Deactivated 46 files. All of these required model releases and were not selling well anyway.

Personally, I think the no compensation bit is twisting the facts. Most people apparently got the $12 as compensation for all future downloads and maybe those saying they didn't get paid have missed something in their accounts. I think that is one of the weakest possible lines to pursue.  Call it nominal or insignificant or inadequate - but "no compensation" is possibly going too far.

I think the removal of copyright metadata from these 6000+ images are the real transgression here!

Quote from: volschenkh on March 29, 2009, 04:58

So sad to see your profile is "hidden" would have loved to see your portfolio on any of these sites.

Personally I don't pay much attention to "new users" that have no portfolio links at all and start to voice very strong opinions. If they go on, I mostly ignore them. Nothing personal, but it's a waste of time if somebody starts a gossip game that doesn't advance my understanding of the business.
Anaire isn't one of those and it's quite easy to find her portfolio.

Actually I was just in a tongue-in-cheek mood. Of course everyone has the right to anonymity and vent their views on a forum where they are free to express them. I just find it sad to see some people have such a negative view of one microstock agency. I mean, can any one of us really give an objective analysis of which site hosts the best images? What are the criteria? How do you calculate this? Surely each microstock site have some of the best and some of the worst images. We have to have a balanced view on this issue, unless there's raw facts to substantiate, and not single out one agency in a public forum. 

As an "odd a55hole chiming in", i'm with yecatsdoherty on this one; anaire, I'm honestly sad to hear of your horrible experience on IS so far. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Uploading process is painful and a complete failure.
Nothing works as it should, except for the-annoying-the-hell-out-of-me reminder page with : I truly am the only one owner, definitely there are no people in my image and no, I swear! I did not steal any parts of this work.
The darn thing comes back at you, again, and again, and again ... 

Try a third party application such as http://www.deepmeta.com/, its got some great features that will really make the task of uploading significantly easier. You can do batch uploading, and only have to click on "I agree" once for the entire batch to upload.

2. Rejections are so absurd it becomes clear what their real meaning is - we don't want you here, get out!
Please resubmit?
I've heard some horror stories about resubmitting. I have never done it and don't think I ever will.
 
When I considered myself a newbie, I took rejections as a way to learn from mistakes and to improve.  Besides from some human errors that may slip in from time-to-time, I have never received an unfair rejection while I was a non-exclusive.

3. Pending time can be over 2 weeks long. Longer than anywhere else I've submitted and yes, it goes on my nerves to have to wait that long.

Yes I agree that this aspect is frustrating, especially if you're new and want to move fast in the microstock industry and there is not much you can do as a non-exclusive. It does improve to up to 5 days when you are exclusive contributor.

4. Both sales and views are the lowest.
Please keep in mind that I'm a newbie with a portfolio of only about 160 images. This info may not be relevant, but the numbers are there. IS is the lowest. 

If you think logically about this you would agree that with a small portfolio your images are diluted out by millions of others, thus your visibility will be low in the beginning. On the other hand, there are contributors with the same portfolio size that are doing great with thousands of views/sales on some of their files. The old clich� answer of "increase your porfolio size, to increases your visibility" should alleviate your situation over time. If you look at the statistics (although perhaps biased) for example from Alexa, you will see that IS still receives the highest traffic..

5. Their search engine is heavily biased and it is not for the benefit of the buyer. The best image doesn't win. Instead, regardless of quality, relevance and beauty, the exclusive one does.

This statement for me is probably the most severe generalization of them all. There are more than one way to search on IS, best match is not the only option. You can search by age, contributor, downloads etc. Yes the best match has been the topic of many debates and contributors are not always happy about the fluctuations is causes, but if you read the forums you would know that they are on the verge of implementing best match 2.0. IS is constantly working on improving the search engine, to the benefit of  the buyer, not necessarily for the contributor.And thats why correct keywording are so important, and why they will get rejected if you don't use them carefully.I also don't think that boosting exclusives in the search results are such a bad thing (shaky and spelling disaster as you put it), nothing wrong with that if the high level of quality is maintained. That being said, hundreds of non-exclusives have exceptionally profitable portfolios on IS, many times more so than myself.

6. Their entire site, their forum, the community, has a feeling (to me) of anger. They're like a pack of wolves and there is nothing artistic, generous or friendly about them. They're constantly at each other's throats, caustic and cinic.

I beg to differ, I've had several experiences on the forums that were really very helpful and friendly. One should not generalize the "entire site" according to one or two threads in the forum where things got a little heated. For example, what I gathered so far from reading the forums, IS reviewer comments are often considered much more helpful, compared to the other microstock agencies.

So to sum up: I hope that your experience on IS improves and that you would make some great friends in the IS community.