Author Topic: Royalty Statement Clarification (Read 13081 times)

Canonbabe · « **on:** February 24, 2017, 18:28 »

Just received a Royalty Statement Clarification email from Getty images... It looks like there are another couple of adjustments are coming:

Zero royalty rate percentage transactions
In preparation for the move to the new royalties systems, we ran several months of test transactions in the live environment. In a small number of cases, we were not able to remove all these test transactions. A small number of cases... looked like all of them were in my statement!

Increased Tax
As you can see in your statement, we track and identify the country or region for each reported sale. US transactions normally account for 50% of transactions but we are seeing an issue where all credit pack sales were reported as originating in the US.
US source transactions are subject to withholding tax, depending on your country of residence. This resulted in incorrect tax withholding for these transactions... Sure, it must be hard to develop some simple software to figure this out on time!

Summary
We are working to solve these issues for future transactions, and to identify every contributor and transaction that was affected by each issue so we can recalculate and repay any royalties owed...
So should we look forward to some extra pennies or are they going to take another big chunk of our royalty?

pancaketom · « **Reply #1 on:** February 24, 2017, 19:19 »

It looks like we will now have to wait up to 2 months to get sub sale results.

Also - have they ever done anything right the first time?

jonbull · « **Reply #2 on:** February 24, 2017, 20:01 »

the statement is the best part of all the story....after i read 0,02 cent commission...ubelievable...photography and micro stock is worth less than beggars asking money at the corner of the street...they earn more in a day....

as already told i wish the getty management to spend all money they have earned in heavy treatment for disease.

ShadySue · « **Reply #3 on:** February 24, 2017, 20:14 »

Quote from: Canonbabe on February 24, 2017, 18:28

Just received a Royalty Statement Clarification email from Getty images... It looks like there are another couple of adjustments are coming:
Zero royalty rate percentage transactions
In preparation for the move to the new royalties systems, we ran several months of test transactions in the live environment. In a small number of cases, we were not able to remove all these test transactions. A small number of cases... looked like all of them were in my statement!

But if it was test transactions, how come all of mine are matched with what appear to be actual sales? (Though it was odd/suspicious that three were right next to each other on one date).

littleny · « **Reply #4 on:** February 24, 2017, 22:10 »

I have no idea what's going on or what these people are doing. Just received an additional clarification of the original clarification lmao!! I give up. So long as they fill my PayPal with something I'll be happy

sigalavaca · « **Reply #5 on:** February 24, 2017, 22:18 »

Quote from: littleny on February 24, 2017, 22:10

I have no idea what's going on or what these people are doing. Just received an additional clarification of the original clarification lmao!! I give up. So long as they fill my PayPal with something I'll be happy

they don't seem to have a clue. which is quite worrying

cthoman · « **Reply #6 on:** February 24, 2017, 22:51 »

I'm not claiming any wrong doing, but it does make you wonder if they know what is going on.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #7 on:** February 24, 2017, 23:38 »

Quote from: cthoman on February 24, 2017, 22:51

I'm not claiming any wrong doing, but it does make you wonder if they know what is going on.

It looks to me as if the management have dumped a plan on the tech department which that department is incapable of handling, perhaps because it is impossibly complex.

qwerty · « **Reply #8 on:** February 25, 2017, 00:13 »

I can't imagine anybody is surprised. Couldn't organise a p1ss up in a brewery !

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #9 on:** February 25, 2017, 02:05 »

Hilarious. All those forum posts about the delays being because they wanted to be 100% sure that the statements would be accurate and it turns out they are riddled with errors. Anyone surprised?

Pauws99 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 25, 2017, 02:09 »

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on February 25, 2017, 02:05

Hilarious. All those forum posts about the delays being because they wanted to be 100% sure that the statements would be accurate and it turns out they are riddled with errors. Anyone surprised?

Not surprised but even worse than I expected.....you'd think it would take only one person to look at a few reports before they were sent out to say "h'mm" this doesn't look right. We can spot the obvious but you can bet these are not the only issues.

Anyka · « **Reply #11 on:** February 25, 2017, 02:38 »

Funny ... I got both clarification e-mails ... but I did NOT get an ESP invitation, I cannot login to ESP, I did not receive any reports ... but I DO get the clarification!
Oh yes, I forgot : I also DID get paid ...

qunamax · « **Reply #12 on:** February 25, 2017, 04:13 »

I'm amazed, we've been waiting for two month so they can change to this brand new system and in the end we get a messed up .txt file. What is this, the MS-DOS era? As bad as it was before this it was way better and at least more modern.

ShadySue · « **Reply #13 on:** February 25, 2017, 04:20 »

Quote from: littleny on February 24, 2017, 22:10

I have no idea what's going on or what these people are doing. Just received an additional clarification of the original clarification lmao!! I give up. So long as they fill my PayPal with something I'll be happy

Gosh, that must be music to their ears, and three plusses.
So at least four people who don't care if they get paid the correct amount so long as they get paid "something".

dpimborough · « **Reply #14 on:** February 25, 2017, 04:24 »

Quote from: ShadySue on February 25, 2017, 04:20

Quote from: littleny on February 24, 2017, 22:10
I have no idea what's going on or what these people are doing. Just received an additional clarification of the original clarification lmao!! I give up. So long as they fill my PayPal with something I'll be happy
Gosh, that must be music to their ears, and three plusses.
So at least four people who don't care if they get paid the correct amount so long as they get paid "something".

There's a lot of that about these days! Never mind money just give me a credit line (oh except getty don't even do that any more

)

Luka · « **Reply #15 on:** February 25, 2017, 04:53 »

What the F*** is "Exclusive contributor subscription transactions"? It concerns exclusive contributors or it's about a sort of subscription? Sorry if I don't get it well, but I am not native and it's driving me crazy receiving so many emails with such big messages without saying anything clear?
From what i understood, is this a way to say that the royalties of 0.02, 0.019 aren't correct and they will give us more money?
Thks

If it as addressed only to exclusives why on the earth are they sending me these emails?

Noedelhap · « **Reply #16 on:** February 25, 2017, 05:17 »

Quote

We are working to solve these issues for future transactions, and to identify every contributor and transaction that was affected by each issue so we can recalculate and repay any royalties owed.

Looking at how slow the ESP transition process was, I doubt they'll have enough manpower to recalculate this in due time. What an administrative nightmare it must be!

So they have to identify every contributor and every transaction that was affected AND recalculate and repay any royalties owed AND fix these issues from happening any further AND complete the ESP Unification process AND record the ongoing sales AND pay out all the others on time every month. One more mistake and every employee is going to have a mental breakdown.

ShadySue · « **Reply #17 on:** February 25, 2017, 05:42 »

^^ They have such a history of this. Some tea lady or delivery boy has a whim to introduce some new wheeze then they rush to implement it without the personpower with the necessary skillset. Then instead of testing it to destruction in a sandbox, they implement a half-hearted version live and spend weeks or months playing whackamole with all the problems.
This must cost them a fortune, which they have to recoup by chipping away at our earnings any way they can.

ShadySue · « **Reply #18 on:** February 25, 2017, 05:44 »

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on February 25, 2017, 04:24

Quote from: ShadySue on February 25, 2017, 04:20
Quote from: littleny on February 24, 2017, 22:10
I have no idea what's going on or what these people are doing. Just received an additional clarification of the original clarification lmao!! I give up. So long as they fill my PayPal with something I'll be happy
Gosh, that must be music to their ears, and three plusses.
So at least four people who don't care if they get paid the correct amount so long as they get paid "something".

There's a lot of that about these days! Never mind money just give me a credit line (oh except getty don't even do that any more )

It's maybe the same people who are upset about having difficulties in uploading, instead of being profoundly grateful.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #19 on:** February 25, 2017, 08:18 »

Quote from: Luka on February 25, 2017, 04:53

What the F*** is "Exclusive contributor subscription transactions"? It concerns exclusive contributors or it's about a sort of subscription?

For want of a hyphen the meaning was lost... it should either be "exclusive-contributor" or "exclusive-contributor-subscription". But I doubt if exclusives get a special deal for their subscriptions (or that people who subscribe exclusively to Getty get a discount) so I'd reckon on the first meaning.
For more fun with punctuation insert whatever marks may be necessary to clarify "woman without her man is lost" and then show it so someone of the opposite sex to see if they agree with you

StanRohrer · « **Reply #20 on:** February 25, 2017, 09:42 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on February 24, 2017, 23:38

Quote from: cthoman on February 24, 2017, 22:51
I'm not claiming any wrong doing, but it does make you wonder if they know what is going on.
It looks to me as if the management have dumped a plan on the tech department which that department is incapable of handling, perhaps because it is impossibly complex.

I figure there is no Getty Tech Department. I figure some middle manager at iS/Getty wrote the reporting specification without any input from actual contributors. That reporting specification got sent to the outside programmers in some third world country. These programmers (which are very good programmers, by the way) barely understand English, have no concept of contributors, have no concept of accounting reports, and attempt to implement per the terrible spec. The iS manager does a 20 minute QA test of the new reports generated by the software engineers. He sees that fields are being filled in the report - never mind that the data in the fields may or may not be correct because he doesn't have a clue what is really supposed to be there. Then the system is rolled out to the world. We are the Alpha and the Beta testers.

I'm convinced that Getty top management is a bunch of bankers in charge of shifting funds around among big accounts. They just happen to be selling/licensing images as a product (or a front to their hidden operations) but these images is not their top concern. Accounting books of their big fund accounts is not a big concern but a necessary evil. Software and accounting for the contributors is just a nuisance problem not worthy of Getty efforts. I figure they get a middle manager to bid out the job to the lowest bidder - and be done with this low level accounting pain as cheaply as possible. Now it takes days to weeks just to uncover an error, write a spec revision, transmit to the programmers, make the fix, get it back, and implement in the live system. When the manager and the programmers are 10 to 12 time zones away, the communication is especially rough. Then there are still disconnects within the fix. We can see symptoms of all this by the simple fact that it took many hours and then _two_ (yes, count them, two within hours) Email notices, to contributors, to start acknowledging that report errors indeed exist. I think Getty does not have a tech department - just a manager that is tasked with spending as little money as possible to appease the contributors level accounting. This poor manager obviously has no connection to the Accounts Payable department as we are seeing contributor payments still being made that are all wrong and will have to be recalculated and readjusted in the coming months. But - just another Getty fiasco among the many.

Phadrea · « **Reply #21 on:** February 25, 2017, 10:19 »

Because there is such confusion as to what on earth is going on I just wait for whatever money from audio and images comes through and bank it. I can't see anything in deep metta 3 and just give up. It's a huge mystery.

PixelBytes · « **Reply #22 on:** February 25, 2017, 14:06 »

At one time, didn't they say that what you get paid for the past month could change and they'd take it back or take it out of the next months earnings?

I'm curious since I just got paid. Is this my money, or do I have to worry about a claw back later on?

ShadySue · « **Reply #23 on:** February 25, 2017, 14:14 »

Quote from: PixelBytes on February 25, 2017, 14:06

At one time, didn't they say that what you get paid for the past month could change and they'd take it back or take it out of the next months earnings?

I'm curious since I just got paid. Is this my money, or do I have to worry about a claw back later on?

Ouch, you got paid late.
They could claw it back if they made a mistake; didn't they famously make a clawback on a mistake in the PP a few years back?
This is supposed to be our payment, and we may be due a bit more when they recalculate.
Who knows anything? Not us, not them.

worriedistocker · « **Reply #24 on:** February 25, 2017, 14:16 »

Quote from: ShadySue on February 25, 2017, 04:20

Quote from: littleny on February 24, 2017, 22:10
I have no idea what's going on or what these people are doing. Just received an additional clarification of the original clarification lmao!! I give up. So long as they fill my PayPal with something I'll be happy
Gosh, that must be music to their ears, and three plusses.
So at least four people who don't care if they get paid the correct amount so long as they get paid "something".

Exactly. And that's why the race to the bottom continues.

It's sad, but I think we're entering a new vicious phase of the price war between the agencies and unfortunately, the contributors will be the casualties. I doubt the most recent pay cut will be the last one...

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Author Topic: Royalty Statement Clarification (Read 13081 times)

Canonbabe

pancaketom

jonbull

ShadySue

littleny

sigalavaca

cthoman

BaldricksTrousers

qwerty

Justanotherphotographer

Pauws99

Anyka

qunamax

ShadySue

dpimborough

Luka

Noedelhap

ShadySue

ShadySue

BaldricksTrousers

StanRohrer

Phadrea

PixelBytes

ShadySue

worriedistocker

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