Quote from: sjlocke on October 31, 2010, 10:33

You can get an audit at Getty.
"4.7 Audit Rights. You may employ a certified accountant or licensed financial advisor to audit payments made to you during the previous 36 months, at your expense unless the audit reveals that Getty Images has underpaid you by more than 7.5%, in which case Getty Images will reimburse you for the actual and reasonable auditor�s fees. Getty Images will honor one audit request per calendar year, upon 60 days notice. If an underpayment is discovered in an audit, Getty Images will pay Contributor interest based on the average one month LIBOR rate for the period under audit on the amount due from the date payment was due, correct the books and records, and will pay any amounts due (subject to any applicable Royalty Deductions) within 30 days after the amount due is finally determined. In the event that an audit reveals any overpayment to Contributor, Contributor agrees that Getty Images may deduct the overpayment from Contributor�s earnings."

If you think a bit about this clause - and I did as I was contemplating adding a suggestion in the IS forums that we have an audit clause in our contracts - it isn't as easy or cheap as we'd like it to be to take a look at the books.

1. You only get an audit once a year and with 2 months advance notice. Lots of time for things to get tidied away.

2. I assume the audit would take place in Calgary, meaning the accountant or advisor would have to be there or we'd pay to fly them there. Imagine how expensive that could be if there were foot dragging in giving the auditor what they needed.

3. Would the person have to be licensed in Canada?

4. There appears to be nothing about how you resolve things should IS and the auditor disagree about what the correct royalties should be. I assume in such cases it ends up going to court if the contributor cares to go that route. More expense.

5. There's a pretty high threshhold of recovery amount before you get paid something for the cost of the audit if there are problems found (reasonable charges - i.e. would they quibble about travel expenses to HQ?).

All of this says that even if we asked for a Getty-style audit clause, it'd only be the highest earners who'd have a prayer of this making any financial sense.

I'd be interested in other people's opinions, but it seems to be that audits wouldn't help most of us given the costs involved. Which brings me back to pushing for getting detailed downloadable sales data so we can monitor what they're doing more closely. Given how many of us there are, odds are good - if we have the data - that we would catch a problem if one occurred.

I would tend to agree. An audit requested by one person would be very costly. An audit requested by many people could carry some weight and the cost could be dispersed among those participating. Get a nice number to join in, and it becomes affordable. But a detailed downloadable sales data sheet would go a long way to helping figure this all out without the auditing business.

^^^I think someone would catch them out if they tried that and their reputation would be shot.  It just wouldn't be worth the risk.

^^^I think someone would catch them out if they tried that and their reputation would be shot.  It just wouldn't be worth the risk.

I consider everything that has transpired since Kelly's big announcement as having ruined their reputation. Finding out that they have been knocking a DL off everyone's account per day would not surprise me in the very least, and I am not making any accusations either. I'm just saying that I consider "pushing software through too early" and trying to save themselves 10% with the exclusives is equally as bad and they have admitted to doing that!

^^^I think someone would catch them out if they tried that and their reputation would be shot.  It just wouldn't be worth the risk.

Not only would their reputation be shot, but this is a crime.  People could do jail time for something like that if it was systemic and deliberate (not saying it is, BTW, just responding to the hypothetical scenario) 

caspixel,
Here is what my email from CE said:

Quote

Hi Cathleen,
 
I am happy to say this has been resolved quickly.
 
The client has repurchased the image with the Extended License Unlimited Print/Reproductions.
 
You should be able to see this information in your account.

You know, I wouldn't put it past them to just say that, to cover their ass. Cynical, I know. But I don't trust anything they say.

So, the Extended License change happened September 27!!!!!!! More than a month ago. And iStock had absolutely no intention of fixing it until they got caught. You can't tell me they didn't notice. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing. Desperate. Greedy. Malicious.

I particularly enjoyed their "oops, the software accidentally got pushed early but sorry guys, we'll give it back to ya". Anyone want to bet it doesn't go back into exclusive's account until after Jan. 1? I'm thinking they need the money to contribute to that bottom line they are trying to achieve this year. We shall see. I will be surprised if it happens before.

What am I missing?

That the PAYG credit price can be lower than 95 cents. See joyze's comment yesterday, including "There is no pay-as-you-go minimum"

Quote from: caspixel on November 03, 2010, 00:25

So, the Extended License change happened September 27!!!!!!! More than a month ago. And iStock had absolutely no intention of fixing it until they got caught. You can't tell me they didn't notice. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing. Desperate. Greedy. Malicious.

I particularly enjoyed their "oops, the software accidentally got pushed early but sorry guys, we'll give it back to ya". Anyone want to bet it doesn't go back into exclusive's account until after Jan. 1? I'm thinking they need the money to contribute to that bottom line they are trying to achieve this year. We shall see. I will be surprised if it happens before.

That's my thinking on it all too. Those refunds probably won't come until after January 1 which won't take away from their bottom line for 2010. Then in 2011 they'll deduct it as a loss from the previous year. Maybe if they meet the projected profit point this year they will do the refund, but I doubt they will unless it is met. Really when you think about it, it wouldn't be that hard to go back on those past sales and credit those accounts within any given time period....which they have yet to say how long that will take. I just got a bad feeling about all this.

Quote from: whatalife on November 03, 2010, 09:16

What am I missing?

That the PAYG credit price can be lower than 95 cents. See joyze's comment yesterday, including "There is no pay-as-you-go minimum"

No minimum. Awesome. So basically they can just pay us whatever they want to and we have no means of verifying anything, on a site where mysterious technical glitches that affect incomes happen all too frequently.

No minimum. Awesome. So basically they can just pay us whatever they want to and we have no means of verifying anything, on a site where mysterious technical glitches that affect incomes happen all too frequently.

Hence the request for detailed downloadable stats - we need to know them sale by sale. That's an extension of an earlier request I made specifically about ELs

Duckycards succinctly posted here about the need for transparency.

Shining a light on closed, hidden processes helps to keep them straight.

Quote from: ShadySue on November 03, 2010, 11:00

Quote from: whatalife on November 03, 2010, 09:16

Aren't we supposed to get paid for the download in addition to the EL?

I'm pretty sure we don't. It's just the EL, which is a 'download with special uses'.

You do, otherwise we wouldn't see all these Legal Guarantee EL questions like "I just got $3.50 for an EL, what's up?".  They got paid for the regular size DL in addition to the EL, so it works that way on the rest too.  Or it should.

That confusion is because the download fee shows up as an orange EL bar in your stats, which it clearly shouldn't.

Quote from: sjlocke on November 03, 2010, 14:22

Quote from: ShadySue on November 03, 2010, 11:00

Quote from: whatalife on November 03, 2010, 09:16

Aren't we supposed to get paid for the download in addition to the EL?

I'm pretty sure we don't. It's just the EL, which is a 'download with special uses'.

You do, otherwise we wouldn't see all these Legal Guarantee EL questions like "I just got $3.50 for an EL, what's up?".  They got paid for the regular size DL in addition to the EL, so it works that way on the rest too.  Or it should.

No, I'm pretty sure we get paid only for the EL. I've just had a couple of EL's go through and neither image has any regular sales recorded for weeks in one case and several months for the other.

You do get paid a separate license for the image itself, at whatever size, but you have no way of knowing what that is unless you contact support to ask.

I know this because I had a sale of an EL on an image that had no other downloads and contacted support to ask how you could get a multi-seat license for something you never licensed. You can read the info here.

Numerous contributors are noticing low royalties on ELs recently. This doesn't even take into consideration the 10% bonus issue. I spoke with Contributor Relations about one of mine and the explanation was that it was a large corporation who paid $.70 per credit. That makes sense if this were the case for a few contributors, but it seems this is the norm for a vast number of ELs now. The price has dropped significantly for everyone I've talked to. The low royalties on ELs is only one issue of non-payment.

Putting aside the option of an individual audit, is there not a regulatory entity that does audits in cases like this? Numerous contributors are angry, with many suspecting fraud.