MicrostockGroup

Meanwhile I found 3 Images in my bestselling 100 set back to 1 Credit basic price for non selling. Well, FT, this is my answer: they go to all other agencies what can sell them!
You get them first and exclusive and you can't sell them.
That's not my problem it's yours.

With best regards.

Is it? ;-) Wow.

Well, done! I have made the same. Moreover, you must pay attention to all your portfolio to set back the 1 credit files to 2, once they have sold again 5 times... I found recently one of mine was ready to be back at 2 and continued to sell for 1 until I noticed (they would care to notify me obviously...).
Sad, but as i said in another post, I wish them a long, slow agony. This week I have deleted all images that were put back at 1 credit. Now I know why in FT just one photo every 50 or so have some 'success' (downloads over 10), so that they can put all back to 1 credit!

Nothing automatic. You can raise prices a) for exclusive files or b) if your rank is emerald or higher. That does not happen automatically, you have to do it (although you can set the price when uploading a file).
New rule (since a while, IIRC): When a file does not sell for six months (used to be a year not so long ago) the price will be reduced to the minimum price (1 credit for XS). Once the file has sold again five times, you can raise the price again - but you have to actively do it, nothing automatic.

All the above from what I understand from their website, does not affect me personally since I do not have exclusive files and my rank is far from emerald...

That's ironic considering that they plan on knocking our images back to 1 credit if we sell them on other sites for less than they do.

This also automatically prices all seasonal images down to 1 credit. Christmas related images can sell a lot in season and them sit dormant for 6 months. I have seasonal images with over 20-30 total downloads that have been set back to 1 credit.

Six months is obviously too short a timeframe to decide that an image is a non-seller.  I'd say two years is a better measure.  Heck, if an image sells only a copy or two in a year, that might make it a good candidate for a higher price.  What if it's not of general interest, but worth more than the minimum price to those who need it?

Not that any of this matters to me.  I would never have reached Emerald at Fotolia at the rate they were selling my work.  And with the last royalty cut, I stopped uploading and removed most of my images.  There's only so much abuse I'm willing to accept.

Yep, poor from their point of view too. I can imagine that a lot of seasonal is bought as a download rather than a sub.

Fotolia is pretty good at this sort of stuff.   To the best of my knowledge, I never received notification of the change. Just came across it one day on FT site and saw that it had been changed from 1 year. Remember they also offered to give 50 cents for any images, unsold for 2 years, when placed in the 'Free' section. That was originally valid for 2 years but then they surreptitiously changed it to 5 years in 'Free'. I can also remember all the misinformation given as gospel from FT contributor support (UK) regarding the correct form to be filled in by European contributors for taxation/exemption by the IRS. They said to fill in a form which required an original signed letter from Fotolia and $100 in fees to the US IRS.............and then FT issued a few copied letters which, if sent with the form after paying $100, were rejected by the US authorities anyway because it wasn't the correct form in the first place.

The strange thing for me is: My sales were always relatively stable with FT (though on a really low level, on average around one download a day). Starting October, sales dried up (44 sales in September, only 9 in October, only 3 in November so far). But the strangest thing is: Out of the 12 sales from beginning of October, 8 were subs - and the other 4 were ELs, all of them in the last two weeks 
I used to sell an EL roughly every three months.
I don't really know what to think about that...