Unfortunately, these are not real identicals, they are 'near identicals' [1], which with the current acceptance policy are all getting in.
I'm sure that if you write to CR, they'll just say they are not identical, which is technically true. They'd be good for 'spot the difference' competitions.
If you're a buyer you could post on the Help column - best if you're not also a contributor. Trouble is, they don't like you posting about other peoples' images, though how you can highlight a problem like this without the search term you gave, they'll just say they don't see a problem.
[1] OK, some may not have a few cm of difference, they may well be identical. More like these intelligence tests where you have to pick out the identical from a list of very similars.

You could try asking on Twitter, where they seem to hang out these days. Forums are too pass� for iStock.

The new acceptance policy is hinting at some future plan which we're not privy to. It looks as though they're trying to attract a lot of new files, but not promoting them, so they are unlikely to sell, then in future they will do  xxx with them. The xxx is the worry.

Previously I had alleged 'similars' rejected which were far different than these.
I remember reading on the forum years ago from someone who had a series of times on a clock, who had had similars rejections, being told that designers were perfectly capable of changing the hands on clocks in PS. Also people uploading themed alphabets were getting random letters in and others rejected as 'too similar'.
Another example of how they've gone from 'too tight' to 'inexplicably loose'. Some of these you referred to would have to be overlaid to see the differences, and some may indeed be identical as I noticed when I changed the sort, so the order changed on my page.

I completely agree. I think the most important thing, for many reasons, including creative satisfaction, is to keep shooting images that you are really proud of. It may seem like a pointless exercise when your little image gets set adrift on a huge flood of multiple mediocre uploads, but I do think (hope) that the really good stuff does somehow find its way to the buyer. And if it doesn't work, there is nothing to stop you taking that collection of high quality images and putting them somewhere else on some other day in the future. Its really difficult to be really good at photography. The best way is to try to shoot really good images. Once you loose sight of that, and start shooting for quantity, you are lost (in my humble opinion)

Hey,

My apologies. You are right. They are not identical. I can see that now. They are so similar its crazy that all of these get through. But Im guessing that, as the contributor is a big conglomerate of photographers, they have a much more relaxed reviewing process than the individual contributors. So things are just bulk processed without any humans checking anything. They might as well just have a direct wifi link from the camera to the the IS website!

Wow, the pop up loupe is so slow to come up, I can't hardly see any differences when trying to compare them. 

These would be great if you wanted to do an animated gangster flick book...

They should have a new category for stills uploaded at 30 frames per second...

Yup, that's it.

So the "contributor" is Clerkenwell Images aka OJO Images - a getty dump

Interestingly, they have moved some of this outfit's images to the cheaper collections - 62 in Main, 5260 in the $$ section, 4293 in the $$$ section and 29,407 in the $$$$ ( I can't recall what these sections are now named)

I was thinking they'd made an effort to "curate" these items, but the crappy fruit slices and sideways apple are still in the $$$$ section, so no one looked all that closely

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25406435-close-up-of-orange-slice.php
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25406521-juicy-green-apple.php

And then there's the slower-than-slow loupe - when it does come up, it's centered over the mouse, so you can't slide to the next image to the right to see that in detail without moving your mouse away to dismiss the loupe and then move it to the next one you want to see. It's really pathetic UI - and they could look at any of the other stock sites, even Thinkstock, to see better (and faster) implementation

So this sounds a bit off topic from the original question, but when you consider how little attention has been given to weeding out the junk in the OJO portfolio (which does have some really good work as well), the mass of near-identical images doesn't seem much of a surprise

Don't knock that apple, It's for early Ipads that dont have a screen rotate. 

Ha! But if they can't afford a new iPad, how will they afford the 135 credits or $242 it costs to buy this gem of an image (with wrong keywords) (that don't even include apple)?

And you don't even impose a cover charge for the comedy show

ugh. who would pay that kind of money for those photos. It's just plain insulting to buyers. My company WAS a buyer at IS and this is the kind of crap that would frost my cookies and made us leave. Even with the $$ slider... still pisses me off.