In my ESP profile section, the number of sales in "downloads year to date" suddenly took a 30% jump this afternoon. This has never happened to me before, so I'm pretty suspicious that these aren't legitimate sales.

Under the "if it seems too good to be true..." rule, I'm presuming these will all be sales for fractions of a cent, if they are not actually a mistake that will later be reversed.

Has this happened to anyone else? Does anyone know what's happening here? I vaguely recall something like this being mentioned in another thread but I can't find it now.

Unfortunately they have made adjustments to our totals from a bug a few months back where we didn't get the correct amounts. My video sales have also had a big jump in the last hour but ist's not sales, it's just the adjustment.

And for clarity, that won't lead to more money, unless you are exclusive and should have gone up to the next level, in which case there will be a further calculation to see what backpay they owe you.
They told us  a while back that this was going to happen (though I'd forgotten until I saw a mention of it just the other day), and there is an explanation on their forum today.

I'm exclusive but these won't bump me up a level. I'm not actively contributing any more -- there's just a small group of files left behind when I abandoned them.

I'm puzzled, though, how you can suddenly have a whole bunch of downloads listed and not get any payment. Are you saying we've already been paid for these downloads? I didn't see that reflected in the monthly reports I've received so far.

It never ceases to amaze me how iStock can so innovatively screw up anything and everything that has to do with paying their contributors.

ETA:

Can you tell me where you found the information that these updated stats will not result in an increase in payments?

I looked at the forum -- where the communications are, as usual, confusing and uninformative -- and I couldn't find anything that stated this sudden increase in YTD downloads would not result in additional payments. As far as I can tell, these additional downloads have not been accounted for in the monthly payment reports I've received in the past so I would assume that they will be paid for in the future.

I understand that I won't get more money because of being bumped up in the rankings but as far as I can tell, I have not been paid anything for these downloads so far, so shouldn't I be getting at least that?

^^ Second sticky post in the help forum, and the info accessed from the link. Plus previous posts (it's 02:06 here, need to go to bed, sorry) and an old email or newsletter.
They always said that dytd was not accurate, but the stats we were getting paid by were accurate; they said they were pulled from different sources, which never made any sense to me, and when I asked why, it wasn't answered.
I'd love it if there were extra payments, but I can't see any hint that there would be, in any of the info we've had on this. It is just a counter adjustment, and certainly my dytd have never matched my reported sales, even remembering to count E+ as 2.

Thanks for the further clarification. That was the forum thread I read. None of it made much sense to me but on second reading, I finally gleaned the point you're making -- that they're claiming we have, in fact, been receiving payments for these "new" DLs all along. Of course, their non-real-time and much-delayed reporting of DLs makes this nearly impossible to verify. But since there's nothing I can do about it, I'll go back to ignoring them.