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Messages - KarenH
151
« on: March 10, 2011, 20:46 »
Somebody please explain to me here - how do I know they are not just putting this money in their pockets? Where is the proof of fraudulent downloads?
Absolutely. It looks like pretty much every large or above download I had in January was labeled as "fraud". And coming from different size credit packs. They have provided absolutely no proof of this.
If I was one of the exclusive BDs losing $3k, $5k, etc., I would probably be on the phone with my attorney right now.
I would be too. If a person is the victim of a crime (and anyone getting money clawed back from iStock is), that person still gets a police report or incident report, even if it's a case that they are still investigating and can't divulge some details. In the last months, besides the fraud and the site screw-up, they've had people that were fighting to collect subscription royalties, people with $0 royalty downloads, extended license bonuses, and I don't know what all. So I don't know why they expect that people will just accept their story of a fraud without the slightest bit of proof, given the history of these payment problems. I hope someone does force an audit on them.
152
« on: March 09, 2011, 21:29 »
Can't name names without dragging a lot of other people into it, but I saw on Facebook that a certain admin quashed a particularly pointed remark on a THIRD person's wall! Now, if you're so sensitive that you have to go round Facebook tsk-tsk-ing people, then there's something seriously wrong :/
Wait, an iStock admin "quashed" something someone posted on their OWN wall?? That is beyond pathetic. And rude. On Facebook, as far as I'm concerned, it's my wall, my rules. No iStock admin has a right to post something nasty in response to a post on one' own wall. That's what they have their stupid forums for. Their assholery knows no limits!!
I think I'd be "unfriending" that admin post-haste for something like that.
153
« on: February 06, 2011, 14:00 »
I am still banned from both the forums and sitemail
I just caught this -- banned from site mail ?  I can't even begin to figure out the logic behind that.  Are they afraid people might email their CN (or "friends" as it is now) and tell them they're banned?
154
« on: January 20, 2011, 11:11 »
And now they're offering buyers 15% off coupons on Twitter to make up for yesterday's site troubles. Someone suggested that they offer the contributors RCs to compensate the contributors as well. Wonder if that will fly. It would be a very nice gesture.
155
« on: January 18, 2011, 22:48 »
It's still a mess. Portfolio shows and then doesn't show, searches show, but formatting is a mess, credit prices changed for some people, and it's basically another typical h*cked-up rollout. Again, no evidence of any pre-prod testing.
156
« on: January 16, 2011, 13:21 »
I'm seriously rethinking my exclusivity - partly because their IT department appears to be trying to demolish the business and partly because I think more crap (specifically removing the opt out from the partner program) is likely to be coming. I really don't want to be doing that, but IS's recent behavior just leaves little hope for good things there in the future for contributors like me. YMMV.
The thing with the partner program worries me too. We've not been able to save the option to "opt-out" for months now, and while they tell us it's cosmetic and not to worry about it, I have to wonder. Since that issue was brought up, they have changed the page to opt in or out of agency collections and made other changes to the page -- but the opt-out issue remains, they haven't addressed that fix. So call me paranoid, but I have to wonder if that is by design, because the ability to stay opted out will be going away. As far as the IT department . . . I am totally out of possible explanations! I've been in development and testing since 1997, and I swear, I've never seen anything like this. I have to wonder if they lost a lot of staff, and have a bunch of new people trying to catch up on how it works.
157
« on: January 12, 2011, 11:30 »
For what its worth, this particular post in its entirety from Kelly is probably the most damning, offensive, and disingenuous forum post any Istock admin has ever made. This post made clear to me that I had no future as an Istock exclusive.
And for I. I cancelled my exclusivity after reading the KT post. Prior to that I planned on being exclusive for many, many years.
His posts, especially the last one about exceeding expectations (while the site deteriorates, buyers leave, contributors are screwed over and all credibility goes up in flames), was downright offensive. That and his "what I think you meant to say" post chastising people who showed concern over the site failure. Is he that clueless? Does he really not look at anything except his own paycheck?
158
« on: January 11, 2011, 13:02 »
Oh dear Lord.
I am glad they are dealing with the fraud. I really am. Surely there should be some way to do that without preventing all new buyers from joining?
I have never been more grateful to be non-exclusive.
They might be dealing with it -- but new posts says it's happening again, targeting "family related".
159
« on: January 01, 2011, 10:44 »
Some of the old exclusives should be able to do well with SS quite quickly but they have tightened up their reviews, so it wont be easy. Not sure if this is good or bad for non-exclusives. There's going to be more competition on the other sites but hopefully istock wont dominate the market now and that looks like a good thing.
It's going to be interesting to see if istock cutting commissions to such low levels and increasing prices will lose them a lot of business and if they are capable of changing their strategy. It looks like they are determined to push this through, even if it damages their reputation. Hopefully they will be sold and the new owners will have a better long term strategy. I'm sure there's still more ways to increase profits other than cutting commissions and raising prices.
It's not just the commission-cutting that is damaging their reputation. It's the site itself, which is getting worse and worse for contributors and buyers to use, the search engine flakiness, the upload process, the constant never-ending bugs. When buyers are posting all over twitter trying to get help because they can't buy, that hurts their reputation terribly. And the alarming part is the attitude that seems to be taking over and the growing lack of communication. When it finally gets bad enough the answer seems to be to throw them a few discounts (at the contributors expense). I haven't tried the other sites, although I'm looking at them. Besides commissions, I'll be interested to find out if the grass is a little greener from the standpoint of searches, uploading, and general site functionality that helps both buyers and contributors.
160
« on: December 30, 2010, 11:17 »
What we are experiencing at iStock is incompetence and gross mismanagement. As CEO of a technology company, the Board would fire my as* in a heart beat if I ran the business and produced a website with the magnitude of problems and lack of testing and Q/C we are experiencing. On top of all the issues they close the shop and take a vacation. This is either total incompetence or just plain arrogance. I don't see a long term future with iStock.
This is one of the things that frustrates me the most. Before going into the programming end of development, I spent a few years in QA as a tester and then managing the QA function. I see some of the stuff that gets rolled out here where basically it's the buyers and contributors testing it, and so obviously broken, that I'm just mind-boggled that it got put into production in that shape. It bugs me when people say "well those things will happen in all companies" -- not to this extent and repetition, and not without heads rolling. I'd have been let go in a heartbeat.
161
« on: December 29, 2010, 12:24 »
OMG, it's like a car driving down the road and as it goes along one part, then another, then another falls out. Pretty soon all the parts will have dropped out the bottom and it'll just stop working.
Looks like another part fell off.  I saw a buyer on twitter report a little while ago that they were trying to buy images, but they're getting a 404 when the download tries to start. This is all so hard to fathom. At this point, I can't understand why they don't roll back to a working version of the site.
162
« on: December 29, 2010, 11:06 »
Maybe this has already been discussed and I missed it or it was just subtle and I didn't get it.
Why would someone steal credit cards and buy stock photos??? They did 4 of mine of a crashed truck but how are they going to turn all that theft into money in their pockets? I think I remember reading about someone saying putting all the images on discs and selling them on the streets of China but how is that worth it? All this effort for what?
I saw a bunch of posts made in Twitter just after Christmas recruiting for people to, among other things, "clone iStockphoto" -- I tried to follow the link, but it went to a freelance programming project site and said it was private and by invitation only. Might be someone just creating a site with a look and feel like iStock's, and it's not the first time -- but it makes me wonder.
163
« on: December 28, 2010, 12:09 »
New update on the site from Joyze:
"In the past 6 days we have received a large amount of fraudulent purchases and downloads. We are working fervently to add new security measures to our purchasing process to prevent this from continuing or happening again. The implementations are happening as we speak.
While we don't normally correct royalties on fraudulent downloads, in this case, we will need to make an exception. We'll notify you next week of the royalty amount that will be adjusted from your account before we do so. Redeemed credits will also be corrected."
Six days???
164
« on: April 01, 2009, 14:48 »
It totally switched back. Take a look at the IS Discussion Forum. A bunch of people noticed, and there are already 2 threads locked.
All's well that ends well 
I'm not sure if this is part of the April Fools thing (someone in a forum post alluded to that). But it certainly seems to be switching around. A sort by best match this morning brought my oldest file to the front -- and a refresh brings it to something else -- switch to "by age" and it resorts correctly -- but every switch to best match or a refresh is changing it back and forth, with every second or third refresh bringing the old one to the front. I'm afraid to bring it up in the forums. If it is an April Fools thing, I would wonder of the effect on search results for buyers (not necessarily for me, I'm a low producer, but for big sellers).
165
« on: March 03, 2009, 21:44 »
I feel for the IT guys there, probably a long night ahead of them.
166
« on: February 14, 2009, 22:54 »
Saturday 10pm CST -- anyone else not able to get in to iS?
167
« on: February 12, 2009, 00:03 »
holy cow, his apology is really over the top.....if he is that sorry, why did he take the picture? ridiculous and strange
I don't think he's the one that took the picture, is he? Unless I misread that, it sounds like he's apologizing for iStock selecting the picture.
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