Arno

Exactly.

I'm talking about the 250 bucks threshold for the height of the commission, not the payout threshold.

I made a post here about an image reported sold (no names, no references, no numbers) in 2019, which is STILL uncleared. Contacted Alamy about it 3 times, saying they're "on it". The post has mysteriously disappeared. Last week I came across an image still being used outside the invoiced period. Got a mail back saying "thanks for flagging it, we're looking into it". How is it that WE have to chase our own images to see if we're being paid or if payments have cleared? We're getting paid less and less for each image, and we have to police stuff ourselves. I'm already fighting as it is with the pennies I'm getting to reach that 250 bucks threshold before I'm getting paid EVEN less. I'm getting ready to just leave this whole stock photography behind. It's giving me more head aches than what it's worth.

Number of sales pretty much the same, revenue vastly down. The average sales price per image mostly in the $ range, which is really sad/pathetic, considering most of them are full page uses in print (up to 10.000), digital and web and in perpetuity. Just got another one on 27th of December for $. A decade ago that same use was still in the 1$$.

So, response from Alamy: You should've come directly to us without contacting our customer first (no sale was reported, I had no way of knowing this was an Alamy client, and I am not exclusive to Alamy). Now they reported the sale, and there's nothing we can do about it anymore. It went for the 2023 rates. As if they can't contact their customer and say "Hey, listen. You forgot to report this sale 7 years ago, so you will have to pay the fees applicable back in 2016." This is not the first time Alamy just shoos me off with a "Sorry, nothing we can do about it." I even had that with a few proper infringement cases. They just added the sales to my sales report for pennies and that was it. So much for contributor service. Customer is king, clearly. Contributors not so much.

You make a fair point. I just saw this particular sale appear in my sales report today, but I will contact Alamy about this and see what they say.

So... I happened to come across an image of mine which was used without a notified sale here, nor directly from me. I contacted the publisher and after some investigation from their side (the image was used back in 2016), it appeared that they obtained it from Alamy, but that it never was registered as a sale, because, so the person said, the Alamy API apparently is very instable and doesn't always work. Now of course I'm wondering how many images of mine are "sold" but never registered to Alamy and of which I have never received any commission. Very worrisome development.

And you get a 1.29 sale, minus commission of 0.77... That leaves you with 52 cents for your savings account. Things aren't what they used to be...

And how is that editorial? Just because it would be an accounting website, doesn't mean that an image on their website is editorial... It's still commercial use, in my opinion.

I just had a sale recorded with the specs "Editorial website" in "General business services" industry. This seems like an oxymoron to me (and of course I'm rather disappointed in the pennies that came my way for that 5-year, any size license)... Could someone explain this to me?

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-longhorn-cowfish-floating-about-the-sea-floor-170654812.html Editorial use any size in Germany. $2.80. Cheers for half a cup of coffee. With two crumbs of left over cake.

Customer service denies that it's the same client for all the images. I find it a bit of a coincidence that the location and the use on all the (re)sold images are exactly the same. Also... I asked twice literally "How long do you allow refunds, because I think 8 months is quite a long time to get a refund." and that question was both times conveniently ignored.

I posed the same question to Alamy via email, and all they said was exactly what I can see in my sales history: sale refunded and rebilled. There was no explanation as to how a sale can be refunded 8 months later. This wasn't just a "sale that was refunded and rebilled", anyway. It was a sale that was refunded twice and sold 6 times. Now I'm just wondering how many refunds I can expect still... 🤨

I was going through my sales history, and two of my images keep on popping up. It starts on July 10th 2018 with one, sold to Japan. It is sold again on January 15th 2019, then again on March 26th 2019. That last one is then refunded EIGHT months later, on November 27th. It is then again sold on November 12th, refunded again on November 18th and sold again also on November 18th, and sold again on November 27th. A second image was sold, also, to Japan on September 24th and refunded on November 27th, and again sold on the same day. I reckon this is the same client every time. Anyone have a clue on what's happening? And how they allow a refund after EIGHT months?

Yeah... No... You were just SO eager to whine about my whining, that you simply didn't care to click the link, or to check the rest from the post. My edit (18:44) was a full 5 minutes BEFORE you posted your comment (18:49).