[Connie]

In case it is a bug, a friend of mine, Jo, (who is having difficulties posting in the forums right now) has pinpointed it to definitely being a design tool issue. She even confirmed that if you have the design tool open in one tab, and are doing something else on Zazzle in another tab, that is enough to trigger the bot pop up.

[jophb]

I'm back! HAHA. Apparently I was caught in spam.  But yes, I didn't design at all from Tuesday through Saturday.  I didn't have the bot pop up even once doing everything else in Zazzle - even when all of you started reporting it here. I could open products, do collections, etc.  The SECOND I opened the design tool for the first time in the week, on Sunday morning, the bot check started and hasn't stopped since. 

[mgdesigns]

They said what it's for so it's not a bug. They need to pay cloudfare or someone to get better security because it's not normal to leave us without being able to work and I think it's affecting customers too. It's time they get a verified program so at least we are never affected again if they don't get better systems, maybe request applications to be able to sell here, start acting and removing shops that use automation and don't upload designs correctly, etc

[BevStuff]

Me too. it popped up after while signed in and designing and i clicked on "add text."  If seems to be overly sensitive. A bot doesn't do design work.

[Tamathaa]

I never got this, but now get it daily??!!

[jophb]

Haven't gotten this more than once every 6 months previously. Now I get it several times in an hour. Has booted me out of designs several times in the past 24 hours and lost the work. Had to find them in saved designs.

[jophb]

I think my biggest concern/question is if customers are also experiencing this? I have had the worst sales days of the year in the days since this issue popped up again a few days ago. Which makes me think it may be possible customers are having this bot check pop up and making them so frustrated they leave?

[BevStuff]

I was coming into my store to share a new product and the "prove your human bot test," wouldn't even work when I "pressed" it. I was locked out of my store. Came here to report and there is still was. At least it worked then, but that bot too often gets stuck running the dots after being pressed while designing. It should not be interrupting a legitimately signed in designer. 😠  This is very unsatisfactory.

[Scott]

Apologies for a lack of response here. We are aware that this feature is negatively impacting your experience.

Note to the Z team, there's more comments here: https://community.zazzle.com/t5/general-zazzle-discussion/please-stop-the-press-amp-hold-button/m-p/...

[osea]

It suddenly appeared again to me too. I was working on a product design and then blocked. It is very troublesome.I already suggested for example to send and ask for O.T.P. on phone number or similars like google authenticator.

[osea]

Keeping pressed for 1-3 minutes, sometimes it works, but overally it seems not a well done solution.

[Shar-Ken]

Same thing here.  Hope it disappears soon.

[ZAZ-TD]

Me too ☹️ so frustrating. Couldn't get in the whole weekend and that's my main time for doing things in my shop.