Author Topic: Charge Backs (Read 1894 times)

B8 · « **on:** January 12, 2012, 00:56 »

I am just curious if anyone else has had a recent number of charge backs in the last week or two or if there is another thread somewhere talking about an above average amount of recent charge backs that people have had as of late?

I do get the occasional charge back on a purchase refund every now and again, but over the last week I have gotten close to 10. Also, refunds and charge backs typically occur either the same day, or within a couple of days of the purchase of an image from what I have seen in the past, but all of these recent charge backs are dating back at least a month or more on the date of purchase. So all of these charge backs are from sales made last year and some were made as far back as 3-4 months ago even.

Is that common to have charge backs on sales made from such a long time ago occurring months later?

packerguy · « **Reply #1 on:** January 12, 2012, 12:23 »

I recently had a charge back from a purchase that was a few days shy of being a year old.

VB inc · « **Reply #2 on:** January 12, 2012, 12:44 »

Ive been getting a lot of refund notices for my files these days. I am thinking this is yet another scheme to take more money from contributors as they/we have absolutely no way in asking for proof that a client asked for a refund. We just need to believe istock???

wut · « **Reply #3 on:** January 12, 2012, 12:54 »

I never heard of refunds on other sites, this is really getting absurd. I once got one at DT, but it was pretty obvious that the same file was bought twice, so I had no problem accepting that and the refund occurred in 24 or 48h at most. I've already stopped uploading there and I'm starting to think about pulling my port altogether, after hearing about funny business practises like that

jsnover · « **Reply #4 on:** January 13, 2012, 15:50 »

There's a thread in the IS forums about large groups of refunds that some contributors are seeing recently. I have not seen many (one on Jan 4th), and other than the e-mail giving month and day but no year for the original download, nothing seemed amiss. It was a sale on Dec 26th and as things had been so horribly slow I remembered seeing the image in the list of sales, so I believe it was Dec 26th 2011.

Sean had a sale on a future date referred to in a refund e-mail - clearly they're at a minimum having trouble with the proces of sending out refund e-mails: "This is in reference to the file downloaded on 16/08/2012 in the amount of $ 0,58 ." Even if you account for month/day day/month issues, that date is future.

My text had the date this way "This is in reference to the file downloaded on Dec 26 ,in the amount of $ 2.60." Why would the date format be different?

Sodafish reported his recent rash of refunds totalled $280.

So they remove the original sale leaving no record of what originally happened. They send out malformed e-mails and list possible reasons for the refund, saying : "due to the high volume of daily transactions, we will be unable to provide additional clarification on the refund performed"

I have to believe this is all incompetence and bad software, but with so little in the way of detailed reports, plus a track record of messing up payments (the EL reimbursements) it's hard to have any confidence in what they're doing with our money.

Karimala · « **Reply #5 on:** January 13, 2012, 16:58 »

About the only good thing about my sales being in the toilet is there's nothing to refund.

Allsa · « **Reply #6 on:** January 13, 2012, 20:36 »

I'm wondering if they report all of our sales to begin with - that would be easy to get away with in the case of indies. I'm not accusing IS of anything, but it does seem strange that they still are at the second highest rank, in the spite of the fact that most people's sales there are abysmal.

ShadySue · « **Reply #7 on:** January 13, 2012, 20:46 »

Quote from: Allsa on January 13, 2012, 20:36

I'm wondering if they report all of our sales to begin with - that would be easy to get away with in the case of indies. I'm not accusing IS of anything, but it does seem strange that they still are at the second highest rank, in the spite of the fact that most people's sales there are abysmal.

The rank is based on information provided by people here.
(I'm not sure how often we are allowed to vote - I don't get the chance every month, for instance)

Karimala · « **Reply #8 on:** January 13, 2012, 20:50 »

Quote from: Allsa on January 13, 2012, 20:36

I'm wondering if they report all of our sales to begin with - that would be easy to get away with in the case of indies. I'm not accusing IS of anything, but it does seem strange that they still are at the second highest rank, in the spite of the fact that most people's sales there are abysmal.

I've been wondering the same ever since I found four of my images with inaccurate September earnings:

WarrenPrice · « **Reply #9 on:** January 13, 2012, 21:53 »

I'm mystified by the iStock accounting system. Probably my own fault; I've depended on Deep Meta to track my statistics. I've recently learned that I need to login to iS to see more detail.
Now, I see NO sales at iS and (I guess) TS results are shown only at the end of the month?
I was having an occasional decent sale at iS. Then, the 9 cent and 22 cent sales started. I haven't seen a sale for more than a dollar since November.
All the discussion about best match changes has me assuming that I should not expect any sales at iS? They probably have transferred me in toto to TS???
My question is about the combining of TS and iS sales. Will they be shown separately or will there be a breakout of details/statistics?

Signed,
totally confused

PS: my port is very small but it was even smaller when I was receiving a few decent sales. $:-\$

ShadySue · « **Reply #10 on:** January 13, 2012, 22:21 »

Quote from: Karimala on January 13, 2012, 20:50

Quote from: Allsa on January 13, 2012, 20:36
I'm wondering if they report all of our sales to begin with - that would be easy to get away with in the case of indies. I'm not accusing IS of anything, but it does seem strange that they still are at the second highest rank, in the spite of the fact that most people's sales there are abysmal.

I've been wondering the same ever since I found four of my images with inaccurate September earnings:

Did Support tell you it was a 'glitch' and would be 'fixed soon'?

Karimala · « **Reply #11 on:** January 13, 2012, 22:23 »

TS/Photos.com sales are buried in the individual image's report. The "My Uploads" lifetime earnings for individual images do not include PP sales...you have to view the individual image's report in order to actually see how much its earned over its lifetime. It's all very confusing.

Quote from: WarrenPrice on January 13, 2012, 21:53

All the discussion about best match changes has me assuming that I should not expect any sales at iS?

I'm right in the middle of deactivating some of my images, and just noticed that an entire series of about 20 images have IS sales up until August 2010 and then abruptly stop. But they didn't stop on Thinkstock...they have been selling quite well since September 2010. I don't know what to make of it. Obviously something happened in August 2010 to make all the IS sales come to a complete end (they had been selling regularly up until then).

So yeh...based on things like this, I wouldn't expect sales at IS anymore.

Karimala · « **Reply #12 on:** January 13, 2012, 22:26 »

Quote from: ShadySue on January 13, 2012, 22:21

Quote from: Karimala on January 13, 2012, 20:50
Quote from: Allsa on January 13, 2012, 20:36
I'm wondering if they report all of our sales to begin with - that would be easy to get away with in the case of indies. I'm not accusing IS of anything, but it does seem strange that they still are at the second highest rank, in the spite of the fact that most people's sales there are abysmal.

I've been wondering the same ever since I found four of my images with inaccurate September earnings:

Did Support tell you it was a 'glitch' and would be 'fixed soon'?

I don't even bother contacting them anymore. It's like talking to dead air.

ShadySue · « **Reply #13 on:** January 13, 2012, 22:37 »

A few days ago, the stats graphs were up to the previous day, now my top two graphs are only up to the 10th.

How come is all this stuff constantly getting worse and worse? It's really no wonder people are losing faith that their figures are accurate.

Karimala · « **Reply #14 on:** January 13, 2012, 23:12 »

Quote from: ShadySue on January 13, 2012, 22:37

A few days ago, the stats graphs were up to the previous day, now my top two graphs are only up to the 10th.

How come is all this stuff constantly getting worse and worse? It's really no wonder people are losing faith that their figures are accurate.

I'm getting a little off topic here...this should be in the Best Match thread, but since I mentioned it here first...

My previous post mentions how sales just stopped on a series of 20 or so images in August 2010. Well, I just searched for them and there's only 100 images with the keywords "neon" "alphabet," and my series comes up just fine. Why, then, have only a few sold since August 2010 when they were all getting regular sales prior to that date and show up fine in the search? It doesn't make any sense. None at all.