It never ceases to amaze me what bad decisions some corporate executives can make. But here comes a brand new one…
Three years ago I gave VistaPrint.com a try for some cards or something. Who cares what it was… I had a bad experience. I wrote about it on my blog. End of story. Except that it wasn’t. Many other people have since chimed in on that topic, one of whom is someone by the name of “Hubbers”. He claims to have had a really bad experience and then did a whole bunch of research to suggest that VistaPrint is associated with some fairly shady dealings.
I have no idea if that is true or false, but the information certainly seems to have some validity to it. Furthermore, I spot checked some of Hubber’s claims and the information presented does appear to be fact based. But I never would have known this if I hadn’t been forced to do the research when I received the following email from VistaPrint HQ!
UPDATE: Stop the presses! VistaPrint is NOT threatening to sue me! Their Ex-partner Adaptive Affinity Ltd is!
After putting out a tweet regarding this post I was contacted by Jeff Esposito from Vistaprint who very politely informed me that his company was not the ones behind the threatening letter you will read below. After doing some research he found that VistaPrint used to partner with Adaptive Affinity to offer some subscription based services, however they ended that affiliation some time back.
Apparently some customers were inadvertently subscribing to these third party services, there was a class action lawsuit, the lawsuit was dismissed, and VistaPrint decided it was no longer in their best interests to offer these programs.
So, to summarize – Adaptive Affinity, kiss my ass. VistaPrint, we’re cool.
Website: onemansblog.com
Email:
Author: John P
Comment: HubbersDear Sirs,
RE: DEFAMATION/LIBELLOUS STATEMENTS – Review: VistaPrint.com Business Cards
-http://onemansblog.com/2007/07/20/review-vistaprintcom-business-cards/
We are writing on behalf of Adaptive Affinity Ltd and refer to the webpage listed above. This web page contains allegations regarding Adaptive Affinity and its partners that is inaccurate and defamatory in nature. It is our view the contents of this post left by ‘Hubbers’ on April 9, 2009 at 8:10 am is causing and could continue to cause serious reputational harm, not only to Adaptive Affinity but VP rewards also.
The accusations made in the post is simply untrue and no proof is offered to validate these claims.
The language used by ‘Hubbers’ is unacceptable and suggests to the ordinary user that the practices of Adaptive Affinity are unethical or at worst illegal. The entire post is an unfair attack on Adaptive Affinity and its partners. These are legitimate businesses with legitimate business practices.
Although the burden of proof lies with you to prove the truth in these statements made, as proof to you (and not for publication elsewhere) that Adaptive Affinity is a legitimate business we can confirm that less than one half a percent of the millions of consumers marketed to and the many thousands of members enrolled in Adaptive Affinity’s membership programs complain about their memberships.
Adaptive Affinity has always followed high standards of responsible corporate practice. We regularly undertake quality controls to ensure our respective business practices comply with or exceed industry standards and applicable law. These practices extend throughout the organisation. We rebut the assertions made in this article and accordingly we request that it is removed with immediate effect.
As the primary publisher and the person who exercises direct editorial control over what is published we would like to point out that you are responsible for all the posting on your site. This matter can still be resolved without incident if you act very quickly to our satisfaction now. However, if you fail to do so, we reserve all our legal rights and remedies in respect of this matter. We also reserve all our rights and remedies (in respect of all relevant posts) if you are involved with any other posts about us or if there is any other publication made as a result of your posts.
Please respond to this letter by return and in any event within 7 days of the date on which it is sent with full details of the actions and the timeframe you will be taking to urgently rectify this matter. Your cooperation in this matter is appreciated.
Yours faithfully
Adaptive Affinity
Cavendish House,
369 Burnt Oak Broadway, Edgware.
HA8 5AW. United Kingdom
t: +44 (0) 8701 432 343
f: +44 (0) 8701 432 344
contact@adaptiveaffinity.com
Let’s examine this, shall we?
- The part that I put in bold there is fantastic. They are “reserving their rights and remedies”. Um, aren’t they always in reserve? What they mean is, “We are threatening to sue you in a court of law to force you to do what we want.”
- When I take a look at Hubber’s comment critically all I see is a link to a random Washington Post article, and another link to his own site where he provides what appears to be a lot of information to support his claim.
- I’m not here to take sides. If Hubbers was merely insulting VP without any merit, I’d delete the post, but I think that to any reasonable person this thing could go either way, so it’s not obviously defamatory (considering that truth is an absolute defense).
- Even if it was defamatory, who in the heck was the moron that decided the best way to approach a well known blogger was to send a threatening email? Honestly, is that supposed to scare me?
The only thing this message did was make me angry, remind me of the bad experience I had with VistaPrint, cause me to really pay attention to Hubbers comment where I hadn’t even noticed it before, and get this additional spotlight on the whole affair.
Why in the hell do people do this? And what advice would you have given them if they felt like they had a legitimate complaint to lodge?
PS – Can you believe that at the same time they sent me this letter, they left a comment on the blog trying to appear “helpful”? What is going on? Good Cop / Bad Cop?
John,
I have been there, and it doesn’t get better from here.
I was sued for $100,000 by a hosting company where I was a customer. I had a bad experience, I blogged about it, and I was sued for defamation and libel. The suit was thrown out of court, but it still cost me a few thousand dollars to get legal representation. Had I ignored the suit and not gotten representation, Texas law would have a allowed the hosting company to have gotten a default judgement of $100,000 against me.
After I was served, I found out that suing former customers and employees was how the company operated, and they had thousands of dollars of “assets” on the books solely from default judgements – it made their balance sheet look good, but their reputation was in the toilet.
Frivolous lawsuits are a huge problem with our legal system – anyone can sue anyone over anything – it’s ridiculous. And the people that get hurt the worst are the ones who don’t have the financial resources to defend themselves. It’s shameful. And from the bloggers perspective, it IMHO appears to be infringing on our freedoms.
Some companies stay in the black simply by suing people – they don’t care about reputation. And bloggers can get hit hard with legal fees from these frivolous lawsuits.
I have been wanting some type of “bloggers insurance” that would protect bloggers from frivolous lawsuits, but I have not found such a policy. If you ever find a way to protect yourself legally, I would love to know how you do it.
Don’t try to make sense of this – that’s a waste of time. It better to focus on how to protect yourself from future and pending lawsuits.
Regards,
Mark Leon Watson
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
Mark,
There are three very simple things that can be done to protect yourself (at least in the USA).
Yes, there are companies who choose to sue for the wrong reasons, and it’s unfortunate when that happens. In this case, they picked the wrong guy if they think they can bully me.
Cheers,
John P.
Having been through this many times with friends and fellow bloggers, you are not alone. I put together a list of some other blogger’s stories, news references, and legal references and advice on bloggers being sued for comments on their blog. Jonathan Bailey also has some great advice on responsibility, libel, and defamation issues regarding blog comments in The Legal Issues with Comments.
We’re with you! Fight on!
What’s even more insane about this is Google Ads showed me a Vista Print ad when I came to read this article.
Me, too! LOL
Me three!
It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch lawyers can be sometimes. It’s like having the legal right to do something automatically makes it a wise thing to do. Dumb.
My guess is their legal and marketing departments don’t know what the other is doing. Regardless I fear we’re going to see more companies with deep pockets legally bullying bloggers moving forward.
We desperately need tort reform in the US!
Ridiculous, I was not even aware about Vista prints doing such things, and I was just about to order a bunch of business cards from them.
Now no way.
Vistaprint.com would make better use of their time addressing the 18,700 search results on Google that show up under ‘Vistaprint.com scam’
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=vistaprint.com+scam&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&ech=1&psi=O2aCTJ2mFsGblgffkd2IDg12836143220988&emsg=NCSR&ei=EWiCTKnWKIWKlwfdxNnDDw
Their threat of a frivolous lawsuit only brings more attention to what kind of a company Vistaprint.com really is.
Also see: Consumer complaints about VistaPrint.com
at http://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/vistaprint.html
John, Interesting story and one that seems to be occurring more and more all the time. I think the fact of the matter is that companies are downright afraid of the voice of bloggers and how quickly word can travel through social media channels.
This kind of tactic might work on new or less experienced bloggers but companies should be at least smart enough to do a little research on who they are attacking. More established bloggers have a tendency to know their rights and aren’t as easily bullied.
Fight the good fight.
My experience with overzealous legal types sending letters like that is that showing a strong backbone and using a solid spine is the best way to approach intimidation tactics like that. After all, they certainly wouldn’t want anything to propagate any further on the internet and put an even bigger spotlight on the links that the one user posted to your comments.
Like cockroaches, legal types like this tend to scatter in all directions when the lights suddenly go on.
John,
If you need some help with this, let me know. I can do a little bit of research if you want.
The Communications Decency Act in the U.S. should protect you here. However, I am a bit worried since this is a British company and I am less familiar with their libel laws. Also, libel tourism is becoming much more common these days, take a look at what happened to Bruce Everiss when he took on Evony, a UK blogger was sued by a Chinsese company in New Zealand of all places.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/31/evony-libel-case-bruce-everiss
They ended up dropping the case but it was a major headache for him.
Drop me a line if you want to talk about this or give me a call, you should have my number.
Keep me posted!
Hey Jonathan – Australia is only a protectorate of New Zealand, not part of the same country ;-)
Hi yes Adaptve Affinity is British Company but belongs to your one cald Vertrue Incorporated wich was found guilty of defrauding nearly 500 000 costomers in Iowa. They use seling action cald bait-and-switch wich is form of fraud , in England and Walseit is banned unther the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulation 2008. Breaking this law can result in a criminal prosecution, and unlimited fine and two years in jail. Uswell uk conterpart has been investigated by the The Office of Fair Trading (2009) and the Trading Standards Institute (2008). I was victim of one of this company shames my bank is now in dispiute with this company for robing me of my maney. when we whant to bring this company down this looks like we need all work togever.
There are lots of resources out there and I decided long ago that I prefer to send the entire card of artwork with orders for my clients rather than use the templates. At least if you send the art for the entire card and the colors are set the same in the file, they’ll all be the wrong shade, not parts. :-) Maybe the templates are pre-printed and they’re just printing the personalization on top but I wouldn’t think so. Anything is possible.
The spammy nature of the emails after you place an order is something I don’t like. That’s why I have an old, old email address where I send potential spammers….anyone I don’t trust gets that email address. PS Really enjoyed OpenCamp!