topic Re: Product Deletions without Warning in Ask a Question

Product Deletions without Warning

ChromaMaven — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 16:16:50 GMT

1. Sometime on Oct. 26th in the evening, or early next morning, some of my products (10 or 12?) were deleted. I know this because I took a screenshot of my products page showing the total number of products I had in my store at the end of my work day. On the morning of the 27th, I noticed the amount was lower. I have no idea what products these were or why they were deleted. Would Zazzle please tell me what products were deleted and the reason(s)?

2. On Sept. 11th, I noticed in my Royalty by Product report, that many of my products had been deleted. I realized later this was due to font retirements. (I am well aware that many other designers had this issue.) In my case, my products that used the Symbols font were deleted without notice.

In one such case, a business invitation was deleted because I used one character from the Symbol font. The entire invitation is gone. This invitation brought in over $1,600 in sales. This is an incredible amount of work lost for me. This is frustrating because I could have replaced the character with something else. I contacted team.designer (no reply) and support told me that they couldn't help me.

As I am in the process of recreating these products (working from Pinterest pins or memory), I thought I would ask if Zazzle could reinstate these products so I can replace the retired fonts. Can Zazzle please reinstate these deleted products for me?

3. Moving forward, I would like to make a suggestion and ask if Zazzle could create a new product status (like the "needs optimization" status) and workflow to warn that products are flagged for deletion for X reason in X number of days. I would really appreciate this. Thanks so much for reading.

@Scott If you need any more information, please let me know. Thank you!

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

PAZP — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 17:25:46 GMT

GOOD LUCK. Besides a few other products, I had a whole category of products removed for that very reason. I used one character that caused them to all disappear. I too used Pins as reference to rebuild the entire category.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

PenguinPower — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 20:51:23 GMT

Same as PAPZ here.. I lost a whole category in my store because is a symbol too.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

Roberta — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 23:32:34 GMT

Hi @ChromaMaven

Thank you for highlighting this with us. Could you provide the screenshots of the products in question so that we can flag this with the team? 🙂 I will also make sure to go ahead and pass your suggestion on. Thank you!

Roberta 🌷

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

ChromaMaven — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 14:46:49 GMT

Thank you @Roberta

Here is the business invitation I mentioned above:

Another example (on many products (cards, buttons, pins, aprons)):

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

PenguinPower — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 15:08:58 GMT

Yeah - I lost everything based on this design because of the little swoosh... I could have replaced it with a graphic of my own if I'd at least had some notice... I'm lucky that I at least have some cover photos I made that I can recreate from.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

Marcia — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 17:04:52 GMT

Yeah, I used that same swoosh & lost around 15 or so products. I was online as they were disappearing so I was able to take some screensnaps & recreate most of them.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

PenguinPower — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 17:21:19 GMT

And it's not just the products that are lost.... it's the marketplace placement (via views and sales) and it's all of your own exposure - any pins, links etc. that you've got out there will lead to a "not found" even if you the products themselves get replaced. It is hard enough in the first place to build all of that stuff up and even get to a place where your designs are seen and sold... it's as disheartening to lose the progress as it is to lose the products.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

ChromaMaven — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 21:05:28 GMT

Indeed, and thank you.

As I am working through the process of repairing this situation, I go to Pinterest to find any images so I can recreate the product, then I go back and delete the pin. The "product not found page" does not help my store image. I imagine if a potential customer arrived on that page, they would just leave. (Sorry Z, I wish you would just redirect to the store.) I hope the lovely third party people who link to my products eventually replace the links and pins. My sales took a dive after this event and I am trying to recover as best I can.

Moving forward I would like to establish some best practices for myself (workflow and documentation) and I will probably reach out here to ask for guidance.

ps. I loved those swooshes and botanical thingies in the Symbol font. I will find or make some new graphics for myself.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

ChromaMaven — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 21:06:40 GMT

That was lucky! Good on you to act so quickly!

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

Marcia — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 00:22:42 GMT

I just happened to be online at the time. It was pretty disturbing seeing them disappear within a span of 15-20 minutes!

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

PenguinPower — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 00:29:53 GMT

Yeah- I finally took the time today to recreate what I lost - or at least what I know was lost, there could be other things that I just don't realized disappeared yet. I deleted as many Pinterest pins as I could, but anything that wasn't pinned to my own boards, I cannot find a way to delete or alter... I hate that if anyone clicks on those that it makes my store look unprofessional..

Oh - if you have access to Adobe fonts Cantoni flourishes and Cantoni ornaments which has some very similar swooshes and icons.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

Roberta — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 23:22:31 GMT

Hi @ChromaMaven

Apologies for the delay here! I've just sent your screenshots to our Team and hope to have an update soon 🙂

Roberta 🌷

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

ChromaMaven — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 14:56:14 GMT

Thanks, @Roberta. I appreciate it!

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

TheDesignerVib1 — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 18:24:44 GMT

I have also had a few things deleted without warning,

But i think there is a glitch with sales and views, i got a sale on a phone case (showed in my royalties)

but when i checked it in the product stats, it says the lasted views date was about 2 months ago, and 0 orders,

So the product stats aren't accurate.

Re: Product Deletions without Warning

Sweetheart — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 08:15:27 GMT

I have the same issue