I've been trying to access one of my accounts online for the past few days and it keeps giving me:

"We're sorry! Our website is unavailable right now, while we perform System maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please stop by later today, when our site will be back up and running."

However, on my other accounts I'm able to log on just fine. Has anyone else encounted this problem?

This account CH isn't letting me access is also the account I made all the "99 cent" purchases off of, if that means anything.

After reading this I went to check the account I used for 99 centers. After entering my password it took me to a page for members of the video club telling me they no longer carried VHS and I am now a member of the DVD club. There I could click a login link that took me to another page where I was finally able to log in. Very strange.

On the other hand my TV edition account approved today is also giving me error messages whenever I try to access certain areas. So it may just be buggy as usual.

I also have an account having no issues. So draw your own conclusions.

I am having the same issue on my TVEdition account that I just received approved for. My regular dvd account is not having an issue.

I haven't been able to access my account for a few days now also. I can access the main page and occassionaly a couple of other pages but eventually get the down for system maintenance error and can't access my order history no matter what. All emails also bounce back that I have been able to send.

Is this random or are they having site wide issues for most everyone?

You could try deleting your cookies if you have trouble accessing the website, and email difficulties might be related to your firewall. Try disabling it when sending emails.

Cookies never changed anything (tried it) and emails are sent via their system so my personal firewall wouldn't affect that.

I take it this is only affecting a very small amount of users then. Could it be selective and, if so, why (as the worst I've done is take advantage of the creative selection "glitch", never had more than 2 accounts nor even that many over the past few years, ordered too many copies, etc)?

it's happening to me quite frequently these days...it either says down for system maintenance or that i'm not logged in at times.

I've been having problems all week. I can log into my account, but when I click on a link (say to respond to my Director's Selection), I get the System Maintenance message. I also get a web server "500" error:

URLDecoder: Illegal hex characters in escape (%) pattern - u2

Does anyone else get this?

PS - This happens both for Firefox and IE.

Every time I have had this happen on one of my accounts I have been able to fix it by logging out of that account then logging in again. This resets the cookie for that account. If you can't log out, try logging in then hitting the log out button at the top right as soon as you see it. Then you should be able to log in normally again.

Try to always log out of an account when leaving the Columbia House website, as a general practice.

If this doesn't work (I would be surprised) then it is time to call up Columbia House (on Monday, not today) and ask to speak to a "web specialist".

I'm having the exact same problem on my TV Club account. I can log in to the welcome screen, but virtually every link I try from there sends me to the 500 error. I first noticed the problem Tuesday 8/16.

Unfortunately, logging out and clearing cookies has no effect. In the distant past I experienced the log-in problem lizard is describing that can crop up if you log out improperly, but this instance is different for me in that it actually lets you log in to the welcome screen rather than sending you to a sign-in error.

I did return return a boxset on this account a couple of weeks ago for replacement due to scratched discs. Before reading of everyone else's difficulties I thought that perhaps some csr had monkeyed around in the account making a manual update thus screwing something up, but now it seems more widespread. I'll give it a few more days to right itself before calling a web specialist.

I'm just glad it's a TV Club account as I can't really cycle those given the limited and rather static selection. What CH needs to do is ship my Thin Man Collection DVD Club fulfillment so I can get on with my boxset fulfillment plan. Fred & Ginger, Garbo, Essential McQueen, Veronica Mars, Nip/Tuck S2, League of Gentlemen S2&3, and BSG S1(hoping this shows up) all need a kind, loving home, CH. Namely mine!!!

I called CH this morning and it turned out the CSR was also a web specialist She was able to duplicate the problem that I was having with none of the links working after logging in. I also mentioned that several others are experiencing the same problem. She submitted a report to their data center so hopefully we'll see a resolution soon.

Wouldn't they have an error log that should have shown them all the errors long before having customers report it to them?

This has my exact same problem for over a week now with my TV account. Several emails to them provide no help or explanation. They advise me to contact my PC maker and internet provider, yet the problem is certainly with their website.

Okay, I have a fix that is working for me. Tried it twice. Log in. Then add an item to your cart. After adding an item everything worked fine. All links became active. Then you can remove the item and everything still works. Hope this helps others.

Thanks Tim, worked like a charm. BTW, this bug seems to only happen with all of my TV accounts. It doesn't happen at all with my regular DVD club account. It always amazes me about the amount of glitches that CH has with their site(the mysteries of CH).

Curses, this didn't work for me. After clicking "add to cart" on one of the front page featured titles, I immediately get the website unavailable message.

Click the back button. The item should be in your cart and you should now be able to access the different links.

My account is back to normal now, no cart tricks required.

Ah, you're awesome! I'm back to normal.