I removed all my portfolio but one photo in May 2014.  What am I to make of an e-mail from Istock TODAY that states:

"Dear Contributor,

The following file(s) were recently licensed to an iStock customer in a transaction that did not occur through the website:

4062630
4213720

We have made an adjustment to your account and added your royalty from the license(s), which totals $1.66."

The only photo on sale does not have these numbers and note the word "recently".

You won't get a coherent explanation but the bottom line is that they can and will sell deactivated images.

I wrote to support this afternoon as they made another license for me for a file deactivated in February 2013. For a princely royalty of 94 cents!!

This is even worse than last time (October 2014 which they finally "resolved" in February 2015, thanking me for my patience). In the previous case there were 3 extended licenses for files that had been licensed earlier.

This pitiful license has to be new.

I wrote to support and told them they had no authority to grant a license and they must revoke it. They can direct the customer to another agency for that file or have them license something else from Getty/iStock.

They promised this wouldn't occur again when we closed the last ticket. To have them do this three years after the file is no longer theirs to sell is disgraceful. I'll update here when I hear back from support...

You won't get a coherent explanation but the bottom line is that they can and will sell deactivated images.

This is so horrible and unprofessional! Is there any way to completely remove the images from iStock, not just deactivate them? 

What do you expect from such an amatuerish crowd of buffoons can't even report sales real time still relying on that god awful CV.

...The only photo on sale does not have these numbers and note the word "recently".

You can look at your deactivated files and search for the file number which will show you which files they licensed. In addition to my deactivated file, a current exclusive who had a dozen or so files listed in Monday's e-mail checked to see if any where deactivated, and three were.

From the reply in Febuary 2015 to the October 2014 sales of deactivated items, customer service said the following:

"I have confirmed that license adjustments should not occur for files that had been deactivated and that we do audit content prior to these negotiations to ensure that the files are still active. It seems that we did not catch your deactivated file(s) on the audit we did and for that we apologize."

Their "audit" is apparently still broken.

Support tells me that these adjustments are for very old transactions - from 2010 and 2013 was what they said. They confirmed that the sales occurred when the files were active

Your Mileage May Vary (and your brain might wonder how this comes to light in 2016 and why there was no text explaining this in the e-mail and probably some uncharitable thoughts about their competence)

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on March 29, 2016, 14:41

Support tells me that these adjustments are for very old transactions - from 2010 and 2013 was what they said. They confirmed that the sales occurred when the files were active

Your Mileage May Vary (and your brain might wonder how this comes to light in 2016 and why there was no text explaining this in the e-mail and probably some uncharitable thoughts about their competence)

But they still sold "adjustments" to these "old transactions" in 2016 after the files had been deactivated, when their previous email noted that "license adjustments should not occur for files that had been deactivated and that we do audit content prior to these negotiations to ensure that the files are still active."

So they still have not provided an adequate explanation why this was allowed to happen again, nor any assurances that it will not happen in the future. In fact, this latest round did happen in the "future" since they told you in 2015 that this "should not occur."

People deactivate their files for a variety of reasons, some of which might be to avoid potential problems with inappropriate uses, model/property releases etc. Deactivated files should be totally off limits, even for different or continued usage of an image purchased when the file was active, unless the photographer agrees to it.

Be careful what you wish for, it seems to me to be the lesser of two evils letting them get away with keeping a few customers happy or forcing them to change the Terms and Conditions to allow this sort of thing in perpetuity.

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on March 28, 2016, 20:20

Quote from: polar on March 28, 2016, 19:44

You won't get a coherent explanation but the bottom line is that they can and will sell deactivated images.

Licensed download before deactivation, buyer is paying for another use or continued use. Ask Jo Ann Snover

Jo Ann is always coherent. IS, not so much. After months of emails, I got no useful explanation from them. Initially, they even denied they'd sold the image despite having added the money to my account.

That's why I say ask her, she gets the facts right. IS can't track their own site and is so sycho that they don't know their own rules for review. Sales of removed, deactivated or disbled files must be illegal? Some will miss them when IS is gone. Rest of us will just watch the titanic sink before our eyes and wonder how they did it. Incompitence.