Cancellation policy

Provided you have not used any images, you may cancel the Licence within 30 days from the date of the invoice. Please notify us of the cancellation by emailing our customer service team: [email protected].

    You may cancel the Licence within ten (10) days from the date of the Invoice without charge.
    If you cancel less than thirty (30) days after the Invoice date, a cancellation fee of fifty (50%) percent of the Invoice will be charged.
    After thirty (30) days, no cancellations will be accepted and the full amount of the invoice must be paid.

Cancelling the Licence revokes an right to publish, reproduce or use the Image(s) in any manner whatsoever.

I don't know anything more, but that's the policy.

Only one I had, someone bought and image, cancelled then bought the same image, for less, the next day.

To me it seems dumb to expose all this to the photographer in the form of 'vapor' sales and commissions.  The account page shows a sale, then a deduction of Alamy's commission; then - weeks later - a refund of the sale, followed by a refund of the commission.  4 line items, adding up to nothing - it's all just noise to the contributor - there's no point in telling me that I 'might' have just made a $100 sale.  

Going through this experience of "claw backs" at Alamy really makes me wonder what would happen if one day I get a $5000 sale. I'll be jumping from one leg to the other for a few months until the payment would eventually clear.

It's still quite nerve-wrecking to see a sale and then get it taken away again.

I've had it happen a couple of times.  It could be due to a number of things - credit card fraud, a buyer inadvertently buys a duplicate image, or maybe a buyer just changed his mind.  It's disheartening, to be sure, but it goes with the neighborhood.  Fortunately, it doesn't happen a lot.

Having 3 nationalities in the family it's not as easily described as "taking it back".

Technically Alamy allows this procedure but for some people the principle of "taking stuff back to the store" is an unknown one.

For example if I buy a loaf of toast bread in the supermarket here in the US I can take back the empty plastic bag and ask for my money back.
(Yes I know, it blew my mind as well when I first got here...).

If you tried the same in Germany the supermarket would flat out refuse to do that unless you can prove that someone who ate that bread got seriously sick from it and had to go to hospital.

In Thailand on the other hand you would have to consider yourself lucky if you made it back outside the store alive asking for a refund in such a situation.

Different folks, different strokes. 

Quote from: stockastic on June 27, 2012, 13:16

Quote from: click_click on June 27, 2012, 12:02

Going through this experience of "claw backs" at Alamy really makes me wonder what would happen if one day I get a $5000 sale.

Staring at $5K in VaporBucks for a month - now that would really, truly suck.   Thank goodness we have the internet to broadcast this useless information.  Can you imagine - back in the day - an agency calling you on the phone every tine they "might" have made a sale?

It's a sale, then an allowed refund, not a 'maybe' sale.
Just like buying something in a shop then taking it back.

I've made only a few sales, and already had a refund.  tab62 (above) had his first sale refunded. So obviously this is part of how they normally do business - a customer chooses an image, then has a few weeks to decide if he really wants to buy it.   If you want to call that a 'sale', ok, but I'd call it 'on approval'.  

Not too sure why this the dark side of Alamy, there isn't an agency in the world that doesn't issue refunds. It just sucks when it happens to you.

The approval period gives the buyer time to find the same photo on a micro site for 50 cents  

More likely, it lets the buyer put his concept together and show it to his customer, at full resolution, without watermarks; and if it doesn't fly, Alamy won't hold him to the purchase.  Note that in a sense your photo actually got 'used' here without you being paid.

Look, Alamy can run their business any way they want.  I just think it's dumb to post big sales - over $100 - to the contributor, as 'vapor' - then undo them later. Yes some of the micros issue occasional refunds too - they're very rare by comparison, and it doesn't hurt quite so much when it's $10 instead of $100 or more.

The approval period gives the buyer time to find the same photo on a micro site for 50 cents  

More likely, it lets the buyer put his concept together and show it to his customer, at full resolution, without watermarks; and if it doesn't fly, Alamy won't hold him to the purchase.  Note that in a sense your photo actually got 'used' here without you being paid.

Look, Alamy can run their business any way they want.  I just think it's dumb to post big sales - over $100 - to the contributor, as 'vapor' - then undo them later. Yes some of the micros issue occasional refunds too - they're very rare by comparison, and it doesn't hurt quite so much when it's $10 instead of $100 or more.

Yep. And even if the money is refunded to the client, how can alamy be certain the digital image was destroyed, or not used? They can't. I think giving refunds after 24 hours is ridiculous. If someone wants to put a concept together, use the comp image...that's what they're for.

H*ll, some people get outfits from shops for a one-off swanky occasion then return them (I never have, though the swanky-outfit-once-worn scenario drives me NUTS!)

I know people that have done that too, but it's almost as bad as stealing. And tangible merchandise is a lot different than digital merchandise...the store knows they got their merchandise back (even if it might have pit stains), not so with digital.

For example if I buy a loaf of toast bread in the supermarket here in the US I can take back the empty plastic bag and ask for my money back.
(Yes I know, it blew my mind as well when I first got here...).

Different folks, different strokes. 

Bad example. You can't eat something (use something) and then return it?

Try, you buy a pair of Red socks, Get home and decide they are too flashy and you really wanted black socks. You take the red socks back for a refund, unused.

That's an Alamy 30 day refund.

All the rest about used, unused, and maybe not deleted, is conjecture, We don't know that they are honest or not, but the fact is, it's not a physical product, so it gets a bit complicated. How do you prove something "doesn't exist". LOL

All the rest about used, unused, and maybe not deleted, is conjecture, We don't know that they are honest or not, but the fact is, it's not a physical product, so it gets a bit complicated. How do you prove something "doesn't exist". LOL

Not complicated at all. Buy an RF photo, no refunds after 24 hours. Buy RM, no refunds after 24 hours. Want to comp a project? Use the comp image. Want an unwatermarked, high rez image (RM or RF)? Buy the image or make do with the comp image. Deals can be negotiated on images fetching more than, say, $100, but anything under, it's microstock. And in my kingdom, I don't just mean this should apply to alamy, i mean all the stock sites should have this policy. Otherwise, people can go back to paying $300-$400 per image from Getty. Even if they make a mistake and have to buy two or three $40 RF or $100 RM images, it's STILL cheaper than trad images. Stop being such cheap a$$es. <rant over> 

I don't know and I won't disagree, it could have been used for some project proposal. It also could have been found on some micro site for $3 instead of the big price. I don't know that as a fact, but another possibility we'll never know. That's why I won't put Micro on Alamy.

And CC is also right, a whole month is a long time to look at something.

But it's not a loaf of bread. It wasn't harmed or consumed and that's where we get into some interesting legal arguments. (not in our favor) because it's not taken, it's not returned and it doesn't remove the item from our potential to sell it again and again.

The one Shady brings up is another problem where one client pays for an image and supplies it for distribution and some other site picks up the same story, we don't get paid for that use. Should we? It's the web and there are channels. As an odd similarity, if an AP newspaper buys a photo from me and puts it into their distribution chain (on the web), I don't get paid a cent if 2000 other newspapers run that same photo. I sure don't like that either but that's the way the system works right now.

How do we find RM use? LOL that's a good one. I've never found one of my Editorial sales from Alamy, in use. And some are pretty darn specific. Book covers, and I'm never seen a one. 

How would we know if someone honestly returned something or not? I don't know that one.

But you do understand, stores allow returns and so does Alamy. It's not the agency that's the problem, it's the buyer.

Quote from: RacePhoto on June 28, 2012, 16:40

Try, you buy a pair of Red socks, Get home and decide they are too flashy and you really wanted black socks. You take the red socks back for a refund, unused.

That's an Alamy 30 day refund.

I'll bet you a dollar that - unlike those socks - my image actually got looked at during that month.   Maybe it landed some designer a contract, or even a job offer.   Maybe it was used in a one-time presentation that closed a big deal.  Maybe they had their own photographer look at it and do something similar, but more specific.

30 days is a heckuva long time to realize you clicked "buy" on the wrong image. I'd say the real poliicy is that a buyer can use a full size image free for 30 days.  Alamy doesn't know or care what that use really amounted to.  I have a bit of a problem with this, because there are all sorts of temporary uses for images, and we should be paid something for them.