Doesn't seem right and what to do about it

[randysgrandma]

I got a notice on Pinterest about "Other boards I might be interested in". I was just curious so I clicked on one of them. I found one my cards pictured on the board. However, the link did not go to my card but too a different one with a similar theme. In fact, all the links on any of the the various cards on the board went to the same card, not the card pictured. There are 33 different cards pictured on the board, all of them Zazzle cards and all of them, when clicked on, go back to the same card as mine did. Hope that makes sense.
I like for people to share my work, but I don't like for them to use my work and not link it back to my work. 
What should I do? 

[J32Design]

Just file copyright claim (DMCA) with Pinterest. They will remove it. I have done this many times before. Never had a problem with them.

https://policy.pinterest.com/en/copyright

[Windy]

It sounds to me like MAYBE what happened is that the Pinterest poster meant to link to your card, but entered the wrong address.  This can happen by mistake. I have done it a few times, and when I noticed it I fixed it. 

[randysgrandma]

I could accept it as an accident if every card on the board, 33 in all, did not link back to the very same card which is not the card shown in the image. That doesn't seem accidental. The poster would have had to accidentally enter the wrong link 33 times. I did contact Pinterest and they took my specific card down. But that leaves 32 other Zazzle cards that link back to the wrong card. Sorry I can't share the link to the board on here. 

[WittyBetty]

It wasn't an accident, it's a well known scammy practice; someone posts a pic of a product and links it to their own product; more often than not it's automated (they use bots for this). It has nothing to do with promoting your products; it's them promoting their own products. It's against Pinterest rules so you have all the rights to report this board.

[KeegansCreation]

I am baffled at how this makes sales for the scammer. In the brick and mortar stores where this originated ("bait and switch"), the advertised item "just sold out, it was so popular" but people had already made the trip and sometimes bought something else. But no trip has been made in the case of a link. There is no "might as well, we're already here". There's only the annoyance of a misdirected link. But it must work enough times that it's worth the bot setup. Still baffles me how everybody doesn't just click away in annoyance.

[JerryLambert]

Because product views boost MP ranking and SEO. 

[KeegansCreation]

Ahhh. That makes sense.

[Windy]

I agree that the 33 instances seems deliberate. ( I was thinking along the lines of the automation so many people seem to use for creating Pins, and that there might be a mistake in that. ). I am glad Pinterest resolved that one you reported!

[KC]

This happened to me in the past. See if they all have the same affiliate link. 

Hover over the pin on pinterest and check out the number at the end. Then send an email to the design team email at Zazzle. 

[randysgrandma]

They same person posted all the cards, since they are all on her board. I did think about contacting Zazzle, but it is so hard to figure out how to contact them and who to contact. And I so hate to get people in trouble. The name under each card is the same and includes the name of the designer but it is obvious the cards pictured were not made by the person they were credited to since all of them link to same card on Zazzle. I don't know if the person who created the board is the designer or someone trying to get boosts for the designer. The designer will be getting views that are fraudulent and getting a MP boost that is unfair to all of us that do things right.  I did a little detective work and found out who she is, if the name she is using is her real name, and it appears to be judging by her designs. No use reporting her she is pretty famous. 

[WittyBetty]

The designer might might or might not be involved in this fraudulent activity; and it's not Zazzle but Pinterest where you can report this board. Zazzle can't control how designers or affiliates choose to advertise. But Pinterest can. They would simply delete the board, so there will be less scam on the platform which is their goal. Also, anyone who is doing scammy advertising well deserves the trouble and they KNOW that one day their boards may be deleted (again, the designer might have no idea that someone promotes her products using shady schemes but if it's her she is prepared to get her scammy boards deleted). You have nothing to worry about.

[mylittleeden]

Yes I have discovered via google searches my artwork clicked gone to pinterest and then click again on my artwork only to go to a completely different page. I contacted the pinner and Pinterest it did eventually get removed... just took some time and working out.

Unfortunately these things happen from time to time...

[Connie]

It doesn't matter how famous somebody is- if they are scammers they need to be reported, over and over if necessary. People get so big and then they think they can just step all over everybody else and use unfair practices to get rid of the competition.

[randysgrandma]

I really don't think it was the designer that created the board and posted the cards. No sense accusing someone with no proof and, in fact doubts, that she had anything to do with it. 

[KC]

If it's someone using a Zazzle affiliate link and intentionally mis-representing the products and linking incorrectly, based on my past experience, they do want to know about it. A large batch of misleading posts to Z ultimately hurts Z within the Pinterest realm.

One has to manually create pins with the wrong photo/link combination. So it's abuse of the regular affiliate program AND violates Pinterest's rules. And if they are using other designer's images and providing a clean link to their own products, its mis-use of the promoter program. 

[CreativeLeahG]

I am wondering why someone 'famous' ( or anyone to be honest) would need to resort to this? Especially if their own designs are gaining them sales. It seems very bizarre. If people are clicking a link due to YOUR image, the affiliate could gain a lovely fat 15% referral, which is unlikely if they find they arrive at a card not the same as the one in the image. Chance are the user would click away. 15% referral fee lost! Definitely contact the designer and see what they have to say. Put your mind at rest.

[Connie]

Can you at least message us the link to the board through Zazzle Chat, so we can see if they are stealing our items also? Also, the more people that report them to Pinterest, the better.

[randysgrandma]

I will post link to the Pinterest board only if I get an ok from Zazzle administrators. It is not worth getting myself in trouble. The problem is the board has the designer's name in the title of each of the cards and that would be like calling out the designer which Zazzle does not allow. 

[Barbara]

Is there a new way to go to the boards of someone re-pinning one of our products? I ask because when I click on a person in my notifications, I'm sent to a strange page showing my product without any info whatsoever. The only way to find the pinner is by running a search of the name. Has something changed and I haven't kept up with that change?

[Windy]

I have noticed the same, and find this extremely frustrating. I thought we were supposed to try to get people to follow our boards.....but how can I follow a board if I cannot even see the board the image is posted to? 

I find as well that Pinterest on my iPad is nothing like Pinterest on my desktop. and even on my iPad it is completely different, with different capabilities, depending on whether I am using the Pinterest app or the website seen through Chrome. Also, when I click on any Zazzle product in Pinterest, I find myself in Spanish Zazzle and I am not logged in. So.....to me Pinterest is just a ridiculous unusable jumble of not much.

[ColsCreations]

My Pinterest is a business account so it may be different for non-business accounts, I don't know, but how it works for me is:

 1) I get the notification on Pinterest that someone Saved my pin.
2) I click that notification, which takes me to my pin on my board
3) at top of that pin I click "see more stats"
4) from there I can scroll down and see "Saved to these Boards"
 - this shows me all the boards others have saved (re-pinned) my pin to

If I choose one of those boards, scroll around til I find my pin on it, and then click on my pin from there, I see one of two things depending on what type of pin it was.

A) If it's a pin I created I see on the pin that it was originally uploaded by me and then at the bottom, the User who re-pinned it and on what board.

* Note: Pinterest's stats are a little out of sync with each other. For the above pin for example, the stats bar says it has been Saved twice.  But if I click on "see more stats" and then "saved to these boards", I can see it has actually been saved to 4 different boards

B) If it's a pin I simply auto-pinned direct from a claimed site, the pin itself doesn't note who saved it or to where.

 Which is fine because I can see in step #4 above what all boards others have saved/re-pinned it to.  🙂

[PAZP]

Thanks @ColsCreations You are a wealth of information. I too had noticed what @Barbara mentioned and even when checking on the stats didn't realize I could find out which boards. I just checked one of mine and even though it was saved to two boards, the stat on my pin shows one. SHRUG

[Barbara]

@ColsCreations  Thank you!

I swear, every time Pinterest changes something (just for the sake of changing something), it becomes even unfriendlier.

[Shakenbake]

Yeah I dont understand Pinterest anymore at all lol. (and they are also going the route of Instagram and everywhere else where video clips are becoming KING SMFH) but whenever I pin something directly from Zazzle and view it, i can never see the collection I put it in from that view anymore, and if I click on any other similar items like it, i can't see what collection they are in either. It's like Pinterest strips out all the info and just keeps the link to zazzle now. Idk. maybe im doing something wrong. but i dont know if i have the energy to figure out. I used to know pinterest and doing okay there but i left it alone for a year or so and came back and dont know her anymore, lmao 

[Windy]

@PAZP  and @ColsCreations  I find that I can see more boards to which an item was shared if I change the time period from 30 days to 180 days. 

[PAZP]

Good recommendation. I hadn't thought of that.

[CreativeLeahG]

I think you should contact the designer at least as they might be completely oblivious and mortified about this and they can of course take the pins down themselves if they're on one of their own boards?

[CreativeLeahG]

I was just twiddling to see how this might even be possible. If a user was adding pins via a 'website link' (rather than the share feature) generally a range of images will pop up. Someone (novice, affiliate?) might be going bananas and adding every image. I just had a go re a sample design to see if this was possible and only the inteneded design images appeared along with a Zazzle logo image when doing this via Zazzle. But it might be the case that in the past, more images (from the similar designs to this) etc popped up?

Meanwhile re Google, many times my designs would show in Google, but when clicked, the items the user was directed to were NOT mine. And that was a Zazzle thing. Not sure if that still happens as this was years ago. That was annoying.