CJ Issues - Gay and Lesbian

[shopandsave]

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Hi,

We've had a very general email from CJ from their Network Quality department, whatever that is refering to this page
http://www.cj.com/pub_agreement.jsp which has a 1001 points on it, and asking us to remove CJ links from our general shopping portal for some reason. They list a page on our site which tells customers we don't offer adult listings on the site and, lists a few other general gay and lesbian listings under Lifestyle.

As usual CJ supply no contact name or telephone number.

For a start I have no idea what exactly they are refering to. I've emailed them back asking them to be more specific, stating in the process that we don't carry adult links but redirect any related search to a totally separate shopping directory like all the other shopping portals, and the remaining few general gay and lesbian listings refer to gay interest books/title and gay cinemas titles available in any decent high street store etc.

We also publish a large gay shopping portal with many high street names / affiliate networks and merchants who are are more than happy to target the gay and lesbian market. Why are CJ.com so out of touch in this respect?

Apart from being totally potically incorrect surely it is now illegal or unwise in the UK to discriminate against gay and lesbian customers?

Anyone got any suggestions?

Regards,
Simon

[drivetowin]

To find out for sure you'd be best giving the UK office a call but having looked at your Gay and Lesbian page I'd guess that what they're objecting to is that large banner ad you have going off to a site promoting gay videos and dvds - since it's openly promoting xxx adult dvds you'd be a bit hard pressed to claim its not adult content.

[shopandsave]

That was the whole point. Like numerous other high street shopping portal out there for example like buybypost and 2020shops.co.uk we removed adult shopping listings from www.shopandsave.co.uk on to a separate dedicated adult shopping portal so you wouldn't have the likes of cj.com moaning and the adult dvds etc are kept separate from the general high street type listings on the main site.

[marky]

Forget about how politically correct/incorrect it sounds
I also think this has absolutely nothing to do with discriminating against Lesbian/Gays

You may not have actual adult content on this site but you are still providing links to adult content. Take off all references to adult content on shopandsave, then speak to them. The links to your gayshopping site mentions R18 gay dvds, xxx gay dvds on the front page. The front page of shopandsave has a link saying adult stores.

That is like hiding your xxx mags when your mother comes to visit you but labelling the drawer where it is kept 'porn stash'

[shopandsave]

I have spoken to CJ UK this morning. The apparent problem was having an Argos logo in the top corner of the page. This wasn't deliberate, as the site is dynamically generated and Argos just happens to appear in the top corner of every page for what little good it does. This has now been resolved.

I was also critical of the original vague message which apparently was now generated automatically by CJ in the States, that there was no contact name or telephone and the abrupt wording of the email which implied what I've mentioned before. CJ UK agreed the email could have been far better worded, could easily be misinterpreted, and was down to poor communication on their behalf.

CJ still seem to be the strictest when it comes to adult related shopping merchants when most of the other UK networks now have adult shopping merchants onboard.

If it came to the crunch I would drop Argos and CJ without giving it a second thought rather than giving up one or two other specific merchants.

Simon