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     My acceptance rate on Dreamstime and iStock is about 60%, on Shutterstock only about 30%, and in recent days I can hardly get anything accepted, very very disappointed.

I had no problems to get 70-80% accepted by SS - since end of november I always got 70-80% rejected. Most because of pretty disputable reasons. Suddenly everything is out of focus, low commercial value and blahblah - of course exactly same pictures are accepted on IS, DT and FT and many of them were accepted also on Alamy.

Probably new batch of editors, new training, policy update or something...

It's true to me. It's much easier to get files accepted by Dreamstime and even IS.  I canceled my Dreamstime exclusive status in late November last year and began to upload to SS, IS and FT. Nearly all of my images uploaded to these agencies are the files accepted by Dreamstime, Many of these files are accepted by IS ( and of course by dreamstime ) but rejected by SS.  Actually I had quite good acceptance at SS at the beginning until someday in December, everything changed all of a sudden since then.

There must be some trainee reviewers or something. I had some rejects, I mailed the support and sure enough, my shots were OK and accepted.
Ofcourse, reviewers must be trained, I appreciate that but not at the expense of shots getting wasted.

Agreed, what are they looking for; this is the only agency that routinely gives the focus rejection

It must be to do with the content and possibly with the lighting.

* I am having around 99% acceptance for my studio people shots (goes down if I try to experiment with contrast directional lighting)
* Goes down with people shoot outdoor natural light and candid type of pictures
* Goes further down with nature/landscape pictures

Why? If agencies have different criteria you might tick all the boxes on one but have another box that you don't tick on another. For example, IS likes a filtered "brilliant" look that can easily get a WB rejection from SS and I suspect all those partly desaturated "Vetta" portraits would fail SS inspection.

I've seen that there isn't a real criteria for rejections on Fotolia, Dreamstime, IS and Shutterstock. A lot of time the reason is only what a stock agency is looking for. I'm an illustrator and I have 70-100% approved images on Shutterstock, more or less the same on Fotolia, much less on dreamstime and IS is not interesting in my work ( altogether, they said me "beautiful works but it isn't what we're looking for" even if I sold well my illustration in other agencies...). A lot of time a picture rejected for technical problems by an agency is accepted to another one and viceversa (I hope that in english vice versa is written like in italian  ). I've understood that technical problems aren't objective (many times...) only a point of view.

Just in this moment I had 7 rejected images by dreamstime. All these works are succefully submitted and accepted by Shutterstock and Fotolia. Dreamstime said me..."This image requires your attention on some issues...ecc.ecc   or "The composition of a successful commercial image needs to be clear and supportive of the image's main concept and primary subject. "  "
Only to say you that there isn't a reason.
Personally I think that an agency should accept all works without error, it isn't important if there're too many flowers or landscapes. It's an error reject good (without errors) works. It isn't a problem for the contributor, he goes in another agency, it's a problem for the agency that loses the contributor.
Shutterstock loves my illustrations, Dreamstime so and so...So I upload only on Shutterstock...also because it's the better one for sales  
I hate the thinking of some agencies, I find it not open mind and I think that it isn't a good idea for themself reject without a realistic and important reason but because, like IS, they looks only for one kind of images.
I can understand what they look for: no atrworks, no effects, clear subjects ecc. ecc. so there're some categorie absent altogether. It's not so strange statistic that I can see here (-0.22)  
Only to say you that many time there isn't a real reason. So good luck everibody 

I submitted an image of an alligator, it was rejected because of selected focus. The game winner, was they recommended using a tripod to increase the depth of field. I want the reviewer to show how it done, with more depth of field, using a tripod, and without getting becoming alligator bait!

I'm pretty sure that's a canned rejection that is meant to suggest you should use a tripod for greater DOF by decreasing the aperture. Doing so means you'd have to use a slower shutter speed (or up the ISO, or both), and thus the suggestion of using a tripod.

Of course, doing so on a moving subject means the subject is likely to be badly (unusably) blurred. Such is the usefulness of canned responses. 

It's getting really bad.  Almost like someone over there is reviewing with a macro, or script.  All we can do is keep on reporting it to support until they actually audit the department.  If this new change in rejections is on purpose, I wish they would announce something.  I consider myself seasoned, like many others here - we didn't change, if anything, we're improving.  It's not us, it's them - don't feel bad.

You mean there's actually a way to report something to support and get an answer back from them? Maybe you can lead me to the secret handshake or link.