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Vistaprint reportedly ships ‘All Lives Matter’ signs with BLM posters

A pair of Atlanta friends who ordered print-outs of Black Lives Matter posters were shocked when they found All Lives Matter prints tucked into their bundle, according to a new report. Sania Chandrani, 23, who was organizing a Black Lives Matter fundraiser with her friend, Jessica Noel, 33, told BuzzFeed News she received the disturbing …

A pair of Atlanta friends who ordered print-outs of Black Lives Matter posters were shocked when they found All Lives Matter prints tucked into their bundle, according to a new report.

Sania Chandrani, 23, who was organizing a Black Lives Matter fundraiser with her friend, Jessica Noel, 33, told BuzzFeed News she received the disturbing order from Vistaprint last Friday, on Juneteenth.

She was filming herself unboxing the Black Lives Matter prints designed by Noel, an art director, when she discovered the All Lives Matter copies hiding behind them.

“I was furious,” Noel told the outlet. “I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it, especially with everything going on. Companies are being very vocal about their stance right now and in being in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, so this felt like very, very clear attempts to…undermine the message we’re trying to put out.”

Chandrani told the outlet she experienced a flurry of thoughts, including “Did I do something wrong? Did I order from a terrible company?’”

“Which is embarrassing,” she added. “It’s not something that I should have had to feel in that moment.”

Chandrani told the outlet a Vistaprint representative informed her the company received an order right after hers for the All Lives Matter posters, which were the same size and count. So the company claimed it accidentally combined part of the other order with hers.

Vistaprint offered the same explanation to BuzzFeed News.

“When we were contacted by our customer about the issue with her order late last week, we launched an internal investigation over the weekend to diagnose the issue,” Vistaprint spokesperson Adam J. Lawless told the outlet in an email. “We received the results of that investigation early [Monday] morning and found that it was an error in the automated packaging process which combined two separate customer orders.”

“This is a process that does not include direct employee contact,” he continued. “We have since addressed this packaging issue and have reached out to our customer to explain the mistake while expressing our deepest apologies.”

Lawless added that Vistaprint “stands behind its support of the Black Lives Matter movement,” and that “while we know mistakes happen, we were particularly saddened by this specific order issue.”

But Chandrani and Noel said they weren’t buying the company’s explanation.

“I’m calling bulls–t,” Noel told the outlet.

“It just feels like some crazy random racist stars had to align for something like that to happen, because the brand is popular,” she added. “It’s really hard to believe that [happened] immediately after our Black Lives Matter run of prints — immediately after, so close that like they ended up in the same packaging… I just feel really unsatisfied with that.”

While Vistaprint gave Chandrani a $100 credit, both women said they now plan to patronize local, hopefully black-owned businesses instead.

“It’s not where I would like my dollars — especially like my black lady dollars, my small business dollars — to be going,” Noel told the outlet.

This wasn’t the first such case involving Vistaprint.

Gay couple Stephen Heasley and Andrew Borg, who married in Butler County, Pa., in September 2017, said they ordered 100 blue and gold programs from the company that included the lyrics to their processional song, “Treasure” by Above and Beyond.

But, as the couple claimed in a lawsuit, they instead received anti-LGBTQ pamphlets that equated their relationship to “Satan’s temptation.”

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