Unreported sale? Your experience please

[Robert M Estall]

Many UK newspapers have operated self-reporting and even self-invoicing schemes for many years. An extraordinary way to run a railway as anyone with experience doing business in the the more traditional world would say. Alamy are being taken over by PA, this may get interesting!

[Starsphinx]

1 hour ago, Robert M Estall said:

Many UK newspapers have operated self-reporting and even self-invoicing schemes for many years. An extraordinary way to run a railway as anyone with experience doing business in the the more traditional world would say. Alamy are being taken over by PA, this may get interesting!

I do think the whole invoicing system is definitely an area PA can improve.  Not just the self reporting/invoicing (which I can see at least some partial arguments for) but the rather nasty sting of full refund after any amount of time.  I know this has come up in other threads where contributors have seen triple figure refunds from their accounts for images sold months before hand.  It has been said that refunds should be time limited - and if they take longer than say 30 days if Alamy wishes to do them the entire cost should be absorbed by the company not the contributor as it is in no way acceptable for someone to be paid triple figures, spend that money in good faith, then a couple of months later find their account is in the red.

[meanderingemu]

2 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

I do think the whole invoicing system is definitely an area PA can improve.  Not just the self reporting/invoicing (which I can see at least some partial arguments for) but the rather nasty sting of full refund after any amount of time.  I know this has come up in other threads where contributors have seen triple figure refunds from their accounts for images sold months before hand.  It has been said that refunds should be time limited - and if they take longer than say 30 days if Alamy wishes to do them the entire cost should be absorbed by the company not the contributor as it is in no way acceptable for someone to be paid triple figures, spend that money in good faith, then a couple of months later find their account is in the red.

 

 

absorbed by the company, means operating cost which means we all pay for it.  So you want to pay because someone decided they didn't you someone else's image?  Alamy please count me out of this scheme.   

[Starsphinx]

2 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

absorbed by the company, means operating cost which means we all pay for it.  So you want to pay because someone decided they didn't you someone else's image?  Alamy please count me out of this scheme.   

Or of course do what every other sensible company does and put a time limit on refunds so once someone has had an image 30 days or whatever they are no longer entitled to a refund.  Or if it is that important to them customers must be able to reject images months after buying them then they absorb the cost out of their own profits - which they do have - without making any more changes to rates.

[Cryptoprocta]

13 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

I will point out though that i hope this is PA's first point of order.

When the very company (Muddle group) who is famous for benefitting from under-reporting is one of their main components?

Not holding my breath.

[riccarbi]

I've just realized that, apart from one single picture in early December, the last paid image reported in my dashboard dates back to 6 November 2019. From then on, without counting refunded and unreported sales, I had 10 sales, all $ and low$$ including some PUs, none of which has been paid to date.
My opinion is that PA's Alamy, both in terms of reporting and payment times (not to mention prices), has a lot of room for improvement.

[Phil Robinson]

On 17/02/2020 at 23:32, riccarbi said:

While I can understand that to get a sale eventually paid could took months, that's how today's business pipeline works,  I don't understand why that sale could remain unreported for months. If I, as a registered customer, identify a picture on Alamy that fits my needs, agree with terms and price, and eventually download it, the system might be able to record such a sale immediately and report it on my dashboard in a few minutes. If and when such a sale will be actually paid, it's a different matter, admittedly. Yet, why we have to wait for months just to know that someone downloaded one of our pictures?

Other agencies I have dealt with mostly 'report' sales when the payment has cleared. That can take months.

Alamy let us know when the uses have been invoiced, which is unusual, and is the reason why we sometimes see those annoying refunds.

People on here complain about refunds but there would be an awful lot more disappointments if we were notified every time a potential customer downloaded something for potential use.

I think Alamy have got the balance about right.

Edited February 22, 2020 by Phil Robinson