Now at 910,644 - so it's still going up despite their latest promise of putting it on hold.

Up to 918,070 this morning - Brian, can you please explain what's going on?

How can I delete images in my veer-portfolio ?
Or have I contact support for this ?

It would seem that they're not taking this issue seriously, as they are clearly continuing to increase the Alamy Creativity collection I can only presume that not enough contributors have complained about this issue and they have decided to go back on their word as posted on this forum 11 days ago:

We will be working with Alamy to halt loading, and remove all content loaded to Alamy from Veer.

We apologize for the frustration this has caused our community, and the undue delays and lack of clarity in communication while we untangle this.  More details to come.

I guess from their point of view they stand to make a lot of money selling their contributors work on Alamy whilst only paying them a fraction of the commission they would have received by going direct.

Either way their lack of communication and u-turn over this move shows how much they value their contributors.

When I emailed them to ask to have my account terminated I got a personal reply asking whether it was over the Alamy issue and whether I would stay if they provided a solution, looks like I'll continue with my termination then.

I received this reply from Veer on the 1st June in response to my email requesting deactivation of my images pending a distributor opt-out option:

"We are in the process of working with Alamy to halt loading of Veer content onto their site. In addition we will be working with Alamy to remove all Veer files loaded to Alamy.  We will ensure that if any sales were recorded, that they will be paid equitably.
 
We apologize profusely that this occurred in the first place, and that it has taken much longer to untangle than we would have liked.
We will have further details soon."

It seems that at the very least Veer are being inconsistent and unreliable. Not a good way to run a business...

We will ensure that if any sales were recorded, that they will be paid equitably.

Where "equitably" = ...?

Does it all really matter?

Brian is just someone who takes the heat for this whole thing.

Veer simply doesn't care who or how many of us quit contributing to them either.

Why? Because there are simply too many contributors who gladly take the peanuts they can get because they live in countries where literally any amount is appreciated and worth a lot.

iStock has proven to a very large number of contributors that they can do whatever they want without having to fear severe consequences to their operation.

Sure some angry big shot will pull his/her port and a few mid-size contributors but it's really just a drop in the bucket.

Even if Veer is trying get things right, it's just an act. Their actions to this point have proven perfectly well, that they simply don't give a rat's a$$.

What else is there to say?

Quote from: click_click on June 11, 2012, 16:27

iStock has proven to a very large number of contributors that they can do whatever they want without having to fear severe consequences to their operation.

Sure some angry big shot will pull his/her port and a few mid-size contributors but it's really just a drop in the bucket.

Whatever iS have done is nothing in comparison to what Veer is doing, Veer is directly taking money away from contributors who already have their portfolio on Alamy by making you compete against yourself, and by the very fact that they will eventually climb the search rankings through sales volume lead by the sheer number of images in their 'collective portfolio' it means that soon all your images you uploaded directly will be buried behind your same images that they uploaded, meaning that most likely the buyer will see and get your image at the same cost to him/her but you'll get a fraction of the commission you would have done before this move.

And from the 'big shots' I've been in touch with I think you'll find it's going to be more than a drop in the bucket.

I think a bunch of contributors agree that IS has done A LOT to upset us over the course of SEVERAL years and not just by screwing us with a partner agency like Veer does right now.

As many recall, IS has not only decided to constantly cut our commissions but also, and that's the more important part (to me), lied to our and the buyers' faces promising stable prices when they had no such intent of keeping those promises.

I don't say that to devalue the importance of what's happening here with Veer but I think I can make a valid comparison after all.

I couldn't afford to leave IS but I could afford to leave Veer. However, I don't plan on doing so because I will still lose out money in the long run (anyone can argue on this one to death so let's not go there). I think only very large portfolios actually experience a drop in their regular Alamy's sales because of this. I have 2.5k with Alamy and consider it small and I don't see a dent in my sales because of Veer.

Of course I hate to see duplicates of mine as much as Alamy does. Alamy will protect their own interests by removing duplicates as soon as possible. I could not see why Alamy would do that to themselves - that alone has nothing to do with Veer (or at least Veer's decision process).

I personally believe it's a myth that Alamy's customers prefer to shop at Alamy despite finding the same images at the micros. The big 4 have probably 90% of all microstock content - so all big Alamy customers most likely also have microstock buyer accounts. If they can't find an image on the Micros they bite the bullet and buy from Alamy. So the route of going to Alamy first to find micro images doesn't appear to me to be very likely.

Of course, I may very well be wrong on that one...

Sorry for the confused way of making my point (English is not my native tongue and I truly believe that the damage through this Veer/Alamy is relatively small).

I just think that Veer missed the opportunity to make things right. Even if no results are available, communication is key and for that,

they get an F

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXslOHU4wt4[/youtube]

snip
I think a bunch of contributors agree that IS has done A LOT to upset us over the course of SEVERAL years and not just by screwing us with a partner agency like Veer does right now.

As many recall, IS has not only decided to constantly cut our commissions but also, and that's the more important part (to me), lied to our and the buyers' faces promising stable prices when they had no such intent of keeping those promises.

I don't say that to devalue the importance of what's happening here with Veer but I think I can make a valid comparison after all.

I think you have made a valid comparison too.

But I agree with gostwyck, this thing with Veer/Alamy is just as despicable. I bailed on Veer when they would not provide an opt out for Partner Programs, so none of this affects me personally. That seems like a petty "nothing" compared to this snafu. I can imagine that many of you are feeling very betrayed right about now.

Very interesting discussion Re: Veer contributors images on Alamy under 'Alamy Creativity' pseud. But worth noting that the 'Alamy Creativity' pseud does not only contain Veer images! If you look closely and dig around a bit you'll see that there are lots of other Microstock agencies work in that pseud too - the most obvious being 123RF. Maybe that's why the count keeps rising? It's not Veer images it's images from loads of other Microstock sites . Check it out!

It's not impossible that the plan is to take feeds from ALL the Microstock outlets - every single one & turn Alamy Creativity into the new Creative Collection. Works for the Micro agencies - they get bigger fees & contributors age same cents on the dollar they get if they sell from the Micro. If Alamy already has agreements in place with most of the non-exclusive Micros already then it's likely that the count on that pseud will rise rapidly in the new few months. Then we'll be looking at much more than triplicates! 

Very interesting discussion Re: Veer contributors images on Alamy under 'Alamy Creativity' pseud. But worth noting that the 'Alamy Creativity' pseud does not only contain Veer images! If you look closely and dig around a bit you'll see that there are lots of other Microstock agencies work in that pseud too - the most obvious being 123RF. Maybe that's why the count keeps rising? It's not Veer images it's images from loads of other Microstock sites . Check it out!

How did you decide that there was other agency's work in that group - do you have images of your own that are not on Veer and are only on 123rf that were included? The count has stayed stable again this morning, so for the moment, it appears someone has halted uploads.

I would check things out if I knew how you were identifying other agency work there.

Alamy's CEO will NOT like the fact that duplicates are floating around their library, for whatever reason. As soon as this hits the management level I'm 100% sure Alamy will take care of the problem asap, regardless if this is caused by some dodgy partner agreement or whatever.

I certainly hope you're right about this.  If Creativity has collections from multiple different micros then that will be one massive clusterf@ck in Alamy's search.  Like others, I got the e-mail from Alamy saying they don't delete redundant images, but if this becomes widespread they may be forced to deal with it.  If so, I hope they delete the Creativity ones and leave my self-uploaded ones alone...