Press and Hold to confirm you are a human while LOGGED AND IN DESIGN TOOL

[Anne]

I am trying to create new products, but while LOGGED IN AND IN THE DESIGN TOOL I constantly have to press and hold to confirm I am a human. Am I now suspected of being an alien or what?
Can this please be fixed? Thank you.

[Anne]

Edit: now also happening when trying to add a product to a collection.

[homespuncottage]

This bot is beyond annoying. It really slows me down. So, I have a two monitor set up, probably like most designers, I usually am working in two windows, an now the bot won't approve the second window. OMG! Please do something about this. 

[Jadendreamer13]

I’ve been having the same issue.

[Cat]

I agree it's SUPER frustrating, especially when it kicks you out of the design tool. BUT it does make me wonder if they've been dealing with some sort of hack or attack that has caused all of the recent problems. While I'm certainly not a fan of having to be interrupted again and again while I'm trying to work, if it's preventing more chaos on the backend then it's well worth it.

[Connie]

That chaos on the back end wasn't nearly as disruptive as this stupid bot popup!

[mgdesigns]

When the last Zazzle problems happened, I reported strange behavior with views so I think it might be related. But this is not something we can live with as they implied. They have to find a solution or it will be impossible to work here.

[Connie]

Yes, I complained about this awful bug a few days ago! There is no need to have it repeatedly pop up after we are already logged in and working. We can't suddenly magically change into a bot after being a human!

[Cat]

Maybe, but what if somebody has created a bot that creates bogus accounts and then auto-generates a million products that fill the marketplace with garbage so none of our designs can be seen? Remember the solid black designs that were filling up all of the searches a week or 2 ago? 4th of July Mugs Spam Attack - Zazzle

I'm not denying that the hold and press thing is disruptive and frustrating, but I don't think they're doing it just to make our lives difficult. I'm sure there's a good reason. 

p.s. I'm saying all this as much for myself as I am for anyone else - I just have to keep repeating "there's probably a good reason for this" when what I really feel like doing is screaming into the void because I got kicked out of the design tool AGAIN when all I'm trying to do is get a little work done! 😉

[Mistica]

If there is a reason, it would be nice if we were told there is a reason....and what the reason might be.

[Cat]

It would be nice, but it would probably be imprudent for them to do so. "Loose lips sink ships" as they say - if it is an attack of some sort, you don't want to tip off the hackers and inadvertently give them info that they might be able to use to circumvent your efforts to stop them. It's probably not even wise for me to speculate about it on a public forum!

[Connie]

They don't have to go into detail. Just let us know it's not a bug, but a feature, and we have to deal with it from now on. 

[mgdesigns]

-

[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.

[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.

[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