Alamy has refunded a sale a few times in the past for me. It's almost always the big purchase that gets refunded. I had one refund last month for about $250 from a sale from more than a year ago. They just took money from my account without any explanation!
This is ridiculous!
I always thought that Alamy was more professional than other agencies, but it looks like all agencies are exactly the same.

Kone

Alamy has refunded a sale a few times in the past for me. It's almost always the big purchase that gets refunded. I had one refund last month for about $250 from a sale from more than a year ago. They just took money from my account without any explanation!
This is ridiculous!
I always thought that Alamy was more professional than other agencies, but it looks like all agencies are exactly the same.

Kone

How is this unprofessional?

Quote from: Kone on July 01, 2014, 21:19

Alamy has refunded a sale a few times in the past for me. It's almost always the big purchase that gets refunded. I had one refund last month for about $250 from a sale from more than a year ago. They just took money from my account without any explanation!
This is ridiculous!
I always thought that Alamy was more professional than other agencies, but it looks like all agencies are exactly the same.

Kone

How is this unprofessional?

So someone challenges you and give them a negative tick?

A clawback of $250 after a year is totally ridiculous.  Only in microstock would anyone claim this is a normal and justified business procedure.  We've just gotten used to being treated like we're standing in line at a soup kitchen.

Quote from: Zeus on July 01, 2014, 22:24

Quote from: Kone on July 01, 2014, 21:19

Alamy has refunded a sale a few times in the past for me. It's almost always the big purchase that gets refunded. I had one refund last month for about $250 from a sale from more than a year ago. They just took money from my account without any explanation!
This is ridiculous!
I always thought that Alamy was more professional than other agencies, but it looks like all agencies are exactly the same.

Kone

How is this unprofessional?

So someone challenges you and give them a negative tick?

There were actually 5 votes.  3 down, 2 up and kone wasn't one of them.

Like any retailer, Alamy can accommodate customers, and give refunds, however they please UNTIL the supplier has been paid - after that, it's too late.  If they want to give a customer a year to decide whether he really wants to buy an image, they can do it AS LONG AS they don't report it as a 'sale' and pay the photographer.

That's just common sense and standard business practice.  You don't go back to a supplier after a year and ask for a refund of payment because you have a deadbeat buyer.

Alamy does this simply because they can, by taking advantage of the fact that our earnings stay on deposit with them until a payout threshold is reached.   They're just grabbing cash that is no longer theirs.

I wouldn't be surprised if they knew for some time that the buyer didn't want to pay for that image; they just waited until you had $250 in your account from other sales, then grabbed it.

Ok if it came from uncleared funds it's not as bad.  But a year?

Anyway, why subject us, and Alamy, to all this weird stuff? Why not just report a sale when it's final, i.e. cleared?  Then you wouldn't have to deal with all the bad feelings and dark suspicions.

Quote from: stockastic on July 04, 2014, 08:56

Ok if it came from uncleared funds it's not as bad.  But a year?

Anyway, why subject us, and Alamy, to all this weird stuff? Why not just report a sale when it's final, i.e. cleared?  Then you wouldn't have to deal with all the bad feelings and dark suspicions.

Often images are used (and can be found in-use) before the funds are cleared. I don't think reporting sales until funds are cleared would be an improvement.

Ok then, if it's in use somewhere, it's sold as far as I'm concerned and I should be paid for it. Right?

A strange thing is that a legitimate sale ... can be found in-use before it's even been reported

That's typical in the world of stock photography given how billing cycles work. It's microstock and the PAYG model which is unusual.

I do a weekly search for our taglines (indexed in the last month) and screen print any uses which I find. Also specific searches for editorial themes which are likely to be current and which I know I have. So far I have not found any uses which were not ultimately reported. I missed one once which was reported on the last day of a month.

Quote from: stockastic on July 04, 2014, 10:40

Ok then, if it's in use somewhere, it's sold as far as I'm concerned and I should be paid for it. Right?

My garage often bills me months after they service my car. Many things we buy the invoice is not sent until much later and then you often have a month or six weeks to pay depending on the conditions. It's the same.

Sure.  But if you decide not to pay, they take the loss on the parts they used for the repair.  They don't try to pass that loss on to their suppliers. 

I understand that from Alamy's point of view, nothing wrong is happening and they never touch "cleared" payments.  It just seems weird to me, to let someone look at a $250 "sale" for a year, then issue a "never mind".

Thanks to James for responding on the forum about my concern.
 
It is hard for me say if the image was cleared or not, to be honest, I didn't pay attention to that details.
If the image is not cleared for a certain time, then Alamy should go after the customer or simply cancel the order.

That's the thing, we did do that - we were going after the customer for the whole time, as we do with ALL uncleared sales. We have a credit control team who have set procedures in place in order to obtain funds. A year is a long time in this case but rarely it can take that long. It was just a cancellation, not a refund as the customer never used it or paid for it. I appreciate our communication could be better though as it is listed as a 'refund' in your account.

I can also confirm that it had not cleared. You can see this indicated by a 'x' next to the sale in your 'balance of account' page.

We took the decision when we first started to report in real time so you are more aware of what is happening with your images in real time. Also, if we were to only show the sale when the funds have cleared then we would be inundated with inquiries about images being used that had not been paid for yet. As Bunhill rightly says, billing cycles like this are the norm for many publishers.

Cheers

James

Quote from: Zeus on July 01, 2014, 22:24

Quote from: Kone on July 01, 2014, 21:19

Alamy has refunded a sale a few times in the past for me. It's almost always the big purchase that gets refunded. I had one refund last month for about $250 from  a sale from more than a year ago. They just took money from my account without any explanation!
This is ridiculous!
I always thought that Alamy was more professional than other agencies, but it looks like all agencies are exactly the same.

Kone

How is this unprofessional?

See my highlighting above.

But Alamy didn't take money back which was never thjere and wasn't ever paid. It wasn't a clawback as called. Not a refund. Most of this thread is mistaken and false. Alamy fixed that and now people find other things to complain.