Pinterest help center and community team – opinion
Yesterday, I watched an interview with Ben Silbermann at D: All Things Digital.
My first impression – he is a very nice and precise guy, who knows exactly what he is doing. Comparing to Mark Zuckerberg, he seems to me more focused on details and quality. This is nothing against the founder of Facebook because I haven’t met both of them personally, it is just my opinion.
I think their personalities might reflect their “children” as well. Pinterest – a great modern design and functionality. Pinterest was also being prepared for a long time to meet users expectations, before it went worldwide.
Using Pinterest a lot, I must admit that it works really well. Of course, as in case of all the other social media platforms with millions of users, also on Pinterest some errors or problems might occur sometimes. And this is one of the situations I would like to describe today. I want to show how quickly Pinterest’s response we can receive and how good our cooperation with their Help Center can be.
As we may notice, Pinterest recently fights a lot against porn content and SPAM, canceling inappropriate pins, boards or even the whole accounts.
In our campaign for Lingerose.com we add a lot of photos presenting lingerie – sometimes very sexy. Some photos might even show some naked parts of female body. Of course, it has nothing to do with any kind of porn content. These photos just present sexy lingerie products. Anyway, any Pinterest’s user may report your pin if he decides that it is inappropriate for him and Pinterest’s crew is obligated to review this reported pin.
Unfortunately, on the 16th of July we received an email from Pinterest saying that because of inappropriate photos our “Axami” board was removed. We were also asked to remove all the other photos that go against Pinterest’s policy. In case if we didn’t do that our account might have been suspended.
In fact, in our Axami’s board there were some sexy photos but not related to porn content for sure. The other reason why it was “Axami” board removed, was that it was simply the first board in Lingerose’s account.
We decided to act immediately, submitting a request and sending the following email to Pinterest’s help center:
“Hello,
We’ve just received an email from you that our board “Axami Lingerie Wholesale” was removed because it included pins that go against your policies. You are also asking to remove all pins that go against your policies.
I’m writing this email to inform that we’ve just started process of removing all pins that might go against your policies. I want to ask to give us about 2-3 working days, because we have a lot of pins and boards and we need to go through all of them to check.
I just want to explain that we are lingerie wholesale distributor and our aim is just to present products that we offer. We sell sexy lingerie as well but these pins have nothing to do with porn content from a buyer and seller point of view. Of course I understand your company policy and the fact that other Pinterest users might consider these pins as kind of pornographic materials.
When we finish the whole process of removing pins that might go against your policy – I want you to ask for any help if you find any pins in our boards that you still consider against your policy.
We’ve been building this account for almost 5 months, adding and pinning day by day. It has been a very hard job. We’ll do our best to cooperate with you and follow your further instructions.”
In another email sent an hour later we also asked which other pins should be deleted:
“We are now deleting all the pins that might go against your policy.
However, it is difficult to decide sometimes if any of those pins go against your policy or not. Below I’m presenting some of our pins and have a question if they should be deleted or not:”
We already had contacted with Pinterest’s help center before, so I knew it would take 1-3 days for them to respond. And they didn’t let me down again. On the 18th of July I received following email, but what was more important “Axami” board was back.
“Hi Jack,
Unfortunately, I can’t comment on individual pins, but taking a look at your account I’d say that you shouldn’t have problems with your pins being removed. We’ll use this as an example to improve our reviewing process in the future, and we appreciate you bringing this to our attention.
We took a look at your board and decided to restore it. We just ask that you keep our content policies in mind while you pin. To sum them up:
We don’t allow things that are inappropriate for the general public – like sexually explicit or pornographic pins – anywhere on Pinterest, including secret boards. We do allow works of art and educational content, like you might see in a museum or classroom.
Thanks for your understanding,
Tobi
Pinterest – Community Team”
So, why I have presented this correspondence between me and Pinterest: I wanted to show that also the Pinterest help center is a high quality team that you may rely on. There are real human beings not robots that want to help you resolve your problems.
Recently, I’ve seen some people complaining on Pinterest’s Facebook profile about canceling pins, board or accounts. Unfortunately, they never do any steps to resolve a problem or they do it a wrong way, sending messages which don’t explain anything. Sometimes they are even offensive or aggressive. And sometimes they are just not right, they add really inappropriate or porn content and then they are very surprised that it was deleted.
So, my advice is: before you start yelling how bad support Pinterest provides, make sure that you are really right and you don’t do anything that goes against Pinterest policy. If so, check their help center. If you can’t find the answer, submit a request and explain very precisely and nicely what has happened. Then allow them 1-3 day for getting back to you. Remember that according to what Ben Silbermann said, in May 2013 there were only 130 employees. I mean – only, because there are about 50.000.000 of us – users. So be patient!
