Does it not say everything that the marketing wallah calls himself KingCash?
http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=8098926
Might as well be up front about the only thing that makes them happy. 

Or maybe paying a wage for a regular hours job is cheaper than paying a salary for work all hours when needed, which could be 'unsustainable'.

^^Exactly.  Judging from the quality of IT they have, they must not be paying much. 

I picture the execs from Istock cruising the Home Depot parking lot in a pickup truck looking for vagrants to do IT work for minimum wage.  Or better yet, guys holding signs that say "Will program for food". 

I sold an extended license this morning (yea - will in part make up for the otherwise crappy week) but I noticed that they no longer say how many credits; just what option was purchased. I looked at a couple of older EL sales and likewise, they no longer say anything about how many credits.

So we've now lost yet another tracking mechanism for the details of our sales transactions - I assume it had something to do with the latest changes. So I have absolutely no way now to tell if there was any sort of error (like the missing 10% exclusive bonus way back when).

Clearly they aren't taking the many suggestions about needing detailed sales data to heart...

Today's post from Lobo:
"I could respond with the typical: We are working on it, but I don't have much more than that to share this morning. So it's almost worse, but, here I am now saying things are being worked on. If I had an ETA please appreciate I would share it.

Views seems to be bugged. We are getting some eyes on that so if you are thinking the entire world stopped looking at your images(generally speaking) you can rest assured that isn't the case.

The Zoom and the other features we disabled are slated to be brought back online as soon as possible. Clearly we don't want to have to disable anything a second time so we want to make sure things are sorted out.

Did we anticipate all these issues prior to the Launch? Of course not, but we have people working away as I type."

OK so again I have to ask - why did they not anticipate these issues? I'm not by any means an IT wallah, but aren't they supposed to check all these things inside out before launch?
Wouldn't you think that with a long history of this happening, they'd want to make really sure?
Weren't they always advertising, for months on end, for someone who could break their system. Did they really never find anyone who could do it?
How many other serious commercial sites have issues like this for days and weeks after they launch a new feature?
Isn't it weird that they announced their cash sales programme only a few days before launch? Was that the cleaner's suggestion of the week, then the programmers were whipped to get it done within so many hours, no matter what? APU.

As someone who shall remain nameless said, they should change their name to SNAFU-IZ-US. It's like the actual site workings had been running fairly smoothly for several months and someone thought, "We can't have that!"

And note that their promise that people who reached their target early would IMMEDIATELY get their higher percentage has fallen by the wayside. In response to people complaining about this, Lobo snarkily pointed out the Cash Sales launch, which OldLadybird also gave as the excuse for them not porting E+ (and being behind on many V/A transfers).

ROFL!  Good work!

@Artpuppy - thanks for a chuckle. I'd prefer a working site, but lampooning the idiots who keep breaking stuff is a reasonable second best

Tsk. Lobo says it isn't broken. Keep up at the back! 
@artpuppy: Very Good Indeed.

For those who don't follow iStock forums, the latest is that not only are they fleecing cash buyers who don't pay in $$$ (I can't find an easy way to change 'method of payment' for cash sales, though it [used to be?] easy enough to buy credits in US$, if your credit card rate was better than iStock's), but they are not sharing the booty with contributors.
When it was pointed out that contributors should be, according to the rate schedule, paid at their percentage of the actual selling, iStock posted:
"Royalties for our new standard pricing downloads are calculated using the same logic as credit downloads: we apply your royalty percentage to the net US dollar value of the file. We are going to change that language on the rate schedule to be more accurate."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=347211&page=3#post6742383
So, not content with cutting the percentage rate of most of us, they are fleecing non-US buyers and not giving us our previously-promised share.
Nothing ever changes.
Worse, it looks like they've never been paying out the rate which was published on their site.
NB: I'd rather they weren't fleecing non-US buyers.

lisafx , jsnover , ShadySue - thanks for the feedback, I'll try to post more cartoons in the future. (I seem to be getting new material from istock with each month)

Regarding the site updates, I can think of only two situations:
One: the IT team at istock HQ doesn't have the skills to do website updates properly so we are just dealing with people who have the best intentions but just can't cut the mustard and no ability to plan whatsoever.
Two: Instructions are from Getty HQ to not work weekends or during off times and to do this during the work week. Sure sales will slump, but in the long run perhaps that is what they want to push us all to a 20% royalty rate. A setback here, a slump there, and soon we'll all be down a canister rate with lower RC earnings.

Hehe, iStock is truly a bottomless well of material for comic strips...

Makes me a bit sad though. I used to like iStock a few years ago. Now I get the feeling that they'll be out of business in a year or two...