A group placed orders with Yeti many times in the past for items having the words "Center for Conservative Women" engraved on them.
Last week the group placed an order that was accepted but then quickly canceled by Yeti. The reason given was that the engraving was political in nature, and Yeti's policy is to not create custom items that contain a political message.
To test that policy, the same group ordered another mug which arrived this week. The engraving this time said, "Proud Texas Progressive."
You be the judge.
I wonder if Yeti's policy can be grounds for a civil suit. The Colorado baker was free to not make cakes for gay weddings due to the artistic, creative nature of baking and decorating cakes. However, I don't think using a machine to etch letters and images the customer created or selected from a gallery of available images constitutes artistic creativity.
As a test, i went to the Yeti site and walked through the custom order process. Based on the "Conservative Women" order, it appears the entire design was likely uploaded. Yeti charges an additional setup fee for designs you either create on their site or upload yourself, but neither method involves Yeti doing anything "artistic" or "creative". It's a "monkey see, monkey do" process. Whatever YOU decide to have engraved, they will feed that into their computer and engrave it for you -- unless it contains words or images they don't like. They won't permit known trademarked images to be used, for example, unless the trademark owner makes the order.
Seems like another case of selectively applying a policy that only hurts one side of the political spectrum. One guess as to which side that is.
https://youtube.com/shorts/LW_Dz6MX1tw