Author Topic: Stats graphics not updating (Read 37863 times)

tickstock · « **Reply #150 on:** November 20, 2013, 20:07 »

Quote from: ShadySue on November 20, 2013, 20:00

Quote from: tickstock on November 20, 2013, 19:47
Quote from: ShadySue on November 20, 2013, 19:29
Quote from: gostwyck on November 20, 2013, 16:37
Just noticed Lobo saying this on the forum;

"We will have a fix very soon."

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=357628&page=1
Not sure what "very soon" means in Calgary but clearly it doesn't mean "within 24 hours".

5th Nov: "it shouldn't take too much longer to fix" Kelvinjay
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=357333&messageid=6954225

Your quote is misleading he said "Hopefully, it shouldn't take too much longer to fix." Leaving out hopefully changes the meaning of the quote.

So he was just expressing a wish, like everyone else; not with any 'inside info'. Ah well. (We need a 'sigh' emoticon, unless covers it.) I'd assumed he meant that the techies were hoping to have it fixed soon.

Either way leaving out 'hopefully' does change the meaning. I do think he added hopefully in because he didn't have any inside knowledge while Lobo didn't say hopefully because he has some inside knowledge. And please no more emoticons.

lisafx · « **Reply #151 on:** November 20, 2013, 23:49 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 20, 2013, 20:07

Either way leaving out 'hopefully' does change the meaning. I do think he added hopefully in because he didn't have any inside knowledge while Lobo didn't say hopefully because he has some inside knowledge. And please no more emoticons.

I'm sorry, but once again you are arguing semantics. Rather than debating the meaning of words or symbols, why not just accept that their site is seriously screwed up, and it has become a real problem. No amount of semantic debates are going to distract from the fact that we can't get something as simple as an accurate record of our earnings and sales. Every other site manages to do this.

And frankly, the argument Bhr made about how there are other issues on the site even more screwed up is hardly an excuse. Kind of reminds me of Mayor Rob Ford defending against accusations of smoking crack by saying it happened when he was in one of his drunken stupors.

tickstock · « **Reply #152 on:** November 21, 2013, 00:00 »

Quote from: lisafx on November 20, 2013, 23:49

Quote from: tickstock on November 20, 2013, 20:07
Either way leaving out 'hopefully' does change the meaning. I do think he added hopefully in because he didn't have any inside knowledge while Lobo didn't say hopefully because he has some inside knowledge. And please no more emoticons.

I'm sorry, but once again you are arguing semantics. Rather than debating the meaning of words or symbols, why not just accept that their site is seriously screwed up, and it has become a real problem. No amount of semantic debates are going to distract from the fact that we can't get something as simple as an accurate record of our earnings and sales. Every other site manages to do this.

And frankly, the argument Bhr made about how there are other issues on the site even more screwed up is hardly an excuse. Kind of reminds me of Mayor Rob Ford defending against accusations of smoking crack by saying it happened when he was in one of his drunken stupors.

That's because misquoting people changes the meaning of what they said, if it's really that bad you don't need to misquote anyone. What they actually said and meant should be enough shouldn't it? It's not semantics at all, it's changing the meaning of the sentence.
The site isn't 'seriously screwed up', I'm still getting sales and we can see each and every one of them. The graphs and daily totals are nice and as an exclusive I'm sure I'd like to see them up a lot more than you would. Like I said before there are many ways to see exactly what you've made without having the graphs because all the raw data is there. Besides after at least two threads and hundreds of posts what else is there to say about it, the stats aren't working and they should be.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #153 on:** November 21, 2013, 01:50 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 00:00

The site isn't 'seriously screwed up', I'm still getting sales and we can see each and every one of them.

That's a faith-based statement rather than one based on knowledge. As with all sites we HOPE that every sale is being reported but you may recall the time they ran the PP, missed reporting a pile of results and then had to go back and do it correctly. Whether they would ever have known it was wrong it if there hadn't been a chorus of "this can't be right" protests is anybody's guess.

There sometimes seem to be odd shifts in PP buyers' behaviour that happen on the first of the month and carry on for the whole month. Look at the surge in PP in October. It didn't begin sometime in September, it started precisely on October 1. But can we be sure those high-priced sales didn't start on Sept 8th or June 5th but somehow not get included in the reports because of some coding error? Similarly, remember all the trouble they had getting the July PP figures out. My PP sales were normal throughout May, abruptly and consistently down 30% in June and then after the massive intervention to get reporting going for July the figures shot up again in July and August, to a slightly higher level than May. Why would July be the best month for DLs in the year on PP? But maybe it was, maybe people were fleeing iStock's price shake-up.

It's not just iS. The seemingly non-random distribution of subs and credit sales on DT bothers me too (but it could just be the way randomness works). There is no way I can determine whether or not all the sales are being correctly reported. I just have to trust them. And I do trust them not to deliberately cheat me but I'm not sure - especially with iStock - that I can trust their skills in making sure their computers don't have some coding error that leads to false reports.

Actually, I know for a fact that iS has misreported sales. You may recall I raised the question of why I had a black bar (Getty sale) appear in my stats for several months earlier. Lobo promptly responded saying it was only for 19c [subtext, "what a meaninless cheapskate to quibble over 19c" - at least that's how I read it] and proclaimed it was a Getty 360 sale, which would appear like that. I wrote to Support, who came up with something similar. The best interpretation I can put on it was that they just invent excuses when they don't know what is happening, because the bar and the 19c it represented subsequently vanished. I can only see three possibilities that explain this:
1) Due to human error, earnings from a Getty 360 sale were wrongly assigned to me and the error was later corrected.
2) Due to a computer "glitch" a sale was wrongly assigned to me and later corrected.
3) Lobo and Support know what they are talking about, the 19c belongs to me but Getty decided to steal it.
(A fourth possibility is that the colour coding for 360 sales changed from black to green, but I'm pretty sure that the 19c disappeared along with the black bar, which wouldn't be the case with just a colour change).

I discount point 3 since I don't believe Getty engages in theft. I hope that every time there has been an error in reporing my sales they have corrected it but I have no way of knowing that is so.

tickstock · « **Reply #154 on:** November 21, 2013, 11:19 »

I'm surprised you would continue to contribute to a site where you don't trust the reporting, I know I wouldn't.

ETA: Judging by the negatives, I guess some people don't care if a site reports sales accurately? Hard to believe that at least 4 5 people here would continue contributing to a site where they don't trust the reporting of sales. Seems crazy to me.

pancaketom · « **Reply #155 on:** November 21, 2013, 11:56 »

IS has a new kind of trust.

Actually I don't think IS or any of the major sites are not reporting sales on purpose. I wouldn't be surprised if some sites mess up because of mistakes and bugs though, and IS seems to be the king of mistakes and bugs. Theoretically mistakes would over-report sales as much as under-report them, but somehow I do trust them not to accidentally overpay us.

It is only when they completely leave a few days off (like with the PP reporting) that we can be sure they missed them. Had they missed 1/3 of them on those days we probably never would have noticed and raised a stink.

I also seem to recall cases where Alamy hasn't reported sales but the photographers saw the images in use credited to Alamy - but with their long term reporting they could claim it was still within the acceptable time.

Unfortunately we mostly just have to accept the sites reporting on faith.

ShadySue · « **Reply #156 on:** November 21, 2013, 11:58 »

Quote from: pancaketom on November 21, 2013, 11:56

IS has a new kind of trust.
Actually I don't think IS or any of the major sites are not reporting sales on purpose. I wouldn't be surprised if some sites mess up because of mistakes and bugs though, and IS seems to be the king of mistakes and bugs. Theoretically mistakes would over-report sales as much as under-report them, but somehow I do trust them not to accidentally overpay us.

Don't worry, if they do, they'll very soon claw it back. That always seems to be done very timeously.

Ron · « **Reply #157 on:** November 21, 2013, 11:59 »

Quote from: pancaketom on November 21, 2013, 11:56

IS has a new kind of trust.

Actually I don't think IS or any of the major sites are not reporting sales on purpose. I wouldn't be surprised if some sites mess up because of mistakes and bugs though, and IS seems to be the king of mistakes and bugs. Theoretically mistakes would over-report sales as much as under-report them, but somehow I do trust them not to accidentally overpay us.

It is only when they completely leave a few days off (like with the PP reporting) that we can be sure they missed them. Had they missed 1/3 of them on those days we probably never would have noticed and raised a stink.

I also seem to recall cases where Alamy hasn't reported sales but the photographers saw the images in use credited to Alamy - but with their long term reporting they could claim it was still within the acceptable time.

Unfortunately we mostly just have to accept the sites reporting on faith.

Didnt they overpay once and then people had to payback using paypal and ended up losing money because of the fees? Yeah, something like that. Bizarre

tickstock · « **Reply #158 on:** November 21, 2013, 12:02 »

Quote from: Ron on November 21, 2013, 11:59

Quote from: pancaketom on November 21, 2013, 11:56
IS has a new kind of trust.

Actually I don't think IS or any of the major sites are not reporting sales on purpose. I wouldn't be surprised if some sites mess up because of mistakes and bugs though, and IS seems to be the king of mistakes and bugs. Theoretically mistakes would over-report sales as much as under-report them, but somehow I do trust them not to accidentally overpay us.

It is only when they completely leave a few days off (like with the PP reporting) that we can be sure they missed them. Had they missed 1/3 of them on those days we probably never would have noticed and raised a stink.

I also seem to recall cases where Alamy hasn't reported sales but the photographers saw the images in use credited to Alamy - but with their long term reporting they could claim it was still within the acceptable time.

Unfortunately we mostly just have to accept the sites reporting on faith.
Didnt they overpay once and then people had to payback using paypal and ended up losing money because of the fees? Yeah, something like that. Bizarre

No. They did over pay and it took them many months to collect it, at least 6 months if I remember correctly. Some people paid back the money but did it incorrectly and got charged fees which I think iStock paid back.

Ron · « **Reply #159 on:** November 21, 2013, 12:09 »

So at least we have it confirmed then that they underpay and overpay. Sounds about right then. Amateurs.

tickstock · « **Reply #160 on:** November 21, 2013, 12:12 »

Quote from: Ron on November 21, 2013, 12:09

So at least we have it confirmed then that they underpay and overpay. Sounds about right then. Amateurs.

I think they said paypal messed that one up.

Ron · « **Reply #161 on:** November 21, 2013, 12:17 »

Hahaha, so they are incompetent and then blame others for it. Sounds about right.

lisafx · « **Reply #162 on:** November 21, 2013, 14:57 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 00:00

Like I said before there are many ways to see exactly what you've made without having the graphs because all the raw data is there. Besides after at least two threads and hundreds of posts what else is there to say about it, the stats aren't working and they should be.

You keep referring to these "many ways" to keep track of our sales and download data, but you don't actually say what any of them are. Perhaps you'd care to elaborate?

luissantos84 · « **Reply #163 on:** November 21, 2013, 15:09 »

guess I will say again StockPerformer (not getting paid for saying so but because they really deserve it)

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #164 on:** November 21, 2013, 15:15 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 11:19

I'm surprised you would continue to contribute to a site where you don't trust the reporting, I know I wouldn't.

ETA: Judging by the negatives, I guess some people don't care if a site reports sales accurately? Hard to believe that at least 4 5 people here would continue contributing to a site where they don't trust the reporting of sales. Seems crazy to me.

It seems curious that, being in possession of the facts about the reporting, you seem to want to continue to supply iStock despite saying that you wouldn't do so. Or are you saying that I am lying about the PP reporting having got screwed up? Perhaps you have your head so deep in the sand that you failed to notice what happened in July.

As I've said more than once before, I consider iStock to be fundamentally honest in their dealings, my concern is not that they are trying to cheat me (when I thought a site did that I left it - that's on record) I am worried about whether they have got a proper grip on the reporting. I hope they have but neither you nor I can be sure about that and we both have good reason to be concerned about it.

However, since you've now declared you will quit iStock, it won't be a worry for you any more.

lisafx · « **Reply #165 on:** November 21, 2013, 15:22 »

Quote from: luissantos84 on November 21, 2013, 15:09

guess I will say again StockPerformer (not getting paid for saying so but because they really deserve it)

Thanks Luis. I have been hesitant to give my login details to an outside company, which is why I don't use StockPerformer.

ETA: I just checked and they don't require the passwords, which is good. But they charge after the trial period, and since they charge in Euros that's a pretty hefty fee for me in the US.

I really don't see why I should have to pay for a service I don't need just because Istock can't get its act together.

Any free solutions just to see Istock stats?

Eyedesign · « **Reply #166 on:** November 21, 2013, 15:34 »

They do have the "Sparrow" plan which is 90,00 euros for the year. That payment plan also give you sale data for all your sites.

Red Dove · « **Reply #167 on:** November 21, 2013, 15:39 »

Still not fixed then? Maybe next year. In the meantime send their IT Director back to school with a thick ear - he obviously missed several of the important lessons and failed to swot up on his homework.

tickstock · « **Reply #168 on:** November 21, 2013, 15:43 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 21, 2013, 15:15

However, since you've now declared you will quit iStock, it won't be a worry for you any more.

Darn, guess I better start uploading to Shutterstock. They have graphs.

gostwyck · « **Reply #169 on:** November 21, 2013, 18:35 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 15:43

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 21, 2013, 15:15
However, since you've now declared you will quit iStock, it won't be a worry for you any more.
Darn, guess I better start uploading to Shutterstock. They have graphs.

They do indeed. SS have lots of graphs ... and a world map showing your sales too ... and real time sales data ... and no dodgy refunds ... or massive changes to the default sort order ... and all images earn their place equally without favour to more expensive images ... and transparent audited financial reporting of the business ... and a 'contributor relations' team that give lots of help on MSG ... and no RC system ... and lots of others things too.

luissantos84 · « **Reply #170 on:** November 21, 2013, 18:37 »

ouch

tickstock · « **Reply #171 on:** November 21, 2013, 18:37 »

Quote from: gostwyck on November 21, 2013, 18:35

Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 15:43
Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 21, 2013, 15:15
However, since you've now declared you will quit iStock, it won't be a worry for you any more.
Darn, guess I better start uploading to Shutterstock. They have graphs.

They do indeed. SS have lots of graphs ... and a world map showing your sales too ... and real time sales data ... and no dodgy refunds ... or massive changes to the default sort order ... and all images earn their place equally without favour to more expensive images ... and transparent audited financial reporting of the business ... and a 'contributor relations' team that give lots of help on MSG ... and no RC system ... and lots of others things too.

Man, sounds like paradise... you would have to be a fool to contribute to iStock.

Mantis · « **Reply #172 on:** November 21, 2013, 18:53 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 18:37

Quote from: gostwyck on November 21, 2013, 18:35
Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 15:43
Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 21, 2013, 15:15
However, since you've now declared you will quit iStock, it won't be a worry for you any more.
Darn, guess I better start uploading to Shutterstock. They have graphs.

They do indeed. SS have lots of graphs ... and a world map showing your sales too ... and real time sales data ... and no dodgy refunds ... or massive changes to the default sort order ... and all images earn their place equally without favour to more expensive images ... and transparent audited financial reporting of the business ... and a 'contributor relations' team that give lots of help on MSG ... and no RC system ... and lots of others things too.
Man, sounds like paradise... you would have to be a fool to contribute to iStock.

All Gostywick has done was point out the positives of SS reporting versus Istock and you are essentially calling him a fool for contributing to Istock? Please remember that while many of us are not happy with the way Istock (Getty) has treated contributors and that their site functionality is clunky, many of us have a lot of skin in the IS game and it's simply not that "easy" to just pull the plug. According to you, we must all be fools.....fools in the eyes of their spokesperson, Tickstock.

tickstock · « **Reply #173 on:** November 21, 2013, 19:00 »

Just saying it doesn't seem worth 85% for a site that doesn't even have stats graphics.

lisafx · « **Reply #174 on:** November 21, 2013, 23:48 »

Quote from: tickstock on November 21, 2013, 19:00

Just saying it doesn't seem worth 85% for a site that doesn't even have stats graphics.

Keep banging that drum. You may very well convince some more people to stop contributing there.

FWIW, the main criterion for contributing to a site for a lot of us, particularly those who shoot stock for a living, is the amount of money it brings in. Istock is still bringing in enough for me to keep my account active.

That doesn't in any way mean people are not entitled to voice opinions about the functioning, or more accurately dysfunction, of the site, as well as policies that affect our images, our incomes, and our user experience.

People complain about other sites when they are not functioning right too. It's just that no other site consistently gives SO MUCH to complain about.

Oh yeah, and still waiting for you to produce those work-arounds you keep crowing about....

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Author Topic: Stats graphics not updating (Read 37863 times)

tickstock

lisafx

tickstock

BaldricksTrousers

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pancaketom

ShadySue

Ron

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Ron

tickstock

Ron

lisafx

luissantos84

BaldricksTrousers

lisafx

Eyedesign

Red Dove

tickstock

gostwyck

luissantos84

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Mantis

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lisafx

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