Nice.  I have to refund money images that were fraud, that I had no control over, and it's okay for IS to hold my Paypal payout too...
I believe this to be my reality - 1. The ASA that I agree to as essentially meant "play by our rules or go." 2. There will be no end to the breakdowns, mistakes and disfunction until the idea of Istock dumping our ports into Thinkstock and Photos.com looks like our saving grace.  This is a "mind screw" if you will, manipulation, plain and simple.
I'm relieved this is not my main source of income.  I feel for those whom it is.

Has anyone ever had money taken off them at SS for such reasons?

I know I haven't.

Hahaha.... I didn't intend to do that! 

I was just thinking that - if SS can manage such events without deducting money from us, why can't others?

I still can't see why we should pay for their inability to check their buyers' credentials.

By the way, the mere fact they are effectively and systematically giving our pictures away to such nice people who use stolen cards, should entitle us to a compensation, not the other way around.

How are they protecting our copyright if they don't even know who's buying our pictures? (I doubt they use their real names with stolen cards)

Well they cant use a false name or their own name when using the stolen credit card, they need to use the actual name on the credit card, otherwise the payment wont be authorized by the CC issuer.

Which means they are using a false identity with a real name. Anyway, someone else should pay for that: the stock agency, or their insurance, or the credit card issuer, or their insurance. Not us: we already had our photos stolen, that's enough.

Quote from: rubyroo on November 06, 2012, 12:23

Has anyone ever had money taken off them at SS for such reasons?

I know I haven't.

N0, but I have at Bigstock. They took 12$ back this month

thats curious, thanks for sharing!

from my 300$  made since April 2009, only have two situations:

August 27, 2012    07:54 AM    [SYSTEM] payable adjustment offset         $-0.21    
May 18, 2012    09:50 AM    Commission calculation correction         $0.21    

I still can't see why we should pay for their inability to check their buyers' credentials.

By the way, the mere fact they are effectively and systematically giving our pictures away to such nice people who use stolen cards, should entitle us to a compensation, not the other way around.

How are they protecting our copyright if they don't even know who's buying our pictures? (I doubt they use their real names with stolen cards)

Exactly. They are even stupid when telling us about it. Again this a case we could win against the agency.
They are middlemen and live from redistibuting our copyright, not so much the images, it is the copyright that is the important good in the shop. It is a quite serious offence from the agencys side, since the stolen good can be endlessly copied and dont loose value by the copying process.
Actually, instead of us being refunded, the agency should be charged the amount that compares to selling the rights, because thats what they do, let our work be stolen, so it can endlessly be copied.
Why dont some guy invent a selfdestructing jpg that destructs when the licence has expired? THAT would be a powerfull innovation.

Sorry Jens but thats BS and you know it. The fraud rate in the payment industry is about 1%. There is always some risk when selling online. And who says the chargebacks where fraud? What if the image was not used or someone made a mistake and purchased the wrong image? Maybe the image was not up to standards?

By accepting the image into the IS Catalog, isn't IS saying it's proper size and quality? Why do we go through such a rigorous acceptance review if not?

Never in 6 years.

But maybe better not to discuss it in case the SS investors are visiting this forum. You don't want them to follow IS' very bad example of how to increase profits!!

Why didnt you ask them when you were on the phone with them??

It is interesting that the retailer in this case can take the money from the supplier.  I know in Canada the laws are a bit different the the US for credit card sales (worked for a bank for 15 years).  When a chargeback comes the credit card company asks for a signed copy of the credit slip from the retailer, if you don't have one or the signature is found to not match that on file the retailer is responsible for not having authenticated the purchase through standard means.  With online, mail order, or any other non witnessed CC sale the retailer must apply for the right to take the non authenticated cc sales and then will often have to place a certain amount of funds in a secured account depending on their credit rating and sales history.  The retailer is held fully responsible for all CC sales without a witnessed signature if they are disputed and the retailer can't prove that the purchase was legit.  Basically if I go in and sign a legal document, have it notarized that says, I didn't make that purchase they give me my money back and the cc issuer gets it from the retailer.

Now Walmart, or Sears, or any other retailer I know of can't then go to the RCA and say, hey that TV you gave us, we're taking the money back cause someone commited a CC fraud and we never got the money for it?  Doesn't really make sense, but I guess until someone actually lost enough to make a court case this won't get solved and they can make their own rules.  Much like electronic bank, bank machines etc, the bank have many rules that the court won't uphold if it gets taken to court, such as if you claim the machine gave you less money and the bank disagrees, but they do it anyhow as there is no law saying they can't, just if someone takes it to court they get their money back.

there's 2 things I don't get:
1) you steal a CC and go and buy..... stock photos?  ! seriously?
2) don't you have to be a registered buyer with a validated email address? surely IS is passing this info onto the CC companies. Haven't they caught any of them and made and example to scare others off?