Beware of these Chats that begin with "Hi Creator, I have a question about [this product]"

[WHS_Designs]

I've gotten a few of these chat requests this week.

The user does not elaborate on the product link. Which forces you to ask, "What can I help you with?" 
So it's very much like click bait.

The discussion that follows afterwards has NOTHING to do with the product link they've attached.
They go straight to asking sensitive questions like how your sales are, etc.

IMHO, if this is a genuine customer (or potential customer), they would ask their opening question as it pertains to the product link they've referenced right away.

[alissag]

The only bright spot, is that it looks like Zazzle is getting better at recognizing and removing these as spam. Had one last week. After sending my own vague how can I help you message, I didn't hear back then noticed Zazzle had deleted the message string.

[WHS_Designs]

@alissag 
 
I've blocked these spammers, however, I think blocking them doesn't remove them as store followers, though. Another email to Zazzle may be necessary. 

[DancingPelican]

When I click on any other designer's product and test sending them a chat message, Zazzle automatically starts my message with "Hi Creator, I have a question about your product:  https://www.zazzle.com/ the product name and product number is inserted here".  The message sender can ask whatever they want. They are not all spam or people asking inappropriate questions. That is how all chat messages default unless coming from the Zazzle app or the message sender could delete the Zazzle auto text and insert their own words.  Test it out on one of my products and you will see your chat message starts with "Hi Creator, I have a question about your product.....".

[WHS_Designs]

@DancingPelican 

yes, but when these chats start asking about how my sales are doing, if I'm selling elsewhere, if I've hired experts, if I can help teach them how to use Zazzle to set up their own store, then that's plenty of red flags, and it's time to end the conversation and block the user. 

in the case of the first chat I received this week, Zazzle auto-blocked the user (but I continued to get emails notifying me that the user was still chatting with me).

[DancingPelican]

Yes, I get that and agree, you should block those. I was just responding to the subject of your thread that warned us to beware of chat messages that begin with "Hi Creator, I have a question about your product:" That verbiage is automatically inserted by Zazzle.

[WHS_Designs]

@DancingPelican got it ... unfortunately, I couldn't really add more to it -- having maxed out my character count for the title 🙂 

[DancingPelican]

I understand! 🙂  Chat has its frustrations, for sure!