3pm rare - Thoughtful Think Tank

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There is a new user agreement to approve as you log into accounts as of Friday morning. You'll see part of it has references to a 'webkinz estore' http://www.webkinzestore.com as where you can buy webkinz item ... Is this the launch of the long rumored webkinz code store?

Webkinz has forced ebay and other auction sites to remove auctions that are 'code only' sales, meaning you can buy the code without a pet - something that is pretty handy if you are a big collector and don't want a huge pile of the actual stuffed animals. It also is cheaper than getting the pet and makes it easy if your area doesn't have that pet yet. Our favorite webkinz seller on ebay had to leave ebay and go out on his own because they told him no more 'code only' auctions.

We always assumed it webkinz was going to enter the market with their own 'code only' store.

Here is one section of the new agreement that references that:



The address webkinzestore.com doesn't come up yet for us. I keep getting a problem loading it but you can tell it is trying to load something.

I'm fairly sure that new user agreement has to do with the new My Options section that lets you turn off 'third party ads' - which are ads from anyone BUT Ganz. If you turn it off, you can't re-activate it for 30 days. I suspect that if you turn it off that will mean also campaigns like the Bee Movie and chipmunk Movie that have giveaways will be blocked on your account.

UPDATE - none of my other accounts has given me this screen and that site still isn't up. I think they must have pulled that agreement until later and we ended up getting a sneak peak!

I checked online to confirm that Ganz does own that domain and it is registered to them:

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: WEBKINZESTORE.COM
Created on: 19-Nov-07
Expires on: 19-Nov-09
Last Updated on: 10-Dec-07

Administrative Contact:
Ganz Inc
1 Pearce Road
Woodbridge, Ontario l4l3t2
Canada

They also own webkinzstore.com too but it has some webkinz shop in New Jersey on that site, not something run by Ganz. I suspect Ganz bought the domain from them.