Hi, I am so upset at the moment. A few minutes ago I received 27 back to back emails from Zazzle letting me know that there was a problem with the products from one of my collections and that they were going to be removed “shortly”. Since I have the rights to all the images used on my design I thought the problem must be on the title, description or tags. The only thing that I can think could be causing a problem is that I used the tag “very peri purple”. In less than 5 minutes all the products were deleted!! so I didn’t have a chance to make the simple tag change.
I sent right away an email reply to Zazzle’s content review team but it did not went through. I got an email back letting me know that the Zazzle’s content review team mailbox is full and can’t accept messages now. Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly!
I keep receiving emails as we speak, I guess the entire 37 products from the collection are getting removed!Can I please get a Zazzle moderator help me out. I took a huge deal of work and time to create all these products, I really hope there is a way to retrieve them and change the tag which would take a few minutes for each product.
Thanks in advance for your understanding, help and guidance.
For everyone else: please don’t use “very peri” purple tag. I thought it would be fine as is been widely used on Pinterest and internet. I have even seen invitations with “very peri” on their title!
So sorry you are going through this… it happens frequently to creators but there has never been any way for us to stop the deletion from happening. I can understand why items are taken down immediately but do wish there was another solution that wouldn’t negate all the hard work done to create those items.
I will be anxiously awaiting to hear if use of ‘very peri’ is the reason your products have been deleted because I’ve used that in some of my tags too. To the best of my knowledge it was OK to use Pantone color names as long as we didn’t use the word "Pantone’ anywhere. Here’s a link to an older discussion about this issue:
Thanks Bailey. I too thought it was okay to use pantone color names and I did not add “Pantone” on the tag, just “very peri purple”.
I do hope a moderator can see this and get back to me as soon as possible as I can not think what else could have cause a problem.
It does feel horrible to have some many products deleted in just a matter of a few minutes with no chance to re-do them or make a tag or title change which would have been a very easy fix. It probably took me about 15 working days to create them!
I’ll keep everyone posted, but just in case, I hope everyone check for any purple product that you might have with “very purple” in a tag or title and change it before you loose it!
I do understand they take the products out of the market right away, but there should be a way to get them hidden and give designers some time to get back to the product and fix whatever was the problem. I’m not asking for a lot of time, just something reasonable. This time I was right in front of my computer at the moment I received the emails and got right away to check them out, but all 20+ products were erased in less than 5 minutes giving me no chance at all to fix them. Soooo many hours of work deleted in a matter of a few minutes, just doesn’t seem right!
It is a reasonable to assume peri purple could be Pantone intellectual property and not use it without seriously researching it. The research is not worth the trouble because the term does not contribute to the product meta data only in the sense that someone might be searching for peri purple as a Pantone color. That tells the story right there. Peri purple is only useful as a Pantone color search. Another descriptor could easily be used instead.
Oh no! While I was writing this forum post 9 more products were deleted! I guess that means it actually is the “very peri purple” tag causing the problem as two of those products were from another “purple” collection!
Since Pinterest is full of very peri purple wedding ideas a lot of brides search for their invitations and event products like that…Still, I just wish I had the opportunity to change the tag which is a simple change and would have taken me only a few minutes by product!
I think you’re right about the color being the culprit. I had products up for a long time in the marketplace, and all of a sudden they were removed recently. I was so confused and had no idea why. It turns out one of my tags was a Pantone color (and I did not use “Pantone” as a tag if I remember correctly). Sorry about your products - I totally agree there should be a 24 hour window or something where we should be able to edit the product. I don’t understand why they can’t just be hidden.
My thoughts exactly. I feel so disrespected, as if all the work invested was non important for Zazzle. They were also good seller products, so it is not just my loss, it is Zazzle loss as well!
I can feel your pain - I had some products removed too (I used the quote that was copyrighted even though used casually) and no chance to correct the design… So, I think it would be a great idea if the product taken from the site was available for EDIT!
This is a long-standing issue. On Zazzle’s end of things is the absolute need to avoid lawsuits, and we do know how much people or corporations love to bring lawsuits. It seems that Zazzle uses a search algorithm that feeds on a database of all the words and phrases that are copyrighted or trademarked, and the take-down emails are automatic along with the deletions. Right in there lies the problem. Though it’s easy for them, it’s a mini-death for us. We’ve all requested that there be some sort of holding period, giving us a chance to correct the words, but as far as I know, they’ve never posted a response to our pleas. If we at least had an explanation of why there can’t be a holding period, it would help. Could it be that the deletions happen more often than we realize and thus it would require a load more work for reviewers? I don’t know, but I sure would like to.
I’ve explained it before, there is no “privatizing the design, holding it back, removing from marketplace to be fixed” because as long as the item in question exists zazzle opens itself up to lawsuits. Sites like zazzle, Amazon, YouTube, Twitch are protected from lawsuits as long as they follow through with the cease and desist and remove the offending content when asked. If they receive a order to remove someone’s IP and ignore it, they open themselves up to be sued directly.
It sucks for us but, I have never had a product removed because I know how serious even attempting to use someone else’s IP is. It’s our responsibility to do our due research in the first place. I read this year that pantone wasn’t going to allow us to use their color names, I’ve never used them.
Even though I’m not from zazzle, you don’t have to work there to know these things, it’s pretty basic. Hope everyone has a good weekend and tries not to stress over this.
good advice not to use Pantone or their color names (although it seems patently (and yes, I mean to use this descriptor) unfair that some of the more common modifiers are also used by Pantone – e.g. Deep Blue and Classic Blue – to say nothing of the more esoteric ones like Mykonos Blue or Mediterranean Blue).
I thought colors couldn’t be trademarked (I recall that not 30 years ago, at least one business (whose name has escaped my memory) wanted to copyright “blue” as part of their brand but had to modify this to “blu”, but apparently since 1995, they can, as per the article below:
Colors are such an odd thing to trademark. For instance, anyone can describe something as being brown unless it’s being used to compete with or indicate UPS. Pantone, on the other hand, uses fancy names for colors they’ve concocted, and it appears it’s only their fancy name that can by truly protected unless they run around with chemistry kits testing tubes of artists’ paints. As for things other than color, there are companies like Daisy (sour cream) that can protect their name only in instances of like products, examples of which are all over the place in TESS. I’ve a number of products featuring a daisy or two and without ramification.
If Zazzle has the product hidden so that nobody but the designer can see it, how can they possibly be open to lawsuits? The people trying to sue don’t know it exists!
That’s good to know about Pantone- we’ve always been allowed to use the color names as long as there was no reference to Pantone. They’ve been getting extremely greedy lately, though, so it’s not too surprising.
As per @RodneyK , I sat here wondering just how many customers search for Pantone colors specifically. I even wondered about true names such as cobalt blue, cerulean, cadmium orange, etc. I bet most people who are set on a specific color search for blue, blue-green, orange, and so on. Down, I say, down with Pantone!
