Refunds do occur from time to time at most agencies, but Alamy is in many ways not like other stock agencies. I'm in the process of leaving Alamy after 15 years, so I don't feel positive about the changes in the last year or so.

Some of the things that have always rankled are the huge time lag between a customer downloading an image and it even showing up as a sale, topped off by the very long waits for the customer to pay for the image after that "invoice". In one case a delay in getting paid meant that I received a lower royalty rate. I had to chase up the sale - saw the image in use but no sale in my list. When they used it my rate was 50% of the sale but when it was finally "invoiced" it was only 40%.

Alamy support's response?: "Really sorry but unfortunately the commission is calculated at the time of invoice rather than publication date. We understand this is frustrating but lots of customers report uses after publication date and this is industry standard."

In a world where all the other agencies record the sale when the download happens, it isn't industry standard to do what Alamy does. Waiting up to 6 months to be paid (I think 9 months was my personal longest wait) happens quite often - not because of refunds but because you don't get paid until Alamy gets their invoice paid in full.

Alamy makes all sorts of accommodations to its large customers - and I'd guess that's where the lower price by way of a refund and a new sale came to be.

Bear in mind that as Alamy lowers its prices (retroactively as you found or for initial purchase) this affects your ability to keep the current 40% royalty rate.

I had a refund and repurchase for the same amount but a lower percentage for me over the course of one of Alamy's grabs for a higher percentage. I was pretty pissed, but as usual the sites control the terms. Refunds do seem to happen fairly often on Alamy, a surprising number are bought for the same price, but most are either not purchased again or are for a lower price.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on February 25, 2022, 22:14

I had to chase up the sale - saw the image in use but no sale in my list.

Can I ask you how you do that Jo Ann?
I mean, if I understand it correctly, you saw the image in use, credited on your name via Alamy, but did not see the sale in your report?

I assume you use Google search alerts, but matching new entries with sales reports is still a lot of work?
Maybe not for Alamy, as sales are rather slow, but if you do this for all agencies... Impossible to keep track I would say.
Unless I'm missing something here.

I don't do anything thorough or systematic, but I have a couple of Google alerts set up so I get email when one of them triggers. Many uses don't include my name though, so that covers only a small portion of uses. In the Alamy case I was credited by name with the agency - it's an image that's sold a lot, so if I hadn't seen a specific agency credit I wouldn't have had a clue.

Once in a while I use Google image search for best selling images to see where I find them - largely because it helps me understand how the images are used (which is helpful in figuring out what might be good to do in the future). I keep "tearsheets" in a folder when I do this. It's not a regular activity - too time consuming.