Microstock Photography Forum - General > General Stock Discussion

||RESOLVED|| SS Account Suspended, $1400 Earnings Gone

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cloudvisual:
I'll start by saying that I was part of the Boycott Shutterstock crowd, but I was making reasonable earnings with them and was willing to take the hit on the new payment terms given this money goes back into paying for equipment/trips.

Got an email off Shutterstock two days ago to inform me that one of the images that I uploaded wasn't my own. Very blunt and to the point that my account was suspended and I am no longer entitled to be a contributor.

The email said that I was entitled to make an appeal, so long as I provided proof. So I did just that and sent over the DNG of the image in question, along with three other images from the shoot to show that I took the photos.

I've had no reply, aside from the auto responder promising me a reply in 24 hours. I also followed up on it yesterday afternoon (9am NYC time) to make sure that I'd really pointed out that a mistake had been made here.

Anyway, they've taken away my earnings and shut the account. So if there's a lesson to be had here, it's to make sure that you don't set your payout to $2000 and let the money pool up each month. They can and will pull the plug on you at any time, regardless of the proof you can provide.

Firn:
I am sorry to hear that. Unfortunately that's not the first time I am hearing of such cases (though in the other cases I am not sure whether the accounts were suspended rightfully or not. Sometimes thieves had the nerves to go to the Shutterstock forum to ask for advice or complain). Ever since I've constantly be worried that something like this might happen to me, even though, of course, all photos I submit are mine.

In a normal scenario this could been attributed to a mistake and should be fairly easy to sort out, if, in like your case, you have proof like other photos from the same shoot. However, nowadays it has become close to impossible to actually get any kind of "support" from Shutterstock if you are on the contributor side. I have had support cases I never got a reply to from 2 years (!) ago. Since it was about a technical error on their side, I gave up as I found a workaround for my side, so it's really not my concern if some customers can't see some photos of other contributors. :(

In your case, since this is quite a lot of money, it might possibly be worth calling them? They do have a phone number up on their support page. Not sure what good it will do, since showing proof won't work on the phone, but maybe you can at least get someone to look at the case that way?
Wishing you lots of luck that you get the issue resolved.

cloudvisual:

--- Quote from: Firn on October 16, 2021, 03:33 ---I am sorry to hear that.

--- End quote ---

Thank you. I did actually call up yesterday evening, but the answer was that any phone number designed for calling is purely for someone buying. Whilst the guy on the other end of the line was very understanding and concerned, he said that there was absolutely nothing he could do and that I need to raise it with the email address given to me in the suspension contact message.

I'm not expecting an email back from them. It's just very disheartening when creating stock footage is already an uphill battle, with an ever-steepening mountain to climb.

vectorsforall:
Sorry to read that :-(
What the fxxck is wrong with them ?! I already told on this forum that when I send them multiple notices of thieves accounts with dozens of duplicate videos, they just - in the better case - pull the videos and let the thieves account online. And here - from what I understand - for just one image, they shut your account all the way down...

JaenStock:
I had a similar problem that was resolved in three days. I worked with a German macro distributor and when I closed my account with them, due to a shutter or distributor error, the images were still online at shutterstock premier. They closed my account and I had to investigate the repeated photos (they did not send me thumbnails but thanks to stock performer I got what images were by ID) I sent a lot of emails with RAW, model contracts ... and I was very insistent. Finally my account was re-established.

I always charge shutter every month and despite not going up much I had 500 dollars that month by that date, finally my money appeared

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