MicrostockGroup

This is so not true.  My best seller on DT which has made over 500$ just there and also sold 100s of times over multi sites was rejected by IS.

Well, I would say iStock has multiple ways of dealing with complaints. From my personal experience (and those issues of other contributors that I had to deal with), you will always find more than one person willing and able to (re-)consider a problem. I really don't think that "an egocentric individual" will be able to cause problems. Though, honestly, I also doubt that this is the case very often at other professional agencies.

However, there are cases where the policy just says "no" and no matter how good you think your arguments are (including the often heard "but other similar images are online...") and how irrational you judge the decision, you will find most agencies to be pretty strict on those matters.

With regards to the "using bought 3D models" issue: I would recommend NOT basing a decision to go exclusive on iStock solely on the assumption that iStock will accept all 3D renders built on bought models forever. 3D rendering still is in a pretty early stage compared to the photo and vector illustration parts and you see changes to policies all the time in those areas as well. So at any point in the future, iStock might change their policies in this regard as well (as they did with using public domain NASA images last year, for example)

Two lypses ahead and a relocation in September... I'd say ask me again end of October. 

If the rejected file were any good and you were exclusive, the likelihood of it getting rejected is a lot less than if you weren't exclusive.  Don't forget that the iStock system is built to foster exclusive content, thats how they justify prices and such

I'm not saying that its always the case, and I've had files rejected by IS that made good money on other sites, but honestly, I'm not feeling the pinch after exclusivity.

I agree - my acceptance rate has varied from month to month but I see no significant difference between pre and post exclusivity, nor would I expect there to be any.

Maybe I'm wrong then and I just became awesome when I got accepted into exclusivity and/or my files were just better.

Hopefully I am wrong, but in the end, I'm enjoying myself now a lot more and I at most lost $150 US to the switch, just due to complications and such in the month of May. 

What doesn't really matter to me is what anyone else does, whether they believe me or not, or whether anyone cares what I do.  So good luck to you all, and if you like what you are doing, keep doing it!

He probably knows what his acceptance rate is (and was).

Not if they state it as their own experience and not state it as a general fact.
My experience is that my acceptance rate has shot up, but that was to do with a bad initial month when I didn't realise that USM was causing most of my rejections. After that, and before I went exclusive, my acceptance rate went up. But there's no room for complacency: after a good run of acceptances I recently had three rejections in a row, all different shoots/three different reasons (one I've sent to Scout, one I redid (an isolation) and it was accepted this morning and one I accept fully).

Yup, that has to be the single most idiotic statement I have ever read on these boards, bar none.

In case you hadn't noticed, your opinions and absurd generalisations appear to generate almost unanimous derison and hostility. Maybe the problem is not with everyone else, as you seem to think, but possibly with that bloke you see in your mirror?