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?
I apologies for getting you into this. Please delete my comment if you are at all worried.
They are coming for me too so I have cleaned the emotion from my post and just left the facts. The problem is I have scores of angry comments from people who when through what I went through.
http://www.hubbers.com/index.php/help-i-need-a-lawyer-adaptive-affinity-are-threatening-me/
Don’t worry. Those guys can kiss my ass. I live in the USA and the constitution guarantees our freedom of speech. If those bastards sue me in a US court of law I will not take it lying down.
Attorneys who participate in the filing or maintenance of litigation without probable cause are personally liable for malicious prosecution of a civil action. And given there is no merit to their claims surrounding this post they would be ill advised to proceed.
As you previously noted, there has been a lot of successful legal activity in the US against Adaptive Affinity, not to mention the fact that I’ve said absolutely nothing wrong here.
Cheers,
John P.
I love this guys response
http://www.thelondonplan.com/?p=350
I just found charges on my credit card from Vistaprint by way of BusinessMax, which started in November of 2009, and have continued, unbeknownst to me (uh, I didn’t watch carefully enough, yes) to this day. So, Vistaprint has not cleaned up it’s act. I am wiser now, though chagrined at my lack of vigilance in the marketplace and my bank statements. Sigh.
Hi!
All, Was looking for a template letter to send to some forum owners and found this site.
Dont know anything about that other company, but I did use Vista print, First time order never showed up, they did issue a refund upon contacting them.
Was kinda wondering if I should use them again or not, but did so, 2nd time items arrived (late one day) but all was good, 3rd time same thing item arrived in good order and I was very happy with the items.
maybe they need a little better customer service, but they deliver the goods, so I dont think it is fair to call it a scam.
In any business you have happy customers and unhappy ones, we just need to remember to be fair, I was upset the first time, but after the refund arrived in less than 24hours, couldnt say a bad thing about them as items DO get lost in the mail.
Anyway just thought to share.
Cheers!
So Vistaprint was able to reap the monetary benefits from affinity, use the stolen cash to grow their foreign business, bombard us with advertising, and then drop them like a hot potato as if they were innocent? Hmmm
Wow. From reading that e-mail, I can infer with confidence that the “John P” is: A) not a lawyer, and B) not literate, either.
First of all, what kind of lawyer asserts that the allegations were unlawful IN THEIR OPINION, as if their personal perspective–rather than the letter of the law–formed the basis for a legitimate case against the author!?!
“IT IS OUR VIEW the [sic] contents of this post . . . is causing [sic] and could [could?] continue to cause serious reputational harm…” (“reputational”?)
What’s more, Mr. P couldn’t even be troubled to confirm that he and the blogger are even subject to the same laws! Libel cases are much easier to win in the UK than in the US, where the burden is on the PLAINTIFF to prove that the allegations are untrue! What a maroon:
“Although the burden of proof lies with you to prove the truth in these statements…” (Uhhh…nope, it does not. Not in America.)
…And here, a few other bon mots demonstrate that the author’s grasp of English is as feeble as his legal case:
“contains allegations . . . that is”
“The accusations . . . is”
“It is our view the contents . . . is causing”
“…we request that it [the assertions] is removed with immediate effect.”
What a maroon.