Author Topic: Do you trust StockXpert ? (Read 8424 times)

rene · « **on:** November 04, 2008, 10:25 »

For 10 weeks photographers are not reimbursed for XL sales (payed only $0.30) at StockXpert. For 6 weeks same photos.com an JIU+ sales seem to be lost for contributors (and not for agency). Portfolios opted-out from subscription program are still avaible at Photos.com. The "bug" struck everywhere.
I know enough about programming to say that even the worst programmer in the world doesn't need so long to fix these issues. I think they never counted pay us.

digiology · « **Reply #1 on:** November 04, 2008, 10:34 »

I believe they will pay us. I do agree the 10 week wait to be reimbursed for XL sales is getting kind of long. I thought it would be taken care of much sooner than it has.

lisafx · « **Reply #2 on:** November 04, 2008, 10:54 »

I just heard through the grapevine that the photos.com sales from October 22 & 23 were the accumulated sales from the first two weeks of no sales. Supposedly notes to that effect are supposed to be going out soon.

I don't know if it's true, but I do know that my photos.com sales those two days were in the double digits, so it seems possible.

But in answer to your question, it's really too soon to say if I trust them or not - they haven't offered any explanation to believe or disbelieve.

leaf · « **Reply #3 on:** November 04, 2008, 11:01 »

Quote from: lisafx on November 04, 2008, 10:54

I just heard through the grapevine that the photos.com sales from October 22 & 23 were the accumulated sales from the first two weeks of no sales. Supposedly notes to that effect are supposed to be going out soon.

yeah that sounds right. I got significantly higher downloads that day

jsolie · « **Reply #4 on:** November 04, 2008, 11:50 »

Quote from: lisafx on November 04, 2008, 10:54

...Supposedly notes to that effect are supposed to be going out soon.

The note just arrived:

Quote

If you are a contributor who participates in the Photos.com and JIUnlimited Plus programs, this e-mail explains the anomalies that occurred with your Photos.com earnings during the first two weeks of October, and from October 22nd to the present. Furthermore, this only applies to Photos.com Plus earnings. Your JIUnlimited Plus earnings were not affected.

If you do not participate in the Photos.com or JIUnlimited Plus programs, this e-mail does not apply to you.

A software bug was discovered during the second week in October that prevented Photos.com Plus earnings from displaying in your Stockxpert report. This bug was fixed on October 22 and only affected earnings between October 3rd and October 21st.

At the same time as the bug fix, we implemented Jupiterimages’ 14-day return policy to all Photos.com Plus images. The return policy allows customers who purchase single images (also known as pay-per-download or PPD) to return the image for a full refund within 14 days of purchase. This policy was already in place for Stockxpert high-resolution PPD images on Photos.com, but we had to implement it for all images to accommodate PPD purchases for all image sizes on Photos.com, including Photos.com Plus subscription sales. So, instead of reporting these earnings to contributors at the time of download and then deducting the earnings for a refund, we held off reporting earnings until the 14 days had expired.

On October 22nd you received the missing earnings for Photos.com sales between October 3rd and October 8th. These earnings are reported in the Photos.com line item for October 22 in your Stockxpert report. All Photos.com earnings from October 8 onward were subject to the 14-day delay. For example, missing Photos.com earnings on October 9 were actually reported on October 23. Missing Photos.com earnings on October 10 were reported on October 24, and so forth.

After analyzing the sales and refund data, we've determined that refunds on Photos.com Plus are rare. So, on November 4, we will be changing the 14-day delay in reporting Photos.com Plus earnings to 1 day, regardless of image resolution. On November 5, you will receive all Photos.com Plus earnings from October 21 to November 4 and going forward, you will see Photos.com earnings for a given day on the very next day. In fairness, if there is a return, the purchase will be deducted from your account when it comes in.

To confirm, since JIUnlimited works the same way as Stockxpert subscriptions (i.e. $0.30 for all resolutions), the 14-day delay issue did not apply. It only occurred with Photos.com Plus earnings.

On a separate but related note, a small handful of contributors received $0.30 instead of 30% for some PPD sales on Photos.com since the August launch of Photos.com Plus. Contributors who are affected by this bug will see in the Photos.com line items of their report that downloaded images with a long dimension of 3,300 pixels or greater received $0.30. We produced and verified a report of all affected contributors and we will correct earnings on November 4th, which will appear in affected accounts on November 5th. The bug causing this problem has been identified and will be fixed by mid-next week. After the bug has been fixed, we will run a final report from November 4th to the date of the bug fix and pay out any final PPD earnings affected by this issue.

We're truly sorry for the inconvenience this has caused and we apologize for not communicating this information more clearly and sooner. October was a difficult month at Stockxpert as we had a major new release, the bugs related to payments were complex and a couple of key developers were out. We now believe that all issues have been resolved and by November 5th all payments will be current. If you believe you are still experiencing payment issues, please let us know right away.

As usual, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Thank you for your patience as we worked through these issues.

Regards,
The Stockxpert Team

Kngkyle · « **Reply #5 on:** November 04, 2008, 11:52 »

Ooo. Tomorrows earnings will be interesting. Hopefully a best day ever. Got my fingers crossed.

MikLav · « **Reply #6 on:** November 04, 2008, 11:56 »

Quote from: jsolie on November 04, 2008, 11:50

The note just arrived:
<....>

I already voted positively an hour ago, and a few minutes ago I received this note. In my opinion this is a satisfactory response.

jsnover · « **Reply #7 on:** November 04, 2008, 12:02 »

I got the note, and I have to say that if it's an accurate statement of what happened, it is mind-boggling that while contributors were asking about missing sales, it never even crossed their minds to mention that they were implementing a 14 day delay in reporting sales at photos.com.

What could your thinking possibly be that you would withhold this "detail" from contributors?

I have to say that the sincere sounding words at the telephone town hall meeting about realizing they had to do better in involving and communicating with contributors don't seem to have resulted in a change in behavior.

Argus · « **Reply #8 on:** November 04, 2008, 12:13 »

I got the note as well and i still trust StockXpert

Communication should have been better but things seem to be going in the right direction so i'm happy.

astrocady · « **Reply #9 on:** November 04, 2008, 15:25 »

Quote from: jsnover on November 04, 2008, 12:02

<SNIP> ...it is mind-boggling that while contributors were asking about missing sales, it never even crossed their minds to mention that they were implementing a 14 day delay in reporting sales at photos.com.

What could your thinking possibly be that you would withhold this "detail" from contributors?

I had the exact same thoughts when I read that passage.

leaf · « **Reply #10 on:** November 04, 2008, 15:47 »

well I think it was very well done for Stockxpert to write that letter and inform us in quite nice detail what is going on, what happened and how it is being fixed. It seems a few other sites simply leave their contributors in the dark about changes or bugs.

edit for typo

madelaide · « **Reply #11 on:** November 04, 2008, 15:58 »

I trust StockXpert, not so sure about JI.

Regards,
Adelaide

Peter · « **Reply #12 on:** November 04, 2008, 16:02 »

Quote from: leaf on November 04, 2008, 15:47

well I think it was very well done for shutterstock ...

shutterstock?

sharpshot · « **Reply #13 on:** November 04, 2008, 16:22 »

There didn't seem to be as many photos.com downloads last month as I expected and I find their explanation a bit bizarre. We should be told about these things before they happen, not after. Are they ever going to understand that?

stokfoto · « **Reply #14 on:** November 04, 2008, 16:24 »

I trust them because I don't think they will be completely out of business and having reached a deal with Getty doesn't mean they don't have to keep their good reputation. having said that current issues should have been handled more professionally I agree with the concerns on that

hali · « **Reply #15 on:** November 04, 2008, 18:25 »

with the volatility of the stock market in the past months, companies and individuals and find themselves short of cash flow. maybe that can explain the silence.
it affects everyone (the stock market correction).

rene · « **Reply #16 on:** November 05, 2008, 10:03 »

Quote from: jsolie on November 04, 2008, 11:50

Quote
...
On a separate but related note, a small handful of contributors received $0.30 instead of 30% for some PPD sales on Photos.com since the August launch of Photos.com Plus. Contributors who are affected by this bug will see in the Photos.com line items of their report that downloaded images with a long dimension of 3,300 pixels or greater received $0.30. We produced and verified a report of all affected contributors and we will correct earnings on November 4th, which will appear in affected accounts on November 5th. The bug causing this problem has been identified and will be fixed by mid-next week. After the bug has been fixed, we will run a final report from November 4th to the date of the bug fix and pay out any final PPD earnings affected by this issue.
...

Somebody was refunded for $0.30 instead of 30% for PPD sales on Photos.com ?

lisafx · « **Reply #17 on:** November 05, 2008, 10:56 »

Today shows a massive number of DLs from photos.com. I imagine this makes up the rest of the missing downloads.

Thanks StockXpert. Better late than never

domencolja · « **Reply #18 on:** November 05, 2008, 11:05 »

Same here, lots of sub sales logged in and even one Photos.com PPD earning 15$ (marked as "super" size).

digiology · « **Reply #19 on:** November 05, 2008, 11:28 »

Well I didn't get paid for my PPD yet (while others did).

Only subs from photos.com today. Obviously its not fixed for everyone. Hope its not another 10 weeks to sort out. Kind of disappointed with them now. $:-\$

haap · « **Reply #20 on:** November 06, 2008, 01:06 »

Quote from: lclark on November 05, 2008, 11:28

Well I didn't get paid for my PPD yet (while others did). Only subs from photos.com today. Obviously its not fixed for everyone. Hope its not another 10 weeks to sort out. Kind of disappointed with them now. $:-\$

There's nothing to sort out this time. Not everybody had PPD sales on Photos.com yet. Your Photos.com sales are perfectly in line with your StockXpert sales.

sharpshot · « **Reply #21 on:** November 06, 2008, 03:00 »

What about Jupiterimages Unlimited subscription sales? It still looks like some of those might be missing from October.

haap · « **Reply #22 on:** November 06, 2008, 04:08 »

Quote from: sharpshot on November 06, 2008, 03:00

What about Jupiterimages Unlimited subscription sales? It still looks like some of those might be missing from October.

They should be OK. I checked some top sellers' stats and there's consistent reporting for October. There's a gap between Oct 3 and Oct 16 and those missing sales were added on Oct 17. These are still fairly new products, so you should expect a lot less sales than on StockXpert. This will of course hopefully change in the future.

digiology · « **Reply #23 on:** November 06, 2008, 11:13 »

After being told back in August that I would be reimbursed a PPD for my incorrectly sized/priced file (xl size sold as a large sub) now it seems they feel all my sales are in line?!?! (at least according to the admin on StockXpert forums). It's only one sale but give me a break!!! I cannot believe I have to chase down 15 friggin bucks.

Here is the site mail I got from SteveO - Aug 27

Quote

Hi Lora,

Thanks for reporting the download. What we are going to do is fix all these sizing issues asap, and then compensate contributors their portion (30%) of the PPD value of any PPD-sized images that were miscategorized and downloaded as subs.

So basically you should receive 30% of $50.00 for that download. Not bad.

Please don't mention this in the forums. I will make an announcement about this after everything has been fixed.

Thanks,
Steve

haap · « **Reply #24 on:** November 06, 2008, 13:37 »

Quote from: lclark on November 06, 2008, 11:13

After being told back in August that I would be reimbursed a PPD for my incorrectly sized/priced file (xl size sold as a large sub) now it seems they feel all my sales are in line?!?! (at least according to the admin on StockXpert forums). It's only one sale but give me a break!!! I cannot believe I have to chase down 15 friggin bucks.

Lora, it seems you had a sale for a 2540 x 1701 image. that's not 3500 as you claimed and it's below the 3300 limit. I'm sorry!

digiology · « **Reply #25 on:** November 06, 2008, 16:22 »

At the time my file sold it was listed as "High" 3500 x 2343. That's where all the confusion started.

So here is how Steve explains what happened.

Quote

A couple other contributors also wanted to know why they didn't get reimbursed.

One of the issues was that the actual text stating the dimensions on the Photos.com page was wrong, while the image that the customer received was correct.

For instance, on the Photos.com page it would say something like this:

High (3500x2400)

In cases like this, the dimension text was wrong, but the actual deliverable was the correct smaller size. I went into Photos.com with a test account and confirmed this was the case.

When I downloaded the image the actual size was something more like 2400x1800.

If in your StockXpert balance sheet the line item said "L" then it was indeed an L size that got downloaded.

So thats the scoop! It was just a large sale after all.

digiology · « **Reply #26 on:** November 06, 2008, 18:16 »

oh forget it...

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Author Topic: Do you trust StockXpert ? (Read 8424 times)

rene

digiology

lisafx

leaf

jsolie

Kngkyle

MikLav

jsnover

Argus

astrocady

leaf

madelaide

Peter

sharpshot

stokfoto

hali

rene

lisafx

domencolja

digiology

haap

sharpshot

haap

digiology

haap

digiology

digiology

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