Opting Out of Distribution Timeline

[MarkK]

In April I opted out of distribution sales as well as all of the microstock-priced schemes.  In June I had a distribution sale come in thus I wrote Alamy asking why this happened and they said because of the lag time the sale went through.

 

Today, September 12, 5 months since opting out, I received another distribution sale for less than a cup of coffee.  If I wanted to sell for microstock prices I would not have opted out of the schemes but since I have opted out of all of these schemes I expected Alamy to honor this.

 

My question for the forum is.......does anyone know when the "lag-time" reasonably stops? Will I still have distribution sales a year after I opted out? Is there any timeline?  Are they ignoring my set parameters for sales by still selling my photos to distributors even though I have opted out?

 

 

[geogphotos]

Funny thing about this lag time.

 

I recently left an agency and guess what not one sale has been reported after the date I left. 

 

Apologies for being off topic.

Edited September 12, 2019 by geogphotos

[MarkK]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

Funny thing about this lag time.

 

I recently left an agency and guess what not one sale has been reported after the date I left. 

 

Apologies for being off topic.

Thanks for the reply and I don't think it is off topic.  It would be logical that any of your photos after you were gone wouldn't be sold hence I was applying the same logic with the distribution scheme at Alamy.  In April when I opted out of all schemes it was presumed that sales would stop/be blocked in those categories.  Five months later I am having my photos still sold by distributors which to me doesn't seem reasonable but I was hoping to find out, through the board, if this is normal for Alamy. 

[DDoug]

With Alamy, I have the option of not participating in the UK Newspaper cut-rate deal and so I don't. However, with distribution, there is no such option. I opted out last April and got a distributor sale a month ago, but fortunately it wasn't a bulk rate discount sale. In an email conversation with Alamy, I said I'd be happy to participate in Distribution again if I could exclude their distributors' bulk rate discount sales.

 

It bothers me that an agency can go to their customers and say, "We can sell you almost anything in the Alamy catalog for pennies on the dollar" (or cents on the euro as the case usually is). I made the choice to be exclusive with Alamy, but there's no point in it if the back door remains wide open.

 

As to your initial question, I have no idea how long the lag time is.

[regen]

For Alamy i don't think 6 months is out of the way- Some of their disributors take longer than that to report a sale! Some publishers particularly books and calendars have very long lead times and even longer credit lines so it could be more than a year before you are clear of distribution always assuming the distributor actions Alamys request.

Edited September 12, 2019 by regen
crap predictive spelling