23 uncleared sales and counting

[Marb]

Is having 23 uncleared sales at Alamy normal since January ? I was shocked to see this having just looked now. Its bad enough that sale amounts have drastically reduced but to have so many sales uncleared is disappointing.

 

And on another note, what happened to the forum link at the bottom of the page ? I have to Google Alamy forums to get the page up now.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Marb

[Joseph Clemson]

Do you mean 23 sales from January remain uncleared, or that 23 sales between January and now remain uncleared? The former would be unusual - all my January sales cleared in March and I am now receiving cleared amounts for February and March.

 

23 sales over a period of a few months from a portfolio of 2200 is good going. Well done. Do some of the sales look like they might be to the same customer and it is that one customer who is slow? Some sales are notoriously slow to come in - calendar sales being a notable example. 

 

The missing link to the Alamy forum has been discussed in another thread. The consensus is that it discourages customers a little from reading the moans and machinations of contributors.

[Marb]

2 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

Do you mean 23 sales from January remain uncleared, or that 23 sales between January and now remain uncleared? The former would be unusual - all my January sales cleared in March and I am now receiving cleared amounts for February and March.

 

23 sales over a period of a few months from a portfolio of 2200 is good going. Well done. Do some of the sales look like they might be to the same customer and it is that one customer who is slow? Some sales are notoriously slow to come in - calendar sales being a notable example. 

 

The missing link to the Alamy forum has been discussed in another thread. The consensus is that it discourages customers a little from reading the moans and machinations of contributors.

14 sales from january and the rest are later months.

[Sally]

1 hour ago, Marb said:

Is having 23 uncleared sales at Alamy normal since January ? I was shocked to see this having just looked now. Its bad enough that sale amounts have drastically reduced but to have so many sales uncleared is disappointing.

 

And on another note, what happened to the forum link at the bottom of the page ? I have to Google Alamy forums to get the page up now.

Glad to hear you’ve had so many sales these last few months.

 

It’s not the number of uncleared sales that is relevant, since that simply depends on how many sales you’ve had. It depends on who the sales were to. The newspaper sales take much longer to clear than others, I have some going back to 30th January, and plenty uncleared for later months. I even have one uncleared sale from last August. A newspaper that I won’t name used two of my images for the same article. They did pay up for one of them a couples of months ago, but unbelievably they didn’t pay up for the other.

 

The Sun, Times etc tend to clear their sales in a bunch around every 5/6 months in my experience.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Sally

[Marb]

1 minute ago, Sally said:

Glad to hear you’ve had so many sales these last few months.

 

It’s not the number of uncleared sales that is relevant, since that simply depends on how many sales you’ve had. It depends on who the sales were to. The newspaper sales take much longer to clear than others, I have some going back to 30th January, and plenty uncleared for Later months. I even have one uncleared sale from last August. A newspaper that I won’t name used two of my images for the same article. They did pay up for one of them a couples of months ago, but unbelievably they didn’t pay up for the other.

Ok, thanks Sally. Just wanted to run it past everyone as I am unsure if this is normal.

[Joseph Clemson]

4 minutes ago, Marb said:

14 sales from january and the rest are later months.

 

I suspect this may be sales to a single customer, it would be very odd for 14 different sales all to remain uncleared for this long. I would send an email to contributor relations on the matter if they don't clear by the end of this month, or sooner if you are getting itchy about it.

[Marb]

5 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

I suspect this may be sales to a single customer, it would be very odd for 14 different sales all to remain uncleared for this long. I would send an email to contributor relations on the matter if they don't clear by the end of this month, or sooner if you are getting itchy about it.

They are all personal use which I suspect if not paid could be people buying images to have with no watermark and use to sell on. I have since unchecked personal use in my account some weeks ago. Not all the same buyers either.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Marb

[Robert M Estall]

I'm surprised more contributors haven't complained that finding the forum has changed. I now go to my dashboard and hit the help button opposite  AIM in blue and that takes me to contributors homepage and the forum button is bottom left in grey.

 

seems we just had to find it by trial and error. maybe there was a notification I missed

 

Of course limiting access to the forum to contributors is a good thing and has been suggested many times

Edited May 11, 2019 by Robert M Estall

[Thyrsis]

1 hour ago, Marb said:

And on another note, what happened to the forum link at the bottom of the page ? I have to Google Alamy forums to get the page up now.

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/11523-link-to-the-forum/

 

[Joseph Clemson]

20 minutes ago, Marb said:

They are all personal use which I suspect if not paid could be people buying images to have with no watermark and use to sell on. I have since unchecked personal use in my account some weeks ago. Not all the same buyers either.

 

Such a large number of PU licences does seem unusual. I know some other contributors complain about the high proportion of PU sales, but for me it is about 1 sale in 20. The other oddity is that you might reasonably expect PU sales to be to one or more private individuals and for payment to be made immediately, in which case they would clear after 45 days, per Alamy's T&C. 

 

While it is possible you are right about people using the PU sale to get images for further resale, it seems unlikely to me that such people would spend money to get unwatermarked images when they can nick stuff quite easily from other parts of the internet. Unless there is something unique about these particular images?  In any case I would query with Alamy such an unusually high number of PU sales and why they have not cleared by now. 

[Marb]

23 minutes ago, David Pimborough said:

Smells like some outfit with an account is taking the mick

 

 

You mean image theft or a tardy company ?

[Marb]

I had a response from support:

 

The sales from January are mainly distribution sales and these do take longer to clear because of the number of people involved in the process. If you haven’t seen the payment clear we haven’t given up or forgotten about it, our Credit control team are constantly chasing invoices and we’ll update your account once we’ve collected payment.
 

[RedSnapper]

On 11/05/2019 at 08:49, Robert M Estall said:

I'm surprised more contributors haven't complained that finding the forum has changed. I now go to my dashboard and hit the help button opposite  AIM in blue and that takes me to contributors homepage and the forum button is bottom left in grey.

 

 

why not make the forum page a favourite/bookmark/shortcut in your browser so that it's just one click away?

 

km

[Harry Harrison]

On 11/05/2019 at 08:49, Robert M Estall said:

I now go to my dashboard and hit the help button opposite  AIM in blue and that takes me to contributors homepage and the forum button is bottom left in grey.

 

I second Keith here, though I like to bookmark the All Activity page:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/discover/

[Phil Robinson]

I have just found quite a few from November that are still uncleared - distributor sales to China and Japan.

And - perhaps more surprising - 5 UK newspaper sales from 30th January (The Sun, I think)

and another 5 newspaper sales from February (The Sun, I think)

I think perhaps it is time Mr Murdoch was sent a reminder

Edited May 17, 2019 by Phil Robinson

[Jansos]

I decided for the first time to have a bit of a comprehensive look at my uncleared pics (bit of a laborious process - is there a quick way of doing this?) and discovered a fair few going back to 2018. No big amounts, so not too concerned but what happens to these? Do they eventually just get written off? Do we receive any notification? I only trawled back as far as 2018 but there could be others lurking from before. Should I chase Alamy or will they eventually get round to sending a notification? Anyone know? 

[AlbertSnapper]

I expect Alamy are well aware of unpaid/uncleared sales.

 

I have asked Alamy to chase them up in the past, sometimes it might get Alamy to nudge their customers to cough up.

 

Also, Alamy may be doing what it can to recover uncleared funds. I've had cases where either the customer or the distributor have gone bust. So no money for any of us ☹️

 

Another time a sale cleared after 3 and a half years !  Alamy had to go down the legal route for that one.

[Mr Standfast]

Marb, contact Alamy, that's an odd pattern of sales.

 

[gvallee]

7 minutes ago, Mr Standfast said:

Marb, contact Alamy, that's an odd pattern of sales.

 

 

This is an old thread that has been resurrected (May 19). By now hopefully, Marb will have been paid.

It's always a good idea to start a fresh thread to avoid confusion.

[Avpics]

1 hour ago, Jansos said:

Should I chase Alamy ....

Surely that should always be the first move, just to be sure there hasn't been an error and to get yourself 'in the loop'.

[John Richmond]

2 hours ago, Jansos said:

is there a quick way of doing this?

Quickest way I've found is to go to the Download sales report screen, set the start and end dates as appropriate for your query and then choose the Date of invoice as the search parameter.  Shows up the gaps where an image has been invoiced but not yet cleared.

[Mr Standfast]

4 hours ago, gvallee said:

 

This is an old thread that has been resurrected (May 19). By now hopefully, Marb will have been paid.

It's always a good idea to start a fresh thread to avoid confusion.

Quite right. 

[Jansos]

3 hours ago, John Richmond said:

Quickest way I've found is to go to the Download sales report screen, set the start and end dates as appropriate for your query and then choose the Date of invoice as the search parameter.  Shows up the gaps where an image has been invoiced but not yet cleared.

Hi John, That's really helpful. Thanks very much! 😀

[Jansos]

5 hours ago, gvallee said:

 

This is an old thread that has been resurrected (May 19). By now hopefully, Marb will have been paid.

It's always a good idea to start a fresh thread to avoid confusion.

Apologies - I thought it was better to resurrect an old thread so there is more continuity on topic. Won't do that again if it is unhelpful!

[Phil Garner]

I had three sales last year. One hasn't cleared since December 2019. I've still not received a penny from Alamy. From what I've read, this seems to be the norm.