Its madness I tell ya, madness.

Phoebe: "It's madness I tell you!"

Once again I call for an Istock accounting ledger page for each contributor. The Account page must be a true ledger of customer payment, iStock deductions, contributor portion. Do this for each transaction in the contributors account. Istock has the data to do the accounting - just make it transparent to each contributor. It's the only way for us to gain any confidence in the Istock accounting system now.

How could you be 100% confident that this would be either honest or accurate?
It looks like their actual accounting was wrong in this instance (maybe PP contributors got 100% of sales?). Why they didn't notice this in their accounting dept or why no-one got suspicious when loads of people were reporting anomalous RPDs here and there beggars belief.

It cant be long now before we have istock chasers instead of ambulance chasers

I have full confidence that if they have made a mistake and overpaid contributors they will consider the overpayment a goodwill gesture and leave it be. 

LOL!
That would be like the UK Tax Office, which a couple of months after I'd paid for 2011-12 sent me a (paper) letter saying they had accidentally undercharged me (20-something pence, less than the cost of a stamp). As it was such a small amount, I could add it onto the next year's payment.
TBH, I was astonished they'd waste time, paper and a stamp on this. If I'd made a mistake like that, I'd have popped in the money myself.
But no, the next tax bill had the pence amount added, and c�10 late fee.
B*stards.
(I just had to pay. The letter came in saying if I didn't pay within ten days I'd be in court - the morning I was going on holiday for two weeks, and I didn't have time to look for the 'underpaid' letter. If it hadn't been for that unfortunate timing, I'd have held out and only paid the small underpay.)

It's certainly going to be interesting to see how they 'spin' this, if they decide to claw it all back.

Quote from: StanRohrer on January 04, 2014, 08:59

Once again I call for an Istock accounting ledger page for each contributor. The Account page must be a true ledger of customer payment, iStock deductions, contributor portion. Do this for each transaction in the contributors account. Istock has the data to do the accounting - just make it transparent to each contributor. It's the only way for us to gain any confidence in the Istock accounting system now.

How could you be 100% confident that this would be either honest or accurate?
It looks like their actual accounting was wrong in this instance (maybe PP contributors got 100% of sales?). Why they didn't notice this in their accounting dept or why no-one got suspicious when loads of people were reporting anomalous RPDs here and there beggars belief.

The contributors would at least be able to check the percentages of the Istock take on each sale and see that the calculations were done correctly. Of course then Istock would have to have a complete descriptive page of how the sales of each category and each contributor level would work. Hence more knowledge by the contributors means more questions have to be answered by Contributor Relations (albeit for the good of all).

What contributors still wouldn't know is if sales "accidentally" got dropped and didn't make the ledger page entry. So, no, this is never going to be 100% confidence but any step is a good step. Massive dropped sales could be caught by a bunch of us banding together and buying some of each others photos and reporting each buy to the seller. If is didn't show in the files sales list (and didn't show in the proposed ledger page) then Istock dropped sales could be detected.

I went back over the past year and took screenshots of all my DLS and earnings. I see the average amount I earn per DL bounces around from month to month, sometimes almost double in one month what I average in another. October is off the chart.

1. It's sad and disgusting that I feel I need to take screenshots of my earnings and sit and figure out anomalies on my own, because the large corporation that represents me and has a staff of IT "experts" and professional accountants is incapable of doing so.

2. I trust the IT experts and accountants at iStock as far as I can throw them.

I do not understand one thing.

In every organized country in the world, with law and statutes and constitution there is something, excuse my English, called "work inspection".

These people checks if everything is regular, or by the law or contract with contributors. Everyone can call them if questioning some company doesn't work like it is stated by the contracts with worker or contributors.

I really doubt that Canada doesn't have these kind of inspections and that it isn't possible to check sales on sites like photos.com or thinkstock.com.

Is any contributor here from Canada and what can he/she say about it?

excuse my English, please.

I was wondering the same

+1

EDIT: Two votes down for agreeing with someone. 

I was wondering the same

+1

and I'm not talking only about IStock, I'm talking about every agency in every other country.

Even smallest companies are under laws of the country they headquarters are and if something isn't like it is written in the contract or some sales are not payed or even shown it's called a fraud or deception or misappropriation and it is punishable by the law.

Are we photographers/illustrators some kind of sheep? It's not a question to you or anyone else.

At last a good new from iStock!

Cheers!

(The return of Shame on iStock)