Today, I found out the hard way that iStockPhoto expires unused credits you buy after a year.
These are not gifts or promotions or bonuses like frequent flyer miles. These are credits you PAY FOR. With REAL MONEY. In exchange for future imagery to download. They just “expire” them.
iStockPhoto calls these credits their very own currency. And they deem it okay to just take that currency from you with nothing in return. Imagine if all those gift cards you gave and received “expired” after a year.
Sorry for sounding redundant. I’m incredulous.
They are already benefiting from having customers prepay: they get to hold onto your money and keep the interest.
This is so obviously sleazy and unfair. Some states already have explicit laws banning the practice.
The ethics of it should be plenty to prevent a company from employing such practices, but because we care about product vision, including business models, let’s lay out why this is such a petty, short-sighted idea:
- Most companies try and incentivize customers to spend more. Expiring credits is a disincentive for customers to prepay for bigger chunks of credits. The more you buy, the more you have to lose.
- Most companies understand the high cost of customer acquisition and try and keep customers loyal so they don’t stray to competitors. Unused credit is a financial incentive to return to the service. If I had just two dollars left in my account I’d go to back to iStockPhoto and spend another $10 to get what I want. But now that my balance is zero, I’m free to look elsewhere. By expiring credits, iStockPhoto frees their customers who would otherwise be locked in.
- Expiring credits turns happy customers into angry customers. Someone wrote, “Yep, iStockPhoto stole money from me as well. They got 4 dollars from me that expired a few months ago. For that, they’ve lost a customer. Genius business model. Luckily there’s lots of competition so no worries on finding clipart.”
Some homework for the business leaders of iStockPhoto: read up on net promoter.
So here is some advice for competitors: differentiate by not expiring credits, and ridicule the ethics of those who do.
Readers: what are the best alternative stock photo providers? How did you feel when you found out your iStockPhoto credits disappeared?
Update 8/20/09 – Here are some alternative stock photo sites:
- EveryStockPhoto – searches multiple free sites
- stock.xchng – free. Includes search results from paid sites including iStockPhoto, our nemesis
- StockXPert – paid, credits do not expire.
- PhotoXPress – free, but limited downloads per day
[Non-recommended sites that expire credits: iStockPhoto, Fotolia, Dreamstime.]
I used istock a lot for a couple years. Always bought bulk credits. Last time I logged in there was nothing there, and I could swear I had some left. This is the first I’m hearing about expiring credits. I really think they should let you know when you are paying them (maybe it was hidden deep in some ToS or something).
Anyway, next time I’m gonna be using dreamstime.com and inmagine.com.
Damn. I signed up and bought 55 credits on Dec 11,2007. I had 13 credits left, and you’re right. They are gone.
I’m contacting support and asking them to credit my account with them. They will likely deny the request, which will give me a great opportunity to ask them to politely close my account, and perhaps send them a link to this blog post.
FWIW, dreamstime also expires credits after a year. There’s a list of competitors here:
http://www.tradevibes.com/company/profile/istockphoto/competitors
And for the maximizer who’s not afraid of the paradox of choice, here’s a massive comprehensive list:
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2008/02/27/stock-photo-agencies/
Although it is easy to sign on to a blog and bitch; it’s easier to call the company and explain to them what happened.
I know iStockphoto well and they do send out three emails prompting you that your credits will expire and in my experience they were very nice when I phoned them asking for an extension. They promptly gave me a 6 month extension on the credits. They give different credit options so you can purchase a credit package you will use based on the year timeline. If you watch when you purchase credits it is stated from beginning to end that your credits expire. I checked my receipt and sure enough it told me there. Good luck with dreamstime and the others…for me I’m sticking with iStockphoto for the quality images they provide.
Just to follow up:
Most of us buy things like gift cards assuming that their value will not evaporate. This is why so many people are upset at iStockPhoto.
I have no trace of receiving warning emails that the credits were about to expire. Even if they had, it does not undermine the point.
I did email the company to complain to them directly, and got the stock response (no pun intended):
This message is disingenuous on several levels. “Only a handful have actually expired?” A handful? Really. The message is unchanged from the version posted online 18 months ago.
“Most people understand the practical issues involved”? Ah, so it’s just me then; I just don’t get it. They’re right; I don’t:
“All of these programs impact the royalties that are payable to photographers, so they have to be specifically tracked within our system.” So how do (and why should) a prepayment I make to iStockPhoto affect royalties to photographers? That doesn’t make sense.
“It is extremely difficult to try to track all of these various categories of credits if we did not know with some certainty, when we could stop doing so.” Ah, so it’s an engineering issue. Math is hard. I wrote back to them with this advice: “The solution to your technical problem should not be difficult: if someone purchases a credit do not expire it. This is not difficult to do. [They already batches of credits for expiration date; just add a bit that indicates, "paid credit; do not expire".] Many stores have gift cards and limited time off coupons. This is a contract between you and purchasers of photos, not your photographers. Am I missing something?” The expiration policy is is bad enough; blaming it on a technical difficulty just adds insult to injury.
That was sent to them two weeks ago. No reply as yet.
They write, “we’re not trying to get something for nothing here” but that is precisely what they are doing, and why anyone who loses credits feels ripped off.
Yep. Same issue here. I am not going to debate things with IStock, we are just not going to ever refer additional customers to them if they don’t give us the credits back. We are a design shop and we rarely purchase the credits for our own use. Instead we tell our customers to go and buy the credits for the design work we do for them. This has a two-fold benefit.
1. The customer likes the fact that we aren’t marking the images up.
2. There is also no question about licenses for use in this scenario. Also, if our customer jumps ship and uses a different design firm in the future, the images are licensed to the customer, and not us, which is the correct and ethical way to handle things. If Istock ever breaths down their neck because there is a question about licensing of images, it is in the customer’s hands and we are not caught in the middle.
This honesty allows for great customer retention here. Being upfront with people and stating things clearly is a good thing. Something IStock should do. IStock should simply state CLEARLY on the front page of their shopping cart BEFORE PURCHASING that you are buying something that you can LOSE. “Use it or Lose it.” People understand that short sentence. They should do this DURING the checkout process.
What Istock doesn’t realize is that we work with Chambers of Commerce’s and other higher profile entities that influence a lot of other businesses. We have sent President’s of companies and Directors to their website to select the appropriate material for the things we design. This streamlines the process as we don’t chase our tail wondering if we are using the incorrect image for the customer.
We will give IStock the chance to reinstate our credits. If they don’t, we will report back here in hopes of preventing other from receiving the same treatment. We will also never refer a future customer to them and will communicate our experience to our current client base that has used their service. We do not want to be perceived as referring a vendor that has questionable and obviously dubious policies that may reflect on us as a business.
By the way, we were blind-sided by IStock’s expiration policy. We had no idea the credits would expire. IStock doesn’t communicate this policy clearly when you BECOME a customer and they bury the information in the website. To the person that posted above stating that IStock emails a message informing customers that credits are about to expire….. My friend, that is simply hogwash. Istock doesn’t do this. We have no messages in our inbox and our filters are not set to block emails from IStock. Afterall, we DO get all of IStock’s other emails thanking us for purchases. So do our customers.
Caveat Emptor here.
Be aware that IStock has some great material and pricing, but they have a lousy policy that disinfranchises their customer’s when this situation happens. It is unethical and it is wrong to steal people’s money because they don’t see fine print buried among the thousands of pages on their website.
We hope they make good and will report back here either way.
Thank you to the person that started this thread. And to future posters in this thread, please use the word Istock in your posts. Use it a lot. This will allow the robots to index this page and give it higher rankings and relevance on Google. Other words of relevance like “loose credits”, “steals”, “stolen”, “took”, “taken” will also be useful. I think you get the idea.
>>>We hope they make good and will report back here either way.<<<
I promised to report back. So here ya’ go.
There was no reply to my email sent to Istock inquiring about the disappearing credits. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I did send it late Friday or Saturday, so it was a weekend. I waited most of the day Monday for a response and then decided to call.
There was a voicemail system in place to filter calls and it was mandatory that I make a selection and key in a number. I ignored the request the first time and the system automatically disconnected me. I was thinking “great, I’m gonna have to enter the voicemail abyss”. So, I called back and this time keyed a number. An operator answered very quickly! No voicemail! I was surprised. I had a brief conversation with him lasting a few minutes. While we were on the phone, he reinstated the credits we lost for an additional 60 days. No muss. No fuss.
He did however state that it is their policy to send out several emails notifying customers when credits are about to expire. I refuted this. Because it is simply not true. We are pretty computer saavy here as we make a living through these gray boxes. And no, our spam filters didn’t screen any messages from Istock. We’ve received every other email they’ve sent in the past. So, it is odd and strange how we would miss multiple notices informing us that credits are about to expire. Simply put. We didn’t. And they weren’t sent by Istock.
Bottom line, Istock quickly credited our account when we called and they were NOT difficult to reach on the phone, but did not respond to emails. For me, phone is the best method for communications, so the lack of email follow-up doesn’t bother us.
Nevertheless, they should simply do away with their policy of automatically expiring credits after a year. It discourages customers and DOES NOT help your business. If we had not called them and simply wrote it off, it certainly would have hurt their business as we refer almost everyone there.
CJ, thanks for the updates.
I agree that extending the credit to squeaky wheels does not make their policy okay.
It reminds me of companies that claim, “Lowest price, guaranteed!”, meaning that they aren’t actually claiming they have the lowest price, but if you find another and go to the effort to complain about it, they’ll refund the diff.
BTW, Gift cards from MasterCard, Visa, Amex, Discover expire too…read the fine print carefully….store gift cards usually don’t expire.
[...] I hate the business model of cell phone plans, which is the same one used by parking meters and any system that requires you to buy credits to use it (like iStockPhoto). [...]
I Agree, Istock are very nice about their credit expiry and will even extend for a few months, all friendly and nice about it, does not make it right.
I will not be using them again, its a fundamental principle, put simply they are stealing your money there is NO reason for them to expire your credits its simply a business tactic to make more money, but its an unscrupulous tactic and as such I will not be using them again.
Ok, as a poster above suggested I will SEO then explain what has happened.
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Enough of the SEO, I like many logged in after a period of time to look for some images that I could use.
I knew there where a few credits available but my account said ’0 credits’ thats when I hit google and here is my post.
Put simply, credits should not expire, imagine going to the bank depositing some money simply to be told by the bank a few years later that your money had expired, LOL.
Money DOES NOT EXPIRE, so, as the ‘credit’ system used by istockphoto is replacing the normal bartering system in which products are secured then the same rules that are applied to a real currency should be respected.
And THAT IS money does NOT expire so istockphoto credit should NOT expire.
Any actions that forfeit these rules should be seen as a criminal act.
Another great example of a ‘modern company’ that uses legal jargon and red tape to rip people off.
Well done….
OK said my bits, crooks……….
Hey!
I know it seems like a total rip off. However; the reasoning behind it does make sense.
They do this so that the contributors on the website aren’t getting losing money in royalties. For example: If someone applied credits to their account 5 years ago, with inflation the royalties the photographers received (from the old credits) would be much lower than the royalties they receive today.
I wrote in to complain once, and the response made sense. See below:
Next to our membership community, iStockphoto’s micropayment credit system is one of the keys to our ability to offer high quality images at unprecedented prices. In addition to consistently low prices, we also offer various promotions from time to time that are tied to different giveaways, bundled discounts and other price promotions. All of these programs impact the royalties that are payable to photographers, so they have to be specifically tracked within our system. It is extremely difficult to try to track all of these various categories of credits if we did not know with some certainty, when we could stop doing so.
We try to be very upfront with our customers. It is stated on the main purchase page (and throughout the purchase path), as well as, stated on your purchase receipt.
It’s been like this since 2002, shortly after the site was founded. Subscription credits expire each day at midnight, and regular credits after one year. We don’t want your credits to expire, and it’s why we email you reminding you before the fact. We find very few credits expire this way.
While the credit system may seem strange, it’s what has allowed us to sell images so inexpensively. And we think our millions of customers would agree. You’ll also find that most of the competitors who have replicated our business model also have expiring credits.
If you find you need more time to spend your credits, feel free to contact Client Relations during business hours, and we’ll be happy to extend your credits.
I phoned, polite person extended my credits. Voila.
PS. Getty also owns a few of the free stock websites listed above.
Yes, the credit which we purchase by money should added to the next cycle always. Not only istockphoto but other sites like freelancing sites also do that which is really unethical.
Yeah, they stole about 35 bucks from me too. I probably won’t be using istock anymore.
Oh you are all cry babies, it is stated on 7 places on their website when you buy the credits. Not only that, it is on the page when you click purchase the order and it’s on your receipt. Wow you people really don’t read at all do you?
It’s call pay as you go dummies, don’t buy more credits then you need just buy as you need.
Another angry istockphoto “customer” here. Or should I say victim?
They can state in their policy however many times they want, it doesn’t change the fact that they are stealing peoples money.
The whole “only a hand full expire” is because when people get the email telling them they are going to be robbed they decide to spend the credits on things they probably wouldn’t have bought. and istockphoto get to keep their lie statistic.
Hello everyone… I was also a istockphoto user and thats a bulshit site. I’m PLanning to open somthing similar to the Istockphoto thingy.If you like to support my idea and fill my survey so i can know what is the best for everyone. plz email me on stock101@hotmail.com or keep your email so i can email you back. i will provide you with details and things.
I’m glad got found this blog post I know will not buy from any stock photo company that using credits I only got limited amount money and builded web site as free web design servers almost like webs. Thank for all post look some where else for stock photo’s .
After see this I think there should be law in place banned this you don’t see a lot per pay phone companys doing it anymore after year mins go over to next year.