-   spread bad (but true) information about dishonest behavior of FT. Allmost everybody has his own site, have different accounts at popular sites (Facebook, If Fotolia is associated with tags like thief, dishonest in Google research some serious companies will hesitate before buying images.

There's nothing to stop people saying that they feel Fotolia treats it's contributors unfairly, or that they're not happy with the commission structure and communication but to call them "thief or dishonest" will leave you open to legal implications unless you have evidence to the contrary.

They've pushed me to the brink of considering exclusivity with iStock. Fotolia may think they've got us all over a barrel but now it seems that it may be more lucrative at iS than being non-exclusive everywhere, even without considering extras such as Vetta, Getty and better search placement.

The apology from Chad Bridewell is a joke. In private dealings with him I have been treated with the same arrogant, dismissive contempt that he says is not Fotolia's culture ... so I know exactly why the employees thought they could talk to us like that and who they got that attitude from. Of course, at the bottom of his emails is the note saying this information is privileged and may not be passed on blah blah, so I can't tell you exactly what he said, but the arrogance of his employees is mild by comparison. I hope he isn't punishing them for upholding his own standards and getting caught out.

The real issue, though, is that not only have our percentages been cut to barely acceptable levels according to the published agreement. It now turns out that through various pieces of trickery we are not actually being paid the true percentage of the purchase prices.

That really leaves me feeling sick and very, very doubtful about whether I want to continue to be associated with this company.

Eating crap from customer relations is something I can stomach on the basis that selling through Fotolia has been part of my business plan and I don't have to like them to do business. Having a legal agreement that says they will pay me a certain percentage of earnings and then finding that they are not adhering to that, but are paying a fixed cash rate regardless of the sale value, is something else entirely. It undermines the basis of my business strategy and throws trust out of the window.

-   FT withhold 28% of all commissions from some contributors (even from no US sales). Is this �tax� transferred or they keep it � in this case they are in trouble. Can we check it?
Do you have any ideas?

I think your points are all valid, but I'm especially interested in this one. How come FT is the only one witholding tax on non-us sales?

PS: I think some suggestions might be counter productive. Spreading a bad word might only make the buyers go away. Which will hurt us in the end.

They have revamped the price packages for buyers, effectively creating a price rise, but they are not passing any of this on to their contributors, so they are cutting our commission percentage by stealth.

They also have for a long time been paying different commission rates to people in different currency zones, and charging different prices to customers in different countries, so the supposed percentage payout is nothing of the kind. Where they claim to be paying over 30% (in line with the agreement) they may in fact be paying less  than 20% under the new price structure.

They have revamped the price packages for buyers, effectively creating a price rise, but they are not passing any of this on to their contributors, so they are cutting our commission percentage by stealth.

Not defending FT, I think it is not correct to say they raised prices, but that they created a variable cost according to the credit package purchased.  As credit prices may vary from 75c to 1.20 (in the USA site), in some packages prices are now in fact cheaper.

The differences in prices according to zones (USD, UKP, EUR) have been around for a while, and it's no news USA-site members receive less in % for purchases made in UK and EUR (in real money, not credits), whereas UK and EUR-site members receive more % for purchases made in the USA site.

Ok, this is getting confusing.  There must be 4 threads about this and counting - the threads all sort of start out with different subjects but turn into the same one.  Therefore I will lock this topic and we can move the discussion here.

http://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/increase-in-credit-value-at-fotolia/

I will leave this topic by itself as it started out as something with a slightly different slant.