I thought KK's response was condescending, rude, immature and just a bit snotty. He may be under stress, but if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I think ( as previously mentioned) he could could use a PR person.

His official Spin Doctor is 'Roger Mexico', so I take all RM's half-informative posts with a big pinch of salt; but he's out of the building as he announced with great noise. http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=285392&page=1
Maybe he  was surreptitiously giving advanced notice of the strife which was to come.

This evening I see a bunch of angry twitter posts from buyers (apparently they're buyers; I don't know the people) as iStock has implemented a time lock - one download every 5 minutes. One comment was that with a lightbox of 38 images that'll take over 3 hours to download.

I assume this is related to the credit card fraud, but if so, how stupid to limit the small numbers of downloads as well as the big batches. So if I need 5 pictures for a project, I download all 5 in 5 minutes and then I go away for hours or days while I work on things. Users of that sort shouldn't have to wait 25 minutes to download their images. It's the sustained numbers of downloads at speed that should be the flag.

I guess this was the best that the skeleton IT staff could come up with over the holidays???

I see the 404 error on SMs is still there. While me getting that message (which apparently doesn't mean anything) when SMing someone hardly matters, I hope it's been fixed when people send support tickets. Even if it's working, the impression is given that it isn't, and buyers don't all hang around the forums (it was an hour or two after my 404 that it was reported in the Help forum, and a while after that before I and others realised that the SMs were getting through despite the 404).

Prior to the 5DMII my percentage rate of accepted images is about 30-100% depending on the site.

Well.... I got the 5DMII.  And I love the quality of the images and the ISO performance.  The AF system IMO is not as good as the 7D.

BUT....my acceptance rate for the past few weeks since I started using the camera has been about 0-10%.

As has been said, you need to share your rejection reasons. Since I got the 5D2, my rejections for artifacting etc have gone down, compensated by 'poor lighting' rejections shooting up.

Quote from: ShadySue on December 29, 2010, 09:45

Quote from: click_click on December 29, 2010, 09:35

I don't understand how it's possible that iStock supposedly paid back some scammed victims' money directly...
Once I had my CC info stolen, I was reimbursed by the CC company and not the retailer where the card information was (ab)used.

Did you contact the retailler? It looks from that site as though a few scammed people contacted iStock directly and were paid by them (at least, that's what they say). Whether they would also be paid by their cc company, I couldn't possibly say.
What one retailler does and what another does is totally disconnected, therefore irrelevant. Most companies may tell you to sort it through your cardholder, doesn't mean all will.

My credit card company protects me from ID theft and therefore I don't have to jump through hoops by dealing with those companies that encountered fraudulent charges with my stolen CC info.

I simply give my CC company one phone call and all is settled: I get my unauthorized charges voided and a set of new credit cards. Done.

I consider it "more" inconvenient if I have to find out where my card was used, contact all of those retailers and explain to them that my card was stolen so I can get my money back from them...

That's no problem. You did seem to be questioning the veracity of what people had said on that site when you said: "I don't understand how it's possible that iStock supposedly paid back some scammed victims' money directly."

Quote from: donding on December 29, 2010, 12:49

Doesn't everyone just dread the New Year. Just wonder what disaster's are going to happen New Years Day.

I don't know about NY day, but definitely the first week or two of the New Year things are probably going to be hitting the fan.  I both dread it and at the same time would like it to be over with so I can stop being in suspense. 

Oh no, they've been practising the code for clawing money back from us since October (at least). This one will go well. 

Quote from: ShadySue on December 29, 2010, 08:27

Not to mention the current sitemail problem: when you hit 'send mail' you get a 404 message.
I thought I'd suddenly been banned from SM, but it's now been reported on the help forum.
Probably mostly irrelevant to buying/selling, so again, a hiccup, not an 'epic fail'.

It's probably because they are getting bombarded with site mails over all this disastrous current events and the servers can't handle the overload.  

Yeah, they're getting 404s when they raise a support ticket too. Like the SMs, they're probably going through, but the 404 is disconcerting.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=286842&page=1

I figured as soon as whitemay posted that reference to the trouble on the 800note site, the thread would get locked.

I am certain too that online companies have this problem, but I'm thinking that it is mostly done on a small scale. In other words, a pattern is noticed, perpetrator caught and prosecuted.

This 800note cc stuff has been going on since 2009 and has hit in a big way. Seems like that should have warranted some sort of law enforcement intervention. And really, since IS knew this had been going on (and we didn't) wouldn't that be an even bigger reason not to have the company unprotected during the holidays and announce it to the world? Wouldn't that be an ever HUGER reason to make absolutely certain there were no holes in security before pushing through a whole new website redesign? I suppose, of course, that the old design might have been as holey as a sieve, too, though. 

This sort of scam, at least the earlier ones with smaller amounts of money, aren't a result of iStock's site security. This can happen even with over-the-phone orders - someone steals a card and uses it to purchase something. Hey, the very first credit card I ever got had someone else's new card inside my envelope - if I'd been dishonest, it would have been a dream for a week or two. Even in the old days of cheques, I remember once buying a pair of shoes in a shop. The shop assistant said she would stamp the shop's name on the 'to' line, which was quite standard, and I didn't think to watch her doing it. When the cheque was returned, her name (or if she was smart, maybe a pal's) was on it, and it took me a while to work out that's what had happened. Trouble was, I'd been in several shoe shops, and couldn't remember which one I'd actually purchased the shoes from, so she got off with it.

According to these people these charges started back on Dec 14th....that's before they went on their glory vacation!!

It seems that the first report on that site was actually 14 Feb 2009, though for relatively small amounts, not the sort of huge credit bundles which seem to have been at the root of the current scam.
However, it certainly looks likely that the downloaded images are very likely to end up being redistributed somewhere, and I guess there's not much can be done.
I'd imagine for a minute that other companies, including amazon, are similarly affected. It's a problem inherent in the nature of online trading.

If iStock is going to adjust contributors' royalties, even though the credit card companies are on the hook for the charges, then where will that money go??? Into iStock's bank account, right? Holy crap, you guys are getting shafted left, right, up, down and sideways.

From the first link Cathy posted, it looks like iStock has been paying back the scammed cardholders directly when contacted.

{Added: see note at bottom}
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=286742&page=1
In case that gets deleted, an example files the OP mentioned was:
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=15017498
which at the time of posting was priced at 1 credit for an XSm -> 10 credits for L.
[Ah, it seems that the contributor has only recently become exclusive, and it's a 'hiccup', not an 'epic fail'.]

To be honest, I'd consider it slimy if we were allowed to keep the royalties without it being the result of some legitimate transaction.

I'm not affected, but if iStock is getting to keep the money (by insurance or by the cc company) it should be shared among those who stand to lose by having their pics put up for sale elsewhere. I had a rueful smile when I read someone say he'd only be happy if he saw a certificate of destruction. Why would you believe a CoD from a credit card thief?
There are plenty of charities who could do with your 'slimy' money far more than KKT or JK.

If you read through the thread about the Main collection you'll see that it's only available on certain browsers. It either wasn't supposed to be released yet or the re-design of the search isn't finished and they will be adding an Exclusive button as well. Either way it's another fail on IS's part.

I believe that when Amazon try something new, it's only available on certain servers as they test it, but because there isn't a forum as such, others don't know about it.
However, it's bad enough they already reneged on their word (that there would not be a way of excluding exclusive files, and there is by choosing Vetta and Agency only, excluding Exc and Exc+) and now they're trying out ways of keeping exclusive files out of the 'main' collection. Why on earth suddenly introduce this when there's just about no-one around?
I just don't understand why so many people are leaping up and down and woo-waying about editorial (as if there were no options): is this a company we can fully trust any more?

I just checked Alamy home page and it has this posted

"Due to severe weather conditions in New York, the US office is closed on Monday December 27th. Please email your requests to [email protected] and we will come back to you as soon as we can. "

That blizzard must really be bad to keep New York shut down.

Seems the airports are/were all closed.