I just noticed that a Zazzle QR code is showing up on the back of my cards. Did I miss an announcement about this? Unfortunately it messes up my logo and information I just created after Zazzle changed the attributions on the back a short while ago.
It’s my understanding that the QR code will bring the customer directly to our store, which is great in some ways, but it might take away from my referrals, as I was putting my website on the back of my cards.
YIKES After we had the white line going across the bottom, I moved my attribution above that so it wasn’t blocked out by the white line. Now the QR code is blocking part of what I started doing after the last change. The QR code is so small on my screen but I got it to give me the z homepage link but when I click on it I’m getting a 404 error code. SHRUG
If this is the new change PLEASE allow us to edit all the most recent designs we’ve added since the last change trying to accommodate the white line along the bottom.
I have been here for a lonnnnng time and I could swear that. at one point, a designer simply could not add anything at all in the bottom half of the back of a greeting card. This might be a good practice to reinstate. This way, Zazzle could make changes to the back of cards at any time, and no designs would ever be impacted, as long as the Zazzle use stayed within the reserved area.
I am feeling happy that my reaction to the first attribution kerfuffle was to simply stop putting anything on the back of a card.
I am feeling consternations with regard to my postcard blog now, however. I have checked a few cards on the site since reading this news. I see that the black box is appearing , not yet on all postcards, but on some, and it’s smack dab where people write the address. I do not think placing a code where the address appears is a good plan. Zazzle’s reputation as a poor postcard purveyor may well intensify. Postcrossers do not want their cards getting lost in the mail because a QR code is messing up the post office machine reader codes now in use in so many countries.
You remember correctly. There used to be a square at the upper part of the card back that allowed us to put our attribution. After the last change, the entire card back was open. I too quit putting my attribution on some but decided to do what I mentioned in my last post. Frustrating.
I now have over 100 highly designed birthday cards and lots of holiday cards where this new attribution covers my own. This is so upsetting. None of these should sell now… at least not till they are redone. And this after fixing all of them for the old attribution. Countless hours of work thrown away. So frustrating!
At least it can be removed… but I had designed all my cards so that the customer did no have to pay for removing the attribution… Not sure I really feel like redoing all my cards again. Walking away for a bit…
@SORS (Shower of Roses Shoppe). No, you didn’t miss an announcement. There wasn’t any. Once again, Zazzle has implemented a far-reaching change with no advance warning to the people most affected, we designers.
@PacifierCity Thanks for posting an example, JB. I was coming here to ask Shower of Roses to post one.
I feel your pain. Your very well-designed cards are spoiled by this most inconsiderate intrusion.
After the blowback on the attribution fiasco, I would have thought it common courtesy to notify us in advance about such a change and not have us stumble across it on a Friday afternoon at the close of the business day.
My card backs are much simpler than yours. Still, like Shower of Roses Shoppe, I too have my own logo and information on the back of my cards. In fact, since Day 1, I have had my own QR code there. Zazzle’s will be redundant if they do not provide an opt-out or an easy method of removal. I have no intention of wasting my time yet again cleaning up a mess not of my making.
I just started the LONG process of clicking the “remove attribution” block on affected greeting cards and postcards. I would rather be adding new designs.
It’s so frustrating. I got my customer’s message “I was looking at the card and it shows a barcode scan, that won’t be on the card will it? I just want the card to be simple and it takes away from the card if that’s on it.” I am afraid that we, the designers, will loose a lot of our customs because of this new addition. Please remove this.
@Zazzle Could you simply lower it so that it occupies the space that was the white banner from before? It looks like this new attribution would fit in that space.
It would also be nice if you could add a line in the design tool that designates space under this line is subject to future Zazzle attribution changes… best not to place anything important, design wise, below this line. Then you could do whatever you want with that space and savvy designers will not have their designs affected in such a negative way. It would improve your reputation with your designer community too. Sadly as this is discovered, there are going to be a lot of upset designers, and with a lot of folks not participating in the new community forum, you will not receive as much negative feedback about it… but so many are still going to be really upset.
Finding a common solution to this problem should be high on the priority list. I personally have been building out a website for my cards and that work has to stop now. I’ll have to redo my cards and then redo all the images on the website too… unless you lower the attribution.
I do like that the attribution is smaller in scope. I do like that you have taken up a QR code. Overall, I think it is a much better fit than the last attempt. I think it would be great if it lead to our stores instead of the Z homepage. If that ended up being the case then many of us could remove our own attributions. Then if we could lock Z’s and not allow it to be removed, it would be a win win in my book. But that is only if the attribution lead to my store.
I’m going to give it some time before I start making changes to my cards. See if you might lower this new attribution. That would save me tons of work. But know that if a new attribution comes out again and ruins my cards, I’m likely to either just leave them and stop making new cards or I’ll delete them and look for a new home for my cards. It is true that people won’t be able to personalize them as much as they can here, but I won’t have to worry about wasting hours upon hours of work because my card host keeps changing things. And that will be a win in my book.
I would also like to point out that it is nice that you did hear the community when we told you the last attribution was no good. I see that as a positive! With a little tweaking as far as location is concerned and then I will be OK, at least for my bifold and trifold cards.
Thanks for reading and considering the suggestion about lowering the new attribution on the cards,
Just noticed thanks to the 2 posts. IMO, on the folded greeting cards it looks way better than the previous variant, and, at least in my case, even if customers uncheck the attribution by accident, it doesn’t completely destroy the backside design. As you see here:
IMO, we designers should have the publishing option to completely disable that attribution thing on the product page, to make sure, our customers don’t uncheck it by accident and then blame the result on us.
Plus they have to fix the problem with the stretched/enlarged special characters in our texts (see the heart symbol in my cards). Apparently, they’re showing special characters like hearts now in a standard font instead of taking the original characters of the font used - the hearts as an example look all the same, and on cursive fonts, they look awful, besides being out of proportion. I really can’t understand, why things that work well, have to be changed for the worse *sigh*
Dangit! not again… sigh. Thankfully I have not got hundreds of cards that I have to go through AGAIN to make sure they are not all screwed up AGAIN. Does Zazzle think we don’t have better things to do than fix stuff that is “improved” ???
Is this why an order for 48 postcards two days ago was cancelled the next day?
I can’t get it to work for me anymore… not from the product page or the backend. I really didn’t need this added stress of fixing things that Z broke AGAIN!
Update: I guess it is working after all, there is just a lag in the time it takes for me to be able to see the changes.
The funny thing is, you cannot fix it, just hide it. Until the customer plays around… “Oh! What’s that? I can save 5 cents? Strange, it does nothing” (hard to see anything if you’re on the front page preview)… and forgets to set it back again, with the result we all know and that can lead to your canceled (or, even worse, returned) 48 cards, yup.
