Quote from: Pixart on April 16, 2008, 00:55
Oh boy, loongirl must be out of her mind.  Whew. I just cashed out there this month and have $2.70 in the piggy bank.  Would that push anyone into $25 if I convert to a couple credits? 

I have to say, although I'm very dissapointed, it is admirable that they didn't just pull the plug and leave us in the dark.

Karin, Sy - hope you get your last cheques!

Awwww, thanks for the sentiment, but the loongirl is okay (I think).

I just cashed out since I had $84 in my piggy bank, and immediately rec'd a reply that as soon as I filled in the W-9 and turned it in before the end of April, they'd schedule me for a payout sometime after 5/30/2008.  My piggy bank now shows empty, so I'm hoping for a PayPal payout sometime in June. (Keeping my fingers crossed)

I just hate that LO is closing - made a bunch of friends, and learned a whole lot from so many who were willing to share.

  b

Quote from: whitechild on April 17, 2008, 12:58
I just registered there and submitted first three images

Ok, we found the culprit!!! 

Regards,
Adelaide

Loongirl/Beth, are you going to give the other sites a try?  I know you were disappointed at (was it DT?)  They all have message boards too, but you won't find anyplace like LO for getting to know people.  Maybe MostPhotos (but no sales - maybe too much similar).

I agree with all who are saddened. The hopes of a lot of people go with a business failure like this.

I liked the way LO reviewers took the time to make positive comments about submissions. And the way they have handled this is classy, as other posters have noted. Nothing I know prevented LO from just turning off the servers and leaving people logging to get a site-not-found message.

I got my first and only payment of $50.50 from them on 4-10. Guess I had my timing right on that one.

RIP LO!

Quote from: maunger on April 16, 2008, 12:58

Quote from: Seren on April 16, 2008, 12:54
I like the fact that the site doesn't even have the common courtesy to tell it's contributors BEFORE it gets posted all over the message boards.  Jeez, what a way to find out!

It was posted first on the LO blog and on every page of the LO site - before it was posted "all over the message boards" - you just happened to log in elsewhere first.

At least they gave 1 month's notice - many other sites have just disappeared from the face of the earth with no notice and no chance for the customers to use their credits and for the contributors to possibly get their money.

Mitch

Were the photographers emailed about the closure BEFORE they posted it to other boards? I haven't received my Notice about this. I sure would like to get an official notice first delivered to me as an individual member rather than finding it on some board since my membership is a contract between me and LO. Bottomline, I didnt apply at LO by putting a post on their board.

Anyway, this is water under the bridge now... Good luck to Bryan and his team who sure made the stay @ LO worthwhile.

C'mon, they're shutting down. They could've very easily disappeared, not said crap, and let everybody figure it out. Sounds like that's how most other sites handled it.

Lucky Oliver was a GREAT place. Very positive atmosphere. I liked it very much. This industry is a tough one, and I appreciate the unique approaches they tried.

The smart thing would be to sell the site with all it's back end contributor problems to someone who wants to invest in fixing the back end.

The Layout and Design was a true work of Art.
It is a shame that the Functionality and Critical Contributor end was never given a chance to be fixed.

Best of luck to the Z man on his next venture.

The site was slow and bug ridden. I would rather build my own that try and fix that

i did withdrawn of two small amounts of money on my moneybookers account, (first one on 16th april) and still nothing happened.
how about you others?

It looks like they've closed the doors early. http://www.luckyoliver.com/home

Looks like L.O. is gone
at least I cant get in to see what they are doing

can anyone else get in or not?

Hmmmmmmm I wonder how many of us Will be Paid after all??

and what recourse do we have?
Anyone a Lawer out there who wants to do a Class Action Lawsuit?

Quote from: LuMaxArt on April 21, 2008, 11:52
The smart thing would be to sell the site with all it's back end contributor problems to someone who wants to invest in fixing the back end.

The Layout and Design was a true work of Art.
It is a shame that the Functionality and Critical Contributor end was never given a chance to be fixed.

Best of luck to the Z man on his next venture.

LO's back-end was run predominantly on Javascript using the usual freebie software that anyone can pick up if you know where to look. I'm not going to post a link because not only is it grossly unreliable it would break your heart to look at the source code. I've seen less bugs in a 10 year old corpse. No on second thoughts, Slappervillage is just as full of maggots and quite possibly the most bug infested site known to man. 

Same here:

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) DAV/2 proxy_html/2.5 mod_ssl/2.2.3 OpenSSL/0.9.8c Server at www.luckyoliver.com Port 80

Not good 

Edit: it is online, again!

well, it's not working now....

I hope I don't wind up eating my words..... I think as soon as I can get on again,   I'm cashing out....  hope I haven't pushed it too far....

The doors are open again.

Hey, is anyone able to use their credits to buy pictures at LO?
My girlfriend tried to use some of hers this morning and it is telling her she doesnt have enough credits, although she has almost 300 of them......

did she purchase those credits or were they from uploading photos?

If the credits are from uploading photos they won't work to buy images with.

well that dont make sense, they worked before for images. and to think she wanted to do a nice thing and spread her tokens in hopes of helping others get a pay out

Does anyone else think it odd that they offered that Valentines Day opportunity to cash out just a short time before they announced they were closing the doors? It seems like it wasn't just coincidence, but a planned move. They had to know they were facing a problem in February - it just feels rather devious to me. (I just realized others have mentioned this Vday payout - I'd read through another LO news thread previously and didn't read this entire one thinking I'd already gone through it)

I've read some comments saying it's silly to complain about a few dollars, but add a few dollars up among a lot of submitters and that could end up being quite a lot of money. If I'm not mistaken, they could easily claim bankruptcy and avoid paying their debts altogether.

It just was a thought that crossed my mind. I'm not usually the paranoid sort, but I find the way this LO closure is being handled to be very unprofessional and a good lesson to us all when placing our images and faith in a new start-up stock site.

That said, they still have a chance to close-up shop responsibly and I hope they will. Then there are those allusions to possibly staying open - I just can't see why anyone would continue to contribute based on recent events.

Quote from: photogrrl on May 07, 2008, 20:34
If I'm not mistaken, they could easily claim bankruptcy and avoid paying their debts altogether.

ummm... do you know how bankruptcy works?
You can only claim bankruptcy if you have no way of paying all your debts.
Once you have claimed bankruptcy it is not like you walk away from your debts.  There is a specified order in which your debts are paid (banks, loan people, investors etc are paid first) and they go down the list until the shirt is off your back.  It is hardly a way to 'get out of' paying your bills.

as I said "if I'm not mistaken"...so no, I don't know the ins and outs of bankruptcy. Apparently I was mistaken.

Frankly, I hope I never have to know much about how it works.

actually depending upon how it is done and if it is a company or an individual, and deeper still the type of company, yes it is a way to dump all your debt. and without a care in the world.
LO could be an LLC or an Inc.
Chances are Bryan has it set up so that his company can get sued but he cant.....
Glad i cashed out many moons ago....

if it was a planned move then lowering payout was an decent and honourable thing to do...they could have left it at $100 and a lot more people would be owed money...they could have just turned the servers off and walked away, at least this way the most any contributor will lose is $24.99... about 1/3rd of the polariser I just bought... not as much as it cost me to take my kids to mcdonalds....