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Messages - KarenH
101
« on: June 12, 2012, 08:05 »
And yet ANOTHER E+ increase today -- an E+ is now triple (or slightly more for some sizes) that of a non-E+. Wasn't the last one just six weeks or so ago? This has to be the fourth one this year, IIRC.
102
« on: May 29, 2012, 18:21 »
I wonder if they've changed their system lately, or the part of their site that deals with the payouts. There have been a few late payment issues in the last month or two. At least before they were consistent, that was the one part of the system that seemed to work, so it seems like perhaps something has changed recently.
103
« on: May 22, 2012, 19:20 »
Aahhh the old "pump and dump". The problem is getty ripped of Bruce with a low ball price which was off by a billion or so and then turned around and ripped off H&F with an over pricing of getty. Now istock has pumped up its profits but sales are slumping. Only an idiot would not see the trend. And this trend is not your friend. If they do an ipo they have to reveal all the financial dirty laundry which would be interesting.
I'd like to see that. It would be interesting to see how many of the past theories were actually correct. 
104
« on: May 18, 2012, 19:19 »
I just got a message a few days ago:
. . .
I got one about two months ago similar to that. It was from someone who had just opened an account, and the letter said "I have many iStockphoto accounts with over 10,000 credit but I have no need to use them. I can buy your photo if you pay me 0.3USD / 1 credit. thank you!" I sent it to Lobo, and the account was then closed.
105
« on: May 12, 2012, 18:14 »
There's a post from yesterday on 800notes.com where someone got fraudulently charged $850 for iStock on May 8. That's a website that generally is for unwanted phone calls and telemarketers and phone scams, but people have been posting the iStock frauds there for the last couple of years probably because the phone number shows up for iStock on their credit card bill. If there's one fraud reported on this website, chances are there are more. It sounds from the forums like there are quite a few in the last month.
For the long-timers here, the ones that have been active at iStock back in the pre-Getty days -- were there fraud issues then? I don't recall any until the big one occurred over the Christmas before last, and it seems like every month or two there is another report (or more) in the forums. I'm trying to figure out if this just didn't happen before, if the security has gotten lax in terms of payment and verification, maybe a different purchasing process; or if they're just clawing every one of them back now where they didn't before.
106
« on: May 08, 2012, 17:41 »
It will probably do about as much good as their contributor survey did.
107
« on: May 04, 2012, 21:46 »
Someone else posted this, I saw it within the past week, maybe the end of the April bugs thread?
... yes second last page of the April bugs thread; in response to a query by sumografika , Kelvin replied "Have you sold enough photos to earn a silver photo canister? You appear to have a silver illustration icon. I've seen a few people who sell vector and photo drop canister levels recently. ."
Don't know if it applies to you? Inplication may be that people had been showing a higher level for a particular medium than they should have been (or is that just my inference?)
Personally I think that's a sh*tty answer on the moderator's part. "I've seen a few people . . . drop canister levels recently." Is it expecting too much that if there has been such a policy change that they should get a straight answer? Kind of like the stats updates. Last month the thread was locked, and I recall one of his posts saying "please don't ask about stats updates anymore", and this week when someone asked, it sounded like he was playing dumb with "Are you sure that you've had iStock sales?" and then "mine are pretty consistently updated daily". And then before locking the thread, "stats are being addressed". It's like the same old routine every month. Maybe I'm expecting more from the moderator in terms of answers than they're expected to give, I don't know. Especially when there is a change in policy (like the canister levels). 
108
« on: April 24, 2012, 08:32 »
There was a store on Zazzle a few weeks ago called Vetta-Images that consisted of products created from many different istock contributor artists' vettas. It might have been just anyone buying istock vetta images and selling products from them, which I think is legit. But the mention in the HQ newsletter makes me wonder. Whatever, the store is gone now.
Legit my a**. We were not paid for the use of these images. If anything, I imagine it was pulled because what they were doing was selling our work without compensating us. What there were doing was unethical and violated our contract. Plain and simple.
I wondered about that because there was one post in the forums asking about it, and it was never answered or mentioned again, until the HQ update came out yesterday and it said "We are pulling these Vetta images from Zazzle and Cafe Press. Contributors will be paid for any sales that have already occurred". Of course, contributors who may not have known their images were there -- how are they to know (other than blind faith) what sales occurred, and what they should be owing?
109
« on: April 23, 2012, 15:21 »
There was a store on Zazzle a few weeks ago called Vetta-Images that consisted of products created from many different istock contributor artists' vettas. It might have been just anyone buying istock vetta images and selling products from them, which I think is legit. But the mention in the HQ newsletter makes me wonder. Whatever, the store is gone now.
110
« on: April 23, 2012, 12:43 »
Don't like that they're pulling phone support.  I've never been able to actually get through, it goes right to voicemail, but given that so many threads with questions get locked (or deleted), and tickets have a way of getting lost or at least not updated, this eliminates one of the last methods of communication for contributors. I wonder if eliminating CR phone support will mean eliminating more people.
111
« on: April 07, 2012, 10:40 »
It didn't used to be like this. The community forums were fun and helpful, and they allowed for criticism, and locked threads (or deleted ones) were rare. Different world then. Too bad.
112
« on: February 22, 2012, 20:32 »
Odd, I'm seeing a major best match shift on Google chrome; a different (but also major) best match sort on Safari; and a third different best match sort on the browser on the smart phone. Some of these are way different, e.g. a file that shows up in the third row of the best match sort on google doesn't show up until the second page of files on the smartphone browser. It's really odd.
113
« on: January 27, 2012, 18:42 »
Same here - I was never a big player in this, but 1 DL for less than $2 this week, and 2 last week. It wasn't even a dwindling off, it just suddenly crashed.
114
« on: January 26, 2012, 23:28 »
Maybe the wrong people were retained. 
Why can't they fix something as easily as they break it?
Why don't they test things thoroughly before pushing them live?
Why were they fiddling in there anyway? (OK, RCs had been 'sticky', sometimes coming down a couple of days at a time, like stats.)
Why do they consistently break things?
It's pathetic and sad, if not so maddening.
And why why WHY do they never seem to operate with a backup to fall back on when their "fixes" fail? I will never understand that.
115
« on: January 19, 2012, 20:36 »
They're calling it "unscheduled maintenance" on their twitter post. Although that sounds oxymoronic to me -- because don't you generally schedule maintenance, and if it's unscheduled, how can it be maintenance?
116
« on: January 19, 2012, 20:19 »
Worse -- it's back to the monster error page. "The glitch monsters are at work down in the dark internety room, but they sent a note up that said: Dear You, Me fix broken thing. Sorry for trouble. Love, Monsters."
117
« on: January 19, 2012, 09:03 »
I posted it knowing it would be locked. Its like a lawyer stating something to a jury knowing the Judge is going to say "disregard that statement" My problem is I have no idea to what level they are going to merge. If their goal is to have everyone at 20% this year then I want out NOW!
That's it exactly. Someone in here posted that it's an internal business decision and no one else's business except for those involved. But people do make decisions based on what is happening. As an analogy, if you hold stock in a company or industry, news about organizational changes to a company you are invested in are relevant, even if you're not an employee. That announcement from Getty is what should have been stated by iStock when it happened, so people (contributors and buyers) don't have to learn about it through social media.
118
« on: January 19, 2012, 08:47 »
Hmmm, interesting timing for this Getty blog post about their technology development approach which I'm familiar with.
I wonder how much of this approach impacts technology strategy at IS.
Just found this;
"Redundancies at iStock
Posted on January 19, 2012
This statement directly from Getty/iStock: As we continue to bring Getty Images and iStockphoto closer together, we are completing the process of full functional integration across the two brands. As with most integrations, some positions become redundant and approximately 30 employees will be leaving the business in the coming months. It is never easy to make these decisions, especially given the strong team we have at iStockphoto. Nonetheless, Getty Images remains committed to having an office in Calgary and to the vitality of the iStockphoto brand."
This was the source;
http://www.whichstockagency.com/en/502/nutshell
It's nice that they're "committed to having an office in Calagary" although it omits to confirm whether any staff will actually be occupying it.
And posted to the iStock forums -- and quickly locked with a "we're not going to talk about it." I honestly do not understand their refusal to just admit it. Being so secretive just fuels speculation.
119
« on: January 18, 2012, 08:10 »
It's hard enough getting any sort of information out of them as it is, it's going to be much harder now.
The writing has been on the wall for sometime now, but the lack of any sort of feedback about anything recently seems to indicate something has been going on there.
I wonder if they will make any sort of official announcement ... somehow I doubt it!
I don't think so now.  On one of the race threads, there was a short message where someone said something like 'bad news at msg', a couple people saying, 'yeah not good' or 'site mail me if you don't know what I'm referring to' -- and no one mentioned the word layoff at all. And a mod just deleted ALL of those posts, with "some issues that other microstock forums may choose to discuss may not necessarily be discussed here." I guess that settles the question of any kind of an official announcement. I don't know why, knowing how it had hit the forums and twitter, they just don't say 'yeah, we found it necessary to make some staff reductions' and just leave it at that, and move on. Banning all reference to company news, and dodging the questions with a lockdown, just makes it worse.
120
« on: January 18, 2012, 00:09 »
Am I the only one who kinda really does not feel that sorry for them if I am being totally honest? I mean they hung with the evil empire - in their tweets they talk about shutting their mouths when they saw bad stuff happening - I know the economy sucks and maybe finding jobs will be harder but if they sat back and watched the contributors get screwed and kept their mouth shuts and continued to work for them regardless when others (see Rob S) left as a matter of principle - sorry but you kinda get what you deserve no? Am I just cold hearted and harsh?
I get where you're coming from, but I have to admit that I've worked at jobs that I totally didn't believe in and were against my principles, because there weren't, at the times, any options, and I needed the job. It eats away at you, you lose some self-respect -- but you also do what you have to do. So if they weren't in a position that they could leave on principle -- and it's a lousy economy to do so -- I get that, and I feel for how they must have felt about it.
121
« on: January 17, 2012, 21:27 »
A Twitter post from six hours ago says there were 30 layoffs. I don't know how big the company is, how many they employ. Is that a lot?
122
« on: January 17, 2012, 21:01 »
Someone just posted on twitter "istock, what are you doing? Raising prices yesterday and cutting staff today? What's going on? Is that an iceberg dead-ahead?" -- I don't think it's a contributor, so if the buyers know, . . .
123
« on: January 15, 2012, 11:42 »
By all means give it a whirl; though I love Blackadder and don't 'get' Bean at all.
Me neither. I might give Blackadder a try, too. I watch House, but definitely formulaic. In fact, it's getting quite boring.
I was a huge House fan for a long time, but I think the show jumped the shark after about series 6. It just started getting silly with series 7 (I saw some episode that had something about a chicken running around the place, and thought 'wow, they are really reaching to find something funny', and I didn't even bother to watch the rest of the episode or season). It's interesting to see the links in here to those other shows. I wasn't familiar with Hugh Laurie before House, and didn't even realize he was British for a long time. He does the American accent quite well!
125
« on: December 17, 2011, 01:35 »
If you think you have it bad.....I've had one measly (22 cent commission) sale in 4 weeks....came to a grinding halt Nov 17....to add insult to injury due to the bugs I have no idea if this is actually occurring as others have been reporting abnormally bad sales as well....is it me or is it iStock?? Yes, I have a small port but ebb and flow is not a reason I want to hear as it has never been close to being this bad. And, other sites are doing as expected. I've sent a request in to CR to look into this for me but I don't have alot of faith that it will be done.
Thank goodness for RM.....
I'm done venting, back to the bottle.
I think that week is when everyone's came crashing to a halt, from the reports on the forums, and it was that week that downloads stopped being reported for some time. I also believe something happened around that time, beyond a general slowdown (my own shows no downloads for two weeks, although the individual lines show DLs not reflected in the total). Too many people have reported the same thing. They don't seem to be dealing with CR requests much. I've a phone call in that went directly to voicemail and was never returned almost a week ago, and several CR reports, and others have reported as such on the forums as well. Given that they closed off another week without any comment on the bugs or responses to anything, I don't think they're paying a whole lot of attention to CR requests. It really shows their contempt for their contributor base.
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