I placed an order for a personalized greeting card from Hallmark.com, one where I write a little message and they have an employee handwrite that message for me and mail off the card. Well I ordered one for my brother, received a delivery confirmation email saying it had been shipped and would arrive on Friday to his house. As of today he had not yet received it so I contacted Hallmark. After 15 minutes on the phone with them they informed me that since I had used "inappropriate language" (as they deem inappropriate not I) that they had canceled my order and refunded my money with no notification whatsoever. I searched their website and there is no information stating this policy anywhere. Nowhere on the order page or the customization page does it say your order may not be processed due to language. Is this legal for them to do? I feel that a "personalized greeting card" should be able to contain whatever language I want it to contain. Any suggestions?
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Hallmark Rejected my Order
- Thread starter egertk
- Start date
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**A: Hallmark is correct and you want to play games. Why not buiy a Hallmark card, write your inappropriate message in your own handwriting and mail it. What is so hard about that?
I work two jobs and didn't have the time to get into a Hallmark store before his birthday. My brothers birthday was on Saturday, I wanted to get a card to him on time. There is a reason hallmark offers this service online. I told him to expect the card in the mail on Friday, the delivery date on my shipment confirmation email and then they canceled the order AFTER confirming shipping it without any notification whatsoever. The customer service person I talked to did not even know about this policy, she had to have her supervisor look into why it was canceled and only then did they figure out the reasoning. Please don't reply if you just want to give your opinion, I'm looking for real legal advice as to whether or not I have any basis for recourse with their company for the inconvenience they have, as I feel it, unjustly caused me.
Zigner
Senior Member, Non-Attorney
Don't be an idiot - you DID receive real legal advice. What you WANT is the advice that you want to hear.
You have NO recourse. None, zip, zilch, nada.
Since Hallmark is the one printing the message they have every right to decide what they will and will not print. The card will have the Hallmark logo on it, and they don't want to be associated with certain things. It is their freedom as business owners to decide what is,and isn't appropriate, for them to do.
The reason why they probably don't have a message about not using inappropriate language is that most reasonable people would know not to do that. Seriously. The fact that you are dumber than the average bear doesn't give you some special recourse.
They took your money for a service they couldn't perform so they returned the money. So, you aren't out any money. You had to go buy a card on your own, but you would have had to do that anyway. It wasn't an additional expense. You say you don't have time in your busy life to get a card, but they sell birthday cards at gas stations, grocery stores, and 24 hour drugstores. You must have found yourself in one of these places at some point during your hectic schedule. You shouldn't have had to spend money on a special trip to get the card.
There is no right to sue for inconvenience. Only for actual damages. If I could sue for inconvenience I'd sue the guy in front of me who insists on driving 20 miles under the speed limit. Inconvenience is a part of life. End of story.
The reason why they probably don't have a message about not using inappropriate language is that most reasonable people would know not to do that. Seriously. The fact that you are dumber than the average bear doesn't give you some special recourse.
They took your money for a service they couldn't perform so they returned the money. So, you aren't out any money. You had to go buy a card on your own, but you would have had to do that anyway. It wasn't an additional expense. You say you don't have time in your busy life to get a card, but they sell birthday cards at gas stations, grocery stores, and 24 hour drugstores. You must have found yourself in one of these places at some point during your hectic schedule. You shouldn't have had to spend money on a special trip to get the card.
There is no right to sue for inconvenience. Only for actual damages. If I could sue for inconvenience I'd sue the guy in front of me who insists on driving 20 miles under the speed limit. Inconvenience is a part of life. End of story.
I'm not "dumber than the average bear" thank you very much. But that was more of the response I was looking for, I'm OK with it being their right I just wanted to know why so that I could understand, since the people at their customer service department had NO explanation of their own. The lady on the other end of the phone did not herself understand why they had rejected it. My brother and I use swear words commonly just as the cast proportion of our society does. Every year my brother and I go to great lengths to find that "perfect" card for each other, something that's a bit humorous, you can't find that at a gas station or grocery store. This year it had slipped my mind till the last minute, granted that's my fault, but I then looked to take advantage of a service offered by Hallmark where you can view and ship cards directly from them. I order all my Christmas gifts online already and figured thought I might as well try out the greeting card route as well. I am one of those people who have embraced the ability to order consumer goods through the internet, from groceries to clothing.
The personalized greeting I had written is not contained in anything printed by them, it was to be in a small handwritten segment at the bottom of the card, signed with my name. The handwriting would be that of a Hallmark employee but it was to be MY message with MY name. Hardly different than me buying the card in the store, writing that message and delivering it to my brother. The Hallmark logo still would reside on the card no matter what, only the handwriting style would change.
Regardless though thank you mb94 for your response, that was the sort of answer I was looking for. Minus the calling me names
The personalized greeting I had written is not contained in anything printed by them, it was to be in a small handwritten segment at the bottom of the card, signed with my name. The handwriting would be that of a Hallmark employee but it was to be MY message with MY name. Hardly different than me buying the card in the store, writing that message and delivering it to my brother. The Hallmark logo still would reside on the card no matter what, only the handwriting style would change.
Regardless though thank you mb94 for your response, that was the sort of answer I was looking for. Minus the calling me names
Zigner
Senior Member, Non-Attorney
I'm going to answer your question with a question. What are your actual damages?
There were no actual damages other than my brother having expected a card that he then never received. Even if they had kept the money I wouldn't really care about that, it was really the principle of the matter. If you took this same principle and scaled it up to something more meaningful and impacting than a greeting card I think it would have a little more of an impact on how people think about it. I realize a greeting card is pretty much meaningless and worthless. However, what if this had been my mortgage company and I had just setup an automatic deduction from my bank account. Received an email stating that everything was fine and dandy and good to go, then suddenly I receive a bill for a late payment and my credit score is hit. Upon inquiring as to what happened they inform me "oh well your automatic deduction was canceled because we have a little known, publicly unavailable, policy that states we will not do automatic deductions for people who bank with Bank X." I know that's a far fetched correlation because one has a serious impact and one is just as minor of an inconvenience as the guy going 40 in the fast lane of the freeway. However, in my mind the lack of, and more importantly the misleading communication, is a very poor business practice.
You Are Guilty
Senior Member
I hope you're not this diligent in your actual (busy) job efforts. It took me 2 minutes to locate this, and I never even heard of them handwriting and mailing cards for you.
(I'd post the link, but it's enormous.)Hallmark.com said:
PS: mb94, 5* answer
Zigner
Senior Member, Non-Attorney
It's not "far fetched", it's NO correlation. YOU WERE NOT DAMAGED. Move along now, nothing to see here.
seniorjudge
Senior Member
seniorjudge
Senior Member
Zigner
Senior Member, Non-Attorney
OP wanted to buy a card from Hallmark, have them tell his brother to F-off, sign his name to it and mail it. Hallmark refused. Pretty straight-forward if you ask me
Nope, you didn't miss anything! And HG is doing just fine. It takes much more than this to hurt HG!
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