MicrostockGroup

So, to get things straight:

- They have had a maintenance that was not announced in time
- They failed to properly communicate this downtime to its contributors (just a forum post, no e-mails)
- They put up a "Jay is working on it" page instead of a professional looking "Maintenance" page
- They offered a 10% discount out of our pockets to compensate for their clients
- They still haven't fixed ANY of the important bugs we currently encounter
- They fail to give contributors an ETA for their missing royalties payment

Seriously. One would expect more from a big multi-million dollar company like this. Why are these amateurs still in business?

Agreed

Oh, plus some things that were working before maintenance are now broken. So far I've noticed:
- the balance is jumping back and forward between yesterday's and today's total (noted on forum)
- if you only select e.g. 'photos' it doesn't stick on a new search (that worked before)
- if you select a sort by, e.g. 'age', it doesn't stick on a new search (that worked before)

Is this a rhetorical question? (ask Jay!  )

Thanks for that excellent summary.  I was trying to explain what's been going on at IS to my husband, who wondered what all my groaning was about, and your post came in very handy in summing it up

" Short of them staging an alien invasion, massive explosion or revealing they're all really zombies"

...just give them enough time...istock can do anything...

They certainly have "DRAMA" baked into the company DNA.

But when we always ended the year in growth it was more fun.

I can picture the November sales tread now - everyone will be posting that they have no idea what their November sales are because the but still isn't fixed and the numbers are jumping all over the place and they haven't received their e-mail telling them what the adjusted amounts are for the timeframe with the lower commission rate.

the people who do that will be banned for not staying "on topic"

lol, this is quite true...well put

We assume our sales and earnings numbers at other microstock sites are correct, simply because they're stable.  But we have no way to actually verify any of these numbers.  Nor could an independent auditor do so, even if he were allowed to walk around freely in the offices and look at any files he chose.  Only the IT people could meaningfully 'verify' these numbers, and if asked to do so, they'd simply re-run the database code and queries that drive the site, and point to the output.  But is it 'correct'?  Or does that code contain a couple of subtle, undetected bugs that have had the effect of losing track of a significant percentage of downloads, and underpaying commisions, for the last 4 years?  

In a business that sells physical products, there are invoices, receipts, delivery and shipping records.  I can demonstrate that I gave a retailer 100 widgets to sell, and only 20 can be found in inventory, therefor I'm owed commission on 80 unless the retailer can document some explanation for their disappearance other than sales.

A microstock agency is really just a set of programs running on a set of computers... and so is a bank, in today's world; but systems procedures have been developed to independently audit a bank's transaction history. 

...

Most photographers I know do a mix of assignment work and stock, i.e. they'll shoot something specific for a client but the client has to buy it via istock (because we are exclusive). With thousands of images being sold this way every year, I think we would notice pretty fast, if these sales were not recorded.

I am sure many independents do the same.

Or you just direct customers to your portfolio because they want to buy your images.

So personally I have never seen a sale not recorded, if I sent someone a link to an image or to my lightbox.

You could of course come up with an independent auditing agency, but for me this real life solution works well.