Although I had no issues myself, I heard of this several times now. There are other ways to create accounts. But you have to pay the fees that otherwise would be payed by steemit.com.

Here's an article about this: https://steemit.com/news/@timcliff/new-tool-from-busy-org-create-new-steem-blockchain-accounts-with-steemconnect

https://v2.steemconnect.com/accounts/create

Simple Instructions - Pay the account creation fee (no delegation)

1. Go to https://v2.steemconnect.com/accounts/create
2. Enter the account name for the new account you want to create. The box will be green if the name is available; red if it is already in use.
3. Save and backup the password. It is extremely important that this does not get lost (including due to hard drive failures, fires, etc). If the key is lost, the account is lost. There is NO WAY to get back into the account without the key. Make sure it is safe!
4. Go to https://steemd.com/ and find the current value for account_creation_fee. Multiply the value by 30. Put this amount in for STEEM. (At the time of writing this post, the account creation fee is 0.5 STEEM, so "15.000 STEEM" goes into that field.)
5. Make sure you have at least that amount of STEEM in your account. (It should be liquid STEEM, not SP.)
6. Click "Continue".
7. Sign the transaction with your account and private active key.
8. That's it! The account is created. You can verify at https://steemd.com/@accountname.