Sounds like the same person who wrote that embarrassingly ridiculous 503 page a few weeks ago when the site was down for five or six hours.   

Why am I getting the feeling that they've almost given up on the site themselves?     

I think Sean's theory from the istock thread is probably more likely the right answer, that these refunds are from referral credits given for free to new sign-ups, and people were gaming the system and signing up multiple new accounts to get 10 free credits repeatedly.

And as he says in that thread, it's wrong that the contributors are being held financially responsible for screw-ups in the referral program.

Agreed.  However, there are at least two reports (and not everyone reports them here) of credit card fraud in the month of November here.
http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-403-265-3062/5

Just saw this thread about the large refunds from so many contributors in the last few days :

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=337937&page=1

Strangely, these refunds seem to be around the time that the system broke (didn't last downloads stop showing up about the 21st of November, and STILL not showing up between then and the 5th of December?), and just before the "maintenance".  At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, this seems oddly coincidental to me. 

I don't trust any of it, it seems all over the place.  My "userview" and "my uploads" shows DLs through 11/21, my iStock app shows there have been DLs since then since 11/26, but I can't believe I had NO downloads for the week of the 21st (especially since so many other people have said that their's came to a halt then also).  On top of that, if I look at "my uploads" it will show a different number of DLs than the individual file page shows, and still some files that show x number of DLs listed on the detail with the royalties, but a different number on the main image page.  What a mess.  Doesn't seem worth messing with though until "end of next week" when they hope to get all the numbers in.  I'm surprised at how many people are asking if they can upload -- given the state of things, why would one want to until it's settled down and (relatively) stable?

They removed 1979SUCKS finally.

At least it is off the page.  I'm wondering if the buyers are able to piggy-back these discount codes -- 10% off of $50 or more of credits is coupon code JAY2011, good for one week from today; and then 15% off of any purchase beginning tomorrow and good until December 7 is coupon code 1979SUCKS.  That is some heavy-duty discounting, if they are able to use both of them. 

Personally, I don't think they got hacked.   My guess would be it was a major implementation of something (what, I don't know) that went bad.  They haven't always given us notice when things are rolled out.  And there's way too much affected for it to be from a tweak of something -- it's uploads, downloads, royalties, RCs, sitemail, you name it.  Just my two cents.

Quote from: tee on November 30, 2011, 20:53

This is one of the weirdest things I've seen from a company of this size. Hacked maybe? Time for a 100% royalty week once they come back online.

Au contraire mon ami.
They've upped the discount to 15%.
Will the bosses or IT guys also get a direct 15% pay cut?

Doubtful.  The first discount was 10% on 50 or more credits.  This 15% discount is on any purchase. 

Quote from: Noedelhap on November 27, 2011, 14:04

So, to get things straight:

- They have had a maintenance that was not announced in time
- They failed to properly communicate this downtime to its contributors (just a forum post, no e-mails)
- They put up a "Jay is working on it" page instead of a professional looking "Maintenance" page
- They offered a 10% discount out of our pockets to compensate for their clients
- They still haven't fixed ANY of the important bugs we currently encounter
- They fail to give contributors an ETA for their missing royalties payment

Seriously. One would expect more from a big multi-million dollar company like this. Why are these amateurs still in business?

Oh, plus some things that were working before maintenance are now broken. So far I've noticed:
- the balance is jumping back and forward between yesterday's and today's total (noted on forum)
- if you only select e.g. 'photos' it doesn't stick on a new search (that worked before)
- if you select a sort by, e.g. 'age', it doesn't stick on a new search (that worked before)

Sitemail is apparently wonky for some too. 

"There is no such thing as ''a bug'' when we discuss Best Match. There never was. Best Match is confidential, never set in stone & evolves all the time. What you may perceive as ''a bug'' may change tomorrow & what you may perceive as ''a bug'' may generate a completely different set of results to your potential client in a week. So please, I am asking you not to worry regarding that aspect of the equation, especially at this very early stage (within the context of the code release that was done today). "

From the above mentioned thread of course it's on page 14 of the thread, I'm not sure how I missed this one.  My question is why would the results be completely different tomorrow?  Doesn't that mean that it wasn't the Best Match in the first place?

I don't get that at all -- there was the "there is no such thing as a bug in best match" in the beginning -- and later on in the same post, "Now, let me be crystal clear: if you are seeing some of your recent uploads showing up in strange places at this very moment... it is simply and absolutely unacceptable. Never was this project intended to produce that result. "

So an unintended result doesn't make a bug??   If it walks like a duck, . . .

This prob will not affect me much, i just started at IS, very few pics. Although i have had a large batch of $ taken away from me at another micro co, for the same reason, "fraud".

This is what is in my mind:

lets say we make and sell a crap load of wiggets to walmart (for resale) and walmart in turn sells them to the public, via there stores.
along comes a groop of scammers/criminals who bought a butt load of our wiggets with stolen credit cards.
walmart would not be charging us for the stolen items?! They would just absorbe it as the cost of doing biz! And possibly follow up with the authorities to try and recup the loss.

Why is it not like this with the micros?

Actually the proper analogy is a bit different -- the stolen credit cards were used to buy CREDITS from iStock, which were then exchanged for images, but they didn't buy the images directly from the contributors with the credit cards.  I was checking to see if credits could be used to buy anything else, like perhaps merchandise from the store (because then would they go back to the manufacturer of the merchandise and ask for their money back?) -- but I guess they can only use the credits on image downloads, and not on anything else.   

Instead of posting wooyay to KK's posting what about "Where the  have you been for the last 3 months"

It surely hasn't been at a communications or people-skills workshop.    They seriously need someone else to be their spokesperson. 

Quote from: jsmithzz on March 13, 2011, 10:00

Quote from: caspixel on March 13, 2011, 09:55

Thankfully there are some rational heads over there still:

I would urge anyone considering taking on this responsibility to consider it carefully.  Depending on the NDA and how much you learn, it is possible that you might not be able to post much if anything analytical about Istock in the forums again, ever.

Those are my thoughts exactly.

Again, why the NDA at all?  This should be a public discussion that's open to all.  Period.

It seems that the discussion with the five peer-selected contributors is only about the fraud, not about the gazillion other things which are wrong with iStock at the moment. Therefore:
It MAY be that iStock is going to explain to the group what the nature of the fraud was, what they did about the first wave, in December, why they apparently can't get insurance (RM says they can't, at any rate!), why the second wave happened, why it went on for so long, apparently undetected - or did they have to leave it for so long to gather enough evidence for the police or other relevant authorities.
It MAY be that that information is sub judice or similar, so can't at the moment be made public. I think that's what Kelly has been saying.
HOPEFULLY the NDA would only be that the group couldn't discuss the details of the fraud cases until it's all made public in the fullness of time.
There would be no need to muzzle the chosen sample from frank, free and full exchange of opinions on other matters on the forums, here or elsewhere, and I wouldn't expect them to agree to anything else.
Sean and JoAnn from here, I hope you're both up for it.

That was my take on it -- an NDA rouses suspicion for sure, but IF there was truly something that the authorities are involved in and IF it is still on-going (and it sounds like it is, if the last "fraudulent downloads" took place as recently as February 28) and they're still trying to catch them, I can see why perhaps there are parts they can't divulge publicly, and why they would need to have new people in the loop agree not to compromise it by divulging certain things.  However it also gives them a weasel-out if it was in fact due to their negligence or carelessness, or a gaping security hole in their F5 revamped site, or something else. 

People signing it don't have to say anything in order to make their opinions known.  I'm sure anyone working there has to sign an NDA agreement, including inspectors, and yet you see them give up their badges and/or leave because in their own words they don't like what is going on or the direction it's going in, and they vote with their feet without breaking agreement.  Likewise, I think if Sean agrees to do this and sees something dodgy, he's not going to sacrifice himself - he might not be able to tell all, but if he leaves or tosses the crown or takes other action like that, he'll have said something by his actions.   Sean doesn't back down from what he thinks is right, as evidenced by three tries to re-open the February stats thread even though TPTB kept locking his thread.  If he sees something on the NDA that doesn't look right, if isn't there for a legitimate reason, I expect that he'll call them on it -- and we'll hear about it. 

I do wish it was open to more than five -- but I think a totally open-for-all call would turn into a major shitstorm, and we'd end up with less answers than we are likely to with a carefully chosen fewer number.  Bottom line -- to me, it's better than KK just locking the thread and ignoring everything until the next issue comes up, which has become the norm lately. 

Just my two cents.