My account and store was deleted, WHY?

[orson]

Im on Zazzle for more than 6 years and now my store and also an account was deleted, all my products removed. Why? I used ONLY my own photos. Can somebody help me?

[Scott]

I would contact Customer Care and start a conversation there. https://www.zazzle.com/about/ask

There's not much we'll be able to do here since you're posting from a different account.

[orson]

I did it, will see if they answer. The store name was dubanci, link: https://www.zazzle.com/dubanci Now it just list some of my products (all with acorn elves), but when you click on some of them you will get just not found answer 😞

[JB]

That is odd. I can see the products but yeah when I click any of them, it says not found.  Those little acorn guys sure are cute! I hope you get it resolved.

[MasterpieceCafe]

Are you Petr Václavek?

https://acornelves.com/trademark/

[orson]

Yes, thats me! I have several websites - acornelves.com, dubanci.cz and also pages on twitter, facebook. And yes, I have a trademark on acorn elf character.

[MasterpieceCafe]

You need to reply to the email you received and explain that you are the copyright holder. The email should contain the reason for the take down. 

Super cute acorn people!

[orson]

Well, the problem is, that I didn't get any email/notice about it. I found it because several fans of my project wanted to buy calendars, but they were not available on the site.

[MasterpieceCafe]

Hmmm, Zazzle always sends an email explaining why something is deleted. Have you checked your spam folder?

[orson]

Sure! That was the first step. Nothing found from zazzle 😞

[Anne]

I'm trying to understand this.
@orson So you have a trademarked design store and then everything was closed down based on what?
Does this mean that a thief could have reported you and is now selling your work on Amazon or God knows where?
I hope I am wrong, but I find this very disturbing.
This also brings up the point (again) of the policies of Zazzle on these issues.
It is my understanding that it would usually be a copyright violation or even something like accidentally using the wrong tags. I can understand putting the products on "hidden" until it is sorted. But you clearly did not have the option to show your trademark documentation and the thief (or whoever) just got all the rights, without you being able to defend yourself. 
This just makes me cry. 

[orson]

Actually I still dont know why they closed my account. There is not any thief, they just closed my account. Maybe it is possible, that I use some wrong keyword, or there was some other problem, but I didn't get any notice / information.

[orson]

5 days ago I send a message on Zazzle customer support, in the automatic response was, that they will answer within 1-2 business days...  😞 

[Anne]

@orson I also have that experience. I hope they will reply soon, wishing you lots of success in this.

[Lais]

I can only think of two possibilities.

1. Someone reported your designs and Z, not knowing that you're actually the real creator of the trademark, automatically deleted your account.
2. Someone hacked your account, accessed it, and deleted it all.

I really hope in any case you can get your store and all of your designs back to Zazzle. 

[EvalineMae]

Me too. Although I'm not able to help I'm keeping everything crossed for you. I can only imagine how upsetting this must be and hope it's resolved soon.

[orson]

First reply from support:

Hello Petr,

It has been brought to our attention that you have uploaded various Content to our Site that is in violation of our User Agreement and Policies.  Unlicensed use of others’ copyrighted, trademarked or otherwise protected intellectual property is prohibited, and our records indicate that we have notified you of multiple content violations in your Account. 

Your actions violate our Policies and/or constitute repeat infringements, and we have therefore terminated your Zazzle Account according to our User Agreement. 

Looks like there is no possibility to discuss, to talk about it, they even don't want to show me the image / product where I use of others’ copyrighted, trademarked or otherwise protected intellectual property. 

Realy bad from Zazzle. Do you anybody have any idea, what to do?

[Lais]

So that's option 1.

Explain to them that you are actually the owner of Acorn Elves, that you have a trademark, an official website, and so on. If you have documents that prove it, attach such documents. 

[Lais]

*When I say "option 1", I mean "1" from my previous comment.

[EvalineMae]

Additionally, have a search through your spam and archive folders and see if you can find any of these notifications of 'multiple content violations'. They may shed some light on the issue if you can unearth them. It's always possible it was a tag that suited your work but unknown to you was trademarked by someone else.

I'd like to be encouraging but many of us have accidentally deleted selling products, in my case one of my top selling ornaments, and it seems there is nothing they can do to retrieve products once gone. Even so, it is worth fighting to get your store reinstated if such a thing is possible. It sounds like you've either fallen victim of some malicious claim or have innocently tripped a filter with multiple re-use of a tag. I hope something can be done to solve this mystery and get you back up and running here.

[MasterpieceCafe]

I assume you responded to this email with your proof of being the copyright holder? I think you should copy <email removed> on that email, they might be able to give you additional support.

It seems like just a miscommunication. They should be able to fix this for you.

I think you should add that English is not your first language, so there may be some terminology you aren't familiar with.

[Scott]

Please do not share Pro email addresses in public discussion boards.

[MasterpieceCafe]

I'm so sorry! For some reason I thought I was in a different forum. I'll pay better attention going forward.

[CreativeLeahG]

Do you have an update on this for us?

[orson]

No, after 12 days of no rely I contacted them via online Chat and the guy on the chat promised me, that  he emailed the management team and asked somebody to reply to my latest email. 

I will inform you later, how it continues.

[MasterpieceCafe]

Looks like your store is back!!! Were all of your products restored?

[Lais]

Unfortunately, it's not back. I believe he created a new one. The link to the original store was zazzle.com/store/dubanci. 

[MasterpieceCafe]

Oh, you're right. I should have looked at the creation date for these products. Well, I suppose it's a win that he could recreate these products. But not being restored is disappointing.

[AcornElves]

The truth is that they have not responded to my last emails at all. I tried to contact them via chat, where they promised to have the relevant team look at my email, but no reply. So after several attempts I gave up and set up a new store.

The author support on Zazzle is not very good and the authors are pulling a lot of short ends, but I guess there's nothing we can do about that 😞 Plus Zazzle doesn't have much competition in the amount of products and the way they create products and deal with commissions.