yeah, i did and heard this

We had to remove affiliates that were collected as a result of a bug in our system a long time again. We have removed the affiliates but will not require you to pay back the money you incorrectly earned.

same stuff here...
inconclusive and contradicting support replies, left with the response 'Let me get back to you on this'

the clock is still ticking, I've gone from very frequent referral earnings down to Zero!
It seems like they only removed the good paying referrers!!! The situation sucks!

It seems very strange to me that our financials at Fotolia can be altered without any communication from them whatsoever.  Why did we not get an announcement?  What is this "bug" (or is this an excuse to cut us out)?  Are they no longer paying for photographers (different pages say different things)?  Was the affiliate plan agreement altered (again, different on different pages of the site)?

In the past, I have had no issue trying to get proper information from Fotolia.  Now, what�s the deal?  Not even a reply email?!?  I feel something very wrong is going on at Fotolia, and no one is giving it to us straight.

Heard back from the Fotolia press rep with the official Fotolia line. Not good news:

True: Fotolia no longer pay for 'new' referred photographers, only buyers. The press rep said that this had already been updated on the website and was surprised when I showed him that it hadn't.

True: They're blaming a bug that mistakenly assigned affiliates, so the removed affiliate will not be restored. Apparently when affiliates are affiliated to an account on a different date to the affiliate's registration date, they've been removed. Some affiliated accounts were older than the account that referred them - meaning it was impossible for the affiliate to have actually referred the new account.

Fotolia has, apparently, lost tens of thousands of dollars due to this bug. Affiliates were getting paid for accounts they didn't refer, but now that money has been stopped. Generously, they're going to let you keep the money they paid you by mistake! 

I told the press rep straight up that I didn't believe the explanation. I told him I thought it was awfully convenient that correcting a bug will save them lots of money, and that my referral earnings at Fotolia were previously in proportion to the size of the agency and the structure of their program but now were lower than smaller agencies with less generous referral programs.

I asked for the date the referral program was changed to exclude paying for referred photographers - he's going to get back to me.  I also asked if they know how long this 'bug' has been erroneously assigning affiliates.

So, conclusion. Fotolia has been accidentally paying us more than they needed to, which means their affiliate program was actually very weak. Now that they've stopped paying for referred photographers, it's REALLY weak! They are also yet to notify affiliates of the change or update the appropriate parts of their website.

Don't forget the big contest this spring where they decided not to award a prize.

Announcing the Unleash Your Creativity contest
http://blog.fotolia.com/us/news/contest/fotolia-_quark-_contest-_desig.html

Announcing that they aren't giving away any prizes.
http://blog.fotolia.com/us/news/contest/unleash_your_creativity-_conte.html

Why aren't new legitimate referrals even being registered?  I get it that they don't kick back a percentage on photographers - but if they aren't even registering them once they tick the photographer's box we also never get credit if that photographer purchases something. 

Is that fair to you that you placed a banner on your site, I discover Fotolia through you, bought $1000 in credits, but I checked the photographer box on signup because that is where my heart is?

well that is really too bad they changed that   disappointing... and disappointing we had to find out through the grape fine and not from the source.

Why don't you think they're not being assigned to you?

Someone took the time to tell me they signed up under me in Sept and he reported sales shortly after, but no new affiliates appeared on my page.  (Not hard to tell when you've only got a couple to start with.)  So that leads me to believe that I must be wrong if recent photographer affilates are appearing for others - he must have had a cookie already. 

On another note, I have always been the one who thought that Fotolia sales were no where near what others claim.  I noticed Peter mention a change in the search system last month, and since about the 3rd week of September my sales have become very healthy.   The best they've been for me since shortly after V2 and I reordered my keywords = sales virtually stopped.  It's very early in the month and Fotolia is in the lead for me, normally they come in 5th or 6th.  Sure SS and IS are down so more easy to pass, but Fotolia is doing better than ever.  I feel like I have finally become a member of the Fotolia clique that I've heard about.  Fingers crossed that this is the new norm.

Yes, it DOES make you wonder, doesn't it?

Partially, yes. They've given us the information about the changes to the affiliate program and updated their website in accordance with the changes.

However, I was contacted by the PR rep again today who asked me if I had everything I needed to understand the situation. This was a great sign as up until now he'd been very defensive and not very forthcoming. Hopefully it's indicative of what's going on inside the company.

Anyway, I asked him a lot of questions about the situation and provided some evidence of one affiliate that Fotolia had canceled who is my affiliates on another agency. Hopefully they can investigate and discover there was a problem in how they've implemented the affiliate cancellations. If they do it'll lend some believability to their explanation too.

I'll keep you posted.

I posted a polite reminder in the Fotolia forums this morning, I have just got home from work now and I find my thread has been deleted??? what is the deal with them?!

I was polite too, just facts and calling for obvious courtesy in regard to telling its customers when things change in the T&C's...  I mean, most other sites out there consult its members when they change something.