have no idea how long this has happened since I dont visit iStock on a regular basis like I used to, but I noticed today that my canister has changed from a diamond (for 25,000+ downloads) down to a Gold.  I know in the scheme of things it is meaningless except that it does indicate how "downloaded" your portfolio is. 

didn't see a bug about this on the istock forum but thought I'd ask here - anyone else notice a change in your canister color?

maybe it's because they have decided to screw me again and now the canister is not total downloads but only photos?  that would make sense, but I dont recall when that happened or an announcement about it. 

just another demoralizing thing they do to contributors I suppose.

Someone else posted this, I saw it within the past week, maybe the end of the April bugs thread?
 ... yes second last page of the April bugs thread; in response to a query by sumografika , Kelvin replied "Have you sold enough photos to earn a silver photo canister? You appear to have a silver illustration icon. I've seen a few people who sell vector and photo drop canister levels recently. ."
Don't know if it applies to you? Inplication may be that people had been showing a higher level for a particular medium than they should have been (or is that just my inference?)

Quote from: ShadySue on May 04, 2012, 12:14

Someone else posted this, I saw it within the past week, maybe the end of the April bugs thread?
 ... yes second last page of the April bugs thread; in response to a query by sumografika , Kelvin replied "Have you sold enough photos to earn a silver photo canister? You appear to have a silver illustration icon. I've seen a few people who sell vector and photo drop canister levels recently. ."
Don't know if it applies to you? Implication may be that people had been showing a higher level for a particular medium than they should have been (or is that just my inference?)

yeah, I think you're right.  I now appear to have a gold PHOTO canister and gold VECTOR icon.  that's my split.  I guess for an old timer like me when the little film canister icon represented all your downloads, it was a great day when that little icon got a fresh new color added to it. Now I guess I don't (or shouldn't) care anymore. 

heavy sigh...

Yeah, what does it matter. I still regard my 'gold' as 'iron pyrites'.

I'm not sure we should be talking to Jami any more

I suppose I should be happy I only dabbled in illustrations for a while (stopped when a best match lurch left them high and dry and newly uploaded photos were king, temporarily). I'm bronze as an illustrator - with no illustrations on the site. To top it off - the cherry on the icing on the cake as it were - I still have a logo icon - for a program that's been cancelled and for which I never submitted anything! I know why I have the logos - if you were an approved illustrator and had any illustration sales, you were automatically approved as a logo contributor.

If Liz' gold is iron pyrites, my diamond is cubic zirconia

hahahaha!  Well yeah, I hve one of those logo icons too.  I actually drafted up a few logos, submitted one but bot rejected because I did something wrong in the submission process and just never bothered to go back and fix it!  I need to dust off those files and turn them into something sellable/useful illustration. 

I guess I'm now "double gold" with my gold photo canister and gold illustrator pen nib.

no.. wait.. I'm "double iron pyrite"!  that actually sounds kind of fun! 

Someone else posted this, I saw it within the past week, maybe the end of the April bugs thread?
 ... yes second last page of the April bugs thread; in response to a query by sumografika , Kelvin replied "Have you sold enough photos to earn a silver photo canister? You appear to have a silver illustration icon. I've seen a few people who sell vector and photo drop canister levels recently. ."
Don't know if it applies to you? Inplication may be that people had been showing a higher level for a particular medium than they should have been (or is that just my inference?)

Personally I think that's a sh*tty answer on the moderator's part.  "I've seen a few people . . . drop canister levels recently."  Is it expecting too much that if there has been such a policy change that they should get a straight answer?  Kind of like the stats updates.  Last month the thread was locked, and I recall one of his posts saying "please don't ask about stats updates anymore", and this week when someone asked, it sounded like he was playing dumb with "Are you sure that you've had iStock sales?" and then "mine are pretty consistently updated daily".   And then before locking the thread, "stats are being addressed".  It's like the same old routine every month.  Maybe I'm expecting more from the moderator in terms of answers than they're expected to give, I don't know.  Especially when there is a change in policy (like the canister levels).   

 Kind of like the stats updates.  Last month the thread was locked, and I recall one of his posts saying "please don't ask about stats updates anymore", and this week when someone asked, it sounded like he was playing dumb with "Are you sure that you've had iStock sales?" and then "mine are pretty consistently updated daily".   And then before locking the thread, "stats are being addressed".  It's like the same old routine every month.  Maybe I'm expecting more from the moderator in terms of answers than they're expected to give, I don't know.

I noticed that about the stats updates. I'm still on 29th April, but as long as he's getting preferential treatment, we all must be wrong.
I don't think a moderator's real purpose is to help contributors; they're there to make sure that anyone making 'immoderate' posts is locked and/or banned.
They don't seem to be privy to much inside info, and their usual 'contact CR' would be OK except that CR seem to be told just to hit a random button in quick reply. I'm the first to say that individual members of the CR team have been very helpful at times, but sometimes the cookie cutter response doesn't even match with the issue. And sometimes they send out answers that contradict the ASA, even allowing for the fact that the ASA is (presumably deliberately) obfuscatory.
Also, on at least two CR replies I've had recently, it's suggested that I should post my question in the forums, which are 'a wonderful source of information', even though I can't.   (Yeah, I know, it's that cookie-cutter response choice again.)

Quote from: ShadySue on May 05, 2012, 05:03

...Also, on at least two CR replies I've had recently, it's suggested that I should post my question in the forums, which are 'a wonderful source of information', even though I can't.   (Yeah, I know, it's that cookie-cutter response choice again.)

On Friday I decided I'd open a support ticket to ask about my forum ban. It was for one sarcastic (no profanity; no rudeness to any individual) post in early September 2011 and Lobo site mailed me that I should take a little break from the forums. The support ticket asked if my ban was in fact permanent, and if not, when would I get my forum privileges back.

It'll be interesting to see what, if any, response I get. It's not that I have any current intention to post in their forums, but there might come a day when I need or want to.

For what it's worth, all Lobo's site mails to me from around that time, and my messages sent to him, are gone from my iStock site mail. I'm assuming he deleted them as they weren't polite or professional (on his part). Don't ever assume site mail is private or permanent (i.e. take screen shots of anything you need to keep track of).

Good luck. I asked about my SM ban and have had no response at all after months.
It hardly matters: the people I want to SM are all here too.

Quote from: ShadySue on May 05, 2012, 05:03

...Also, on at least two CR replies I've had recently, it's suggested that I should post my question in the forums, which are 'a wonderful source of information', even though I can't.   (Yeah, I know, it's that cookie-cutter response choice again.)

On Friday I decided I'd open a support ticket to ask about my forum ban. It was for one sarcastic (no profanity; no rudeness to any individual) post in early September 2011 and Lobo site mailed me that I should take a little break from the forums. The support ticket asked if my ban was in fact permanent, and if not, when would I get my forum privileges back.

It'll be interesting to see what, if any, response I get. It's not that I have any current intention to post in their forums, but there might come a day when I need or want to.

For what it's worth, all Lobo's site mails to me from around that time, and my messages sent to him, are gone from my iStock site mail. I'm assuming he deleted them as they weren't polite or professional (on his part). Don't ever assume site mail is private or permanent (i.e. take screen shots of anything you need to keep track of).

really bad story....the communication is the real problem of istock

Did they ban SM too? I didn't know that. Did they ban SM because of some forum postings at the same time or later? What was the reason for banning SM?

Did they ban SM too? I didn't know that. Did they ban SM because of some forum postings at the same time or later? What was the reason for banning SM?

Not sure if the question was directed at me, but I am not banned from site mail. I just have had site-mails to and from Lobo from around the time of my forum ban removed. I have site mails from way before and after that time, so it's not any sort of automatic cull of old site mails.

Most people in this forum=    you= .........
It's so refreshing to see someone take yet another hit from IS, and be so calm and collected, my hat off to you Jamirae!

haha.. didn't see this until today.  I'm done being pissed off at IS.  I prefer to move on as best I can.  Although it's kind of like an ex-husband, especially when you have kids with them, you can never really be completely out of each other's lives but you can move forward and make the best of the new/changed relationship for the sake of the children.

in this case iStock is the ex-husband and all my images are the children -- I want them to still have a relationship with istock, but I'm showing them that there's a lot more out there in the world than just one company. 

Quote from: jsnover on May 05, 2012, 08:37

On Friday I decided I'd open a support ticket to ask about my forum ban. It was for one sarcastic (no profanity; no rudeness to any individual) post in early September 2011 and Lobo site mailed me that I should take a little break from the forums. The support ticket asked if my ban was in fact permanent, and if not, when would I get my forum privileges back.

It'll be interesting to see what, if any, response I get. ...

So far, no response - Opened May 4th, it's now May 15th. I realize this isn't a time-critical issue, but when you're looking at a yes-no answer, I think that 9 days is plenty of time. Apparently they could serve us better via the ticket system - if this is "better", I hate to think what worse is.

I have this vision of the support ticket going to someone that has no authority to make the decision to reinstate so they send an e-mail to their supervisor who tells them to open an internal support ticket which gets a canned response that all issues are to be taken up at the weekly support issue meeting.  At the meeting they realize there is no policy on reinstatement and the response is tabled until a task force can be assembled to create policy, meanwhile another internal support ticket is sent to request a new push-button response to be sent in reply to future requests for reinstatement - something along the lines of "the issue of reinstating your forum privileges is being worked on and we will respond when we have a decision - if you require more information please call CR or post in the forums"

As it's now been a month since I opened the support ticket (with no answer), I thought I'd update it with a couple of paragraphs saying: I think a month is plenty of time to answer even a non-critical question, and that even if they have some policy decision they're working on, some sort of response explaining it may be a while would be appropriate.

I realize that providing decent service to contributors who pay their salaries (and loan payments to H&F) isn't a priority any more, but this is just crappy, rude customer service.

so it's 10 days now.. did they respond yet or are they continuing the trend of crappy, rude customer service?

Nada - and my forum privs are still missing (checked in case they turned them back on but forgot to close the ticket or send me a reply).

Another contributor was (a while ago, when support was bad, but better than now) opined that one could set up customer service that just told everyone "F@ck you!" and still have better support than IS

I think that other contributor had a good idea!  LOL!!

Quote from: jsnover on June 14, 2012, 17:53

Another contributor was (a while ago, when support was bad, but better than now) opined that one could set up customer service that just told everyone "F@ck you!" and still have better support than IS

^ You want them to let you back on their forum so that you can slag them off over there too ?

ETA: ubiquitous

I think if you bother to look back at my many IS forum posts the bulk of them were constructive, even when critical.

I wouldn't bother making any comments - critical or positive - in the moribund iStock forums, but would like to be able to use the help forum to report or ask about problems. Given all the money they're making from me, and the fact that one slightly sarcastic comment (about an iStock policy, not any sort of personal attack) has had me banned for almost a year, I think this is excessive.

Did you have a point other than just wishing to be rude about my comment here that customer service is non-existent for contributors? Whether the answer is yes or no, saying something - anything - within 6 weeks is a pretty reasonable request in my opinion. I am paying their salaries and they are just ignoring a support ticket.

Say is this "Lobo" guy still around at IS?

Yes

I think it's nice they're going to take a look at it after 4 months,

4 months is absurd. I think I'd have started contacting people outside iStock before that point... they've all got real-world emails, Facebook, etc.