I had a few sales with Alamy several weeks ago (altogether 235 $)  but they don�t show up in my "cleared balance" so I can�t aks for a payout.
How long does it usually take with Alamy before one can ask for payout?
That�s what my account says since several weeks:

Balance brought forward:    $94.10
Total sales:    $0.00
Commission / charges:    $0.00
Total payments to you:    $0.00
Balance carried forward:    $94.10
Cleared balance:    $14.23
Next payment date:    Not due

I think Alamy must reconsider their contributor's payment policy. The agency can wait for a lifetime to get paid by the buyers if that is what they want. But the agencie's money making machine (the CONTRIBUTORS),  must be paid regularly same way as with other major stock agencies. Alamy's payment policy is getting on my nerves. So Mr Alamy make up your mind: You either want my photos contribution or not. I you do want to have me as a contributor, then you have to change your policies and pay me FASTER.- I f you are listening let me know IN THIS forum.-

Bear in mind too that we don't know what PA's intentions are.

More of a concern than the Alamy collect later policy which has always been their way of doing business. They finally got over the upsized, ridiculous image requirements. I can only see the book keeping as a huge headache with all this, download now, pay later. We already had two commission cuts, what will PA do? Buyers, new owners, want profits. Companies get bought because they have assets above the worth, and future value beyond the price paid.

If they look at the crummy small payments we get from the "best" agencies, what's coming?

However, there's hope that PA won't want these complications of chasing for payments, which has to be an expense, difficult to track, and complicated to audit and monitor. I can hope? New system where buyers pay in advance.

Doing OK for now, my uncleared only goes back to January 2020. I've seen longer.

In November i had a Alamy sale, but my Cleare balance is not updated yet.

I wonder how long it will take

Read the first reply above

In November i had a Alamy sale, but my Cleare balance is not updated yet.

I wonder how long it will take

I usually prod them after the end of three full months after the sale, so if the sale was mid-Nov, I'd email them at the beginning of March. If it was a distributor sale, that takes longer.

I have uncleared earnings since july 2019. I have already e-mailed them, but the reply seemed a bit annoyed, saying they are aware of this, and as soon as they receive the payment...  This was almost 2 months ago. Still nothing happened.
In a previous case my earnings were cleared after 1.5 years. Very disappointing.

As you say, the reply you get does sound 'a bit annoyed'. Also it tells you not to contact them again (or at least that used to be part of the message).
However, a couple of years ago I had many unreported usages of the same photo by the Mail Group (Daily Mail / Metro / This Is Money) and reported it, and got the annoyed/don't bother us again message.
So I left it for six months and re-reported it (luckily, I'd kept a form that I had taken a long time to make out listing all my found in-uses, which is required for their system) and got the answer that there had been a 'change of staff' and my report had gone missing.
Around six months later I contacted them again, and again got the 'change of staff' excuse, but a couple of months after that I got the payment.
So ... did the 'investigating unreported uses' team really have total restaffing twice in a year, despite us having to do all the looking up, screenshotting and reporting meaning all they had to do was match up the reported sales then bill the offenders?

You are lucky, they actually robbed me in February and since than all my later sales are still uncleared.
Current amount is still not enough for a lawsuit, but if this continue for a few months or more I will probably go into that direction.

Here is the story:
2 days before end of February I had 81$ cleared so I expected my payment to be initiated at the beginning of March.
At that moment I had one bigger sale but off course that amount was uncleared and I didn't expect be payed at the beginning of March.
A few days later I was checking my balance for a payment when I saw that last sale was refunded.
There was no doubt about which sale was  refunded because there was a notice "Original sales on 27th of February".
But that refund WAS IMMEDIATELY CLEARED unlike original sale and that lowered my cleared amount from 81$ before 27th of February to 32$ !!!
All later sales from 5th of March until today 8th of May are still uncleared including that one from 27th of February so I am still on 32$ cleared.
I wrote them dozen of times, first to general support and than to legal department but didn't get any explanation for that.
I send them very specific questions but didn't get any single answer to them, just general comments.
At least they didn't mentioned Covid-19 as an excuse.

I am not a lawyer, but the fact that they lowered my previously cleared amount with refund to sales which came after that looks illegal to me.

Quote from: Android Marvin (formerly mb) on May 08, 2020, 04:00

You are lucky, they actually robbed me in February and since than all my later sales are still uncleared.
Current amount is still not enough for a lawsuit, but if this continue for a few months or more I will probably go in that direction.

Here is the story:
2 days before end of February I had 81$ cleared so I expected my payment to be initiated at the beginning of March.
At that moment I had one bigger sale but off course that amount was uncleared and I didn't expect be payed at the beginning of March.
A few days later I was checking my balance for a payment when I saw that last sale was refunded.
There was no doubt about which sale was  refunded because there was a notice "Original sales on 27th of February".
But that refund WAS IMMEDIATELY CLEARED unlike original sale and that lowered my cleared amount from 81$ before 27th of February to 32$ !!!
All later sales from 5th of March until today 8th of May are still uncleared including that one from 27th of February so I am still on 32$ cleared.
I wrote them dozen of times, first to general support and than to legal department but didn't get any explanation for that.
I send them very specific questions but didn't get any single answer to them, just general comments.
At least they didn't mentioned Covid-19 as an excuse.

I am not a lawyer, but the fact that they lowered my previously cleared amount with refund to sales which came after that is very illegal.

It happens  , and not only on Alamy.

Why it is so hard to say "Sorry we made a mistake".

2 agencies, 2 examples both from april 2020.:

Alamy: I finally got the answer on my 6th email which looks like somebody actually read my complaints. Unfortunately the answer was "no problems there, business as usual you could wait up to 4 months for amounts to be cleared and bla bla"... but the very next day my sales from february and march were all cleared and suddenly I have 171$ cleared and ready for payout.

123rf: At the end of April I send them complaint that I didn't sell any single image during the whole month of April. That didn't happened since I sell my 1st image there 10 years ago. Typically I'm selling around 100 photos per month which is around 20-30$, and never had a month with 0 sales since 2010, also I have portfolio of 7000+ images there. I asked them is there any reason for that, as example blocked portfolio/profile but the answer was "account is fine and business is as usual, could be my personal sales drop because of covid-19" with usual advices how to boost my sales. 1 day after that answer my sales suddenly returned back to normal with 4 images sold and now after 15 days I have 47 images sold during this month which is finally "business as usual" for me.

It sounds like they are going to hang on to contributors� money as long as they can, and that means until you question it or complain about it. 

It sounds like they are going to hang on to contributors� money as long as they can, and that means until you question it or complain about it. 

For me questioning/complaining didn't help either. In 2 months I'll be preparing a birthday cake for my uncleared earnings...

When I started with Alamy you needed $250 cleared to be paid so it could be worse ...

The worst thing however are the refunds, especially when you wait months for a sale to clear and then way more than 60 days later the image is refunded, beyond Alamy's stated policy, but you still lose your commission. I've had sales for as much as $250 refunded which is really disappointing when it happens. Those of us who've been with Alamy a long time always hold our breath when those $250-450 sales come in until they actually clear.

Of course these days we are holding our breath to even see any three-figure sales. No idea where PA is going with the agency, but even my views (never mind zooms and sales) have dropped precipitously. Hard to gauge what to expect when the coronavirus hit so shortly after the change in management, so it may be a while before we know.

I have to say whenever I've written to follow up on uncleared funds or other issues, the folks at Alamy have always been polite, even after the change in management, though occasionally on a follow up email I'll get an answer that contradicts the first one.

KEEP AWAY FROM ALAMY GANG!!!
Looks like a bunch of gangsters took over Alamy in 2020.
I had cleared amount of 81$ back in february and then it somehow 1 day before the end of month became uncleared, and it was lowered to 32$ without any reason.
Next month cleared amount stuck at 49$ !
1$ below payment threshold.
And it stays like that 3 months more, despite dozens of sales every month, none of them was cleared.
Now it is July and I have 10 times more as an uncleared amount and cleared amount is still on 49$.
I am an Alamy contributor for almost 10 years and never experienced something like this before.
There were some single sales that were stuck for a couple of months but never like this.
For me this is by now an obvious criminal activity but I don't know how to handle this situation.
I sent dozen of emails to them from polite to mad, requesting escalation, even mentioning the police but they just doesn't care.
I've got 1 generic answer in total for 5 months.
Any good advice what to do would be appreciated in this situation.
They are acting like a criminal organization and I think that they need some sort of external investigation.
If anybody knows which institutions are responsible for that based on their location I would appreciate that info.
Some contact link/email of those institutions would be nice.
Thank you.

1. REFUND IS NOT A PROBLEM
2. SINGLE SALE IS NOT A PROBLEM (LIKE BEFORE) - EVERY SALE IS A PROBLEM
First of all refund is not a problem, it is too small.  Also you obviously didn't read my previous comment from the month of May.  Also I didn't mentioned later that temporary cleared amount of 171$ was back to 49$ again and that pi$$ed me off for real. Since that they are not answering at all. I don't have many refunds so they are easy to trace. For the last 365 days (from July 1st 2019.) there was ONLY ONE refund, and it is visible on my Alamy account balance . Refund was back in February, customer bought an image and a few days later it was refunded and immediately both again for the lower price. Refund in total (sale price) was just 21$. I really don't understand how they get from 81$ of cleared balance to 32$ with that refund. After that every sale except one in last 4 months wasn't cleared. Without any public statement and/or personal answer what is going on it looks absolutely like a GANG job.

Thanks for your email, please read the following important information.

 
Temporarily, we�re unlikely to be able to answer your email due to a reduction in team size whilst we respond to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

 
For any legal or copyright issues you need to email [email protected].

 
Quality Control wait times will be much longer than normal. Please bear with us and we will review your submission as soon as we can. Wait time for initial submissions will take around 3 to 4 weeks.

 

For all other questions, we encourage you to ask your question to knowledgeable fellow photographers over on the Alamy forum:

 
https://discussion.alamy.com/forum/19-community-support-ask-the-forum/.   

 
You can also find the answers to most questions here:

 
�       Our help pages: https://www.alamy.com/contributor

�       Our FAQs: https://www.alamy.com/contributor/faqs

 
Here are some common questions and answers that may help:

 
Want to sign up to sell your images?

 
�      That�s great! At Alamy we don�t edit pictures on content; we accept images as long as they meet our technical quality standards, so it�s up to you to send us what you like. If you�ve not visited our website we suggest the first step will be to have a read of our contributor help pages including our submission guidelines. Once you�re ready to make a start you can create your account here.

 
Can�t find your �on sale� images?

 
�         When you�ve annotated your images and they are showing as �on sale� in Alamy Image Manager, they won�t show as �on sale� on your dashboard or be visible to our customers until the search engine has updated. This happens approx. every 24 hrs.

 
Have you had a batch of images fail Quality Control?

 
�      We see a large number of images each day and it�s not possible for us to check every image so we take a random sample of images and if all images in that sample are fine then we pass all images awaiting QC. If we find one failure then all images awaiting QC will fail. All images submitted should meet our QC standards so when we look at a random sample this should represent the quality of all images submitted.

How do I upload to the Alamy Live News feed?

    You�ll need to apply for access to the Live News upload route. You can do this under the �additional revenue options� section of your contributor dashboard. If you have any queries, you can email our news team at [email protected].

Mistakenly uploaded images?

 
�         Our system doesn�t let us delete images during processing or quality control. If they pass QC you can delete them under the �optional� tab in the Alamy Image Manager.

 
Looking to upload a release?

 
�         We�ve removed the upload function for releases as we don�t need you to upload them. All you need to do is annotate your images saying that there is one available and then we will get in touch with you if the customer needs it.

 
Want to mark your images as exclusive to Alamy?


�         You can mark your images as exclusive by ticking the 'only available on Alamy' box under the 'optional' tab in the Alamy Image Manager. You can do this in batches of 500 at a time by selecting multiple submissions in the left hand column using the 'shift' key and then ticking 'select all passed'. You can also set a default for all future submissions under the settings cog icon in the image manager. You�ll find more info about what classifies an image as exclusive here.

 
Question about payment?

 
�         You can enter your payment details under the �account settings� section on your contributor dashboard.

�         You�ll be included in our payment run and sent funds when your cleared balance is over $50.

�         The amount shown on your contributor dashboard is the gross amount and doesn�t include commission deductions.

�         During the payment run it can take up to 9 working days for the payment to reach your account.

 

Seen your image being used but the sale is not listed yet?

 
�         Some customers report usages to us over a set period of time. If you�ve seen your images being used it can take up to 3 months to appear as a sale in your account. If you have a sale that remains unpaid beyond this timeframe please be aware that our credit control team will have a record of this and will be chasing the client for payment accordingly.

 
Looking to upload video?

 
�         Thanks for your interest but unfortunately, we�ve closed our video application process to focus on the stills side of our business.

 

Thanks for your patience at this difficult time.

I don't want your attention because I'm giving up of Alamy.
But if you want to help just to check all those irregularities in clearings and help contributors to get their money.
There are people who have uncleared balance for a lot of time, some of them for years and that is not hard to check.
Summarize those amounts, think about it and do something.

Cases like mine are more rare than that but I'm sure that I'm not alone:
I had enough cleared amount >50$ for payment almost 6 months ago.
And then I had relatively big sale which was refunded at the last day of that month.
Despite the sale was never cleared REFUND WAS CLEARED IMMEDIATELY and that lowered my previously cleared balance well below 50$.
That is not legal in my opinion but in addition to that all further sales stays uncleared. Five months of sales.
That also doesn't look legal to me and I want you to investigate all those cases.
Again it's not hard to find, just search in 2020 for all refunds which lowered previously cleared balance below 50$.
Repeat the same search for 2019.

That's all I have to say.