Honestly, if "It's a third-party information, so probably I will not be able to provide further details.", I don't believe it.  Why should I believe it?  False accusation is a serious thing.  I don't believe anything without seeing an evidence on my own eyes. 

As much as most of us contributors dislike Shutterstock these days, can't accuse anybody without firm evidence.  There are too many of those false accusations/fake news out there on internet.  There's no way for me to investigate this particular case.  So, I don't believe it at all till I see the evidence.  That being said, I think those low sales numbers on Shutterstock are real.  They don't get the best contents for video nor photos.  So, customers are leaving as many contributors left.  The best photos go to Adobe Stock and the best videos go to Pond5.  So it was wise for them to buy Pond5.  And probably was a big pay day for some long time Pond5 employees who might have had a stock option on Pond5.

Third party information without details. Does anyone think we haven't done this test before to see if all were being reported. I thought Lagereek was banned from the forum for life. This is his kind of crap claim. You're right about the TOS and we can't buy our own photos but paying someone to download 1 from 25 different people, to test SS isn't a violation. No evidence no facts.

A year ago I made a test purchase, but some of the sales were not displayed.
Who needs proof here, post some photos, I'll buy them and see how many of them you see for sale.

I will continue to work with the reserve, but the material I put in there is second-rate.

It's a third-party information, so probably I will not be able to provide further details. But it comes from a trusted contributor, experienced, with a pretty old portfolio.

At the end of October, we decided to make a control purchase on the Shutterstock, collaborated with colleagues and bought a package of �25 Standard one-time� demands. Purchases were made of works that had never been sold, with the help of a real customer within a spread of 10 days.
Divided it like this: 5 purchases from my accounts, 11 purchases from colleagues� accounts, 9 purchases randomly.
Of my five - 1 appeared on the first day, 1 - after a couple of days, and another one after 4 days
The result as of February 1 is the total number of sales for all interested parties - 7

So, 70% of the sales via one-time demands package are lost! What do you think about this?

If any of this is true, you need to take the evidence to the state attorney general of New York. Then get representation and file a class action suit on our behalf, all of us can collect back earnings after an audit.

I actually hope that agency spys read this post and check the complaints. Maybe we well get more earnings . Now that agency knows that people might test them. No matter what this is serious.

They say never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. If the way they record sales is anything like how they improve the contributor experience then I have no confidence in them.

That said, I find it hard to believe they are regularly not reporting sales. If so, they are opening themselves up to serious consequences, it would be nice to see some good independent auditing though. I think they are taking such a large percentage of every sale legally according to their rules, it seems weird they would have to cheat when the setup is already so tilted in their favor.

Yes, they are taking large percentage.

But,

Before they introduced subscription plans for videos, my RPD was between $22-$25, but now its between $5-$8.
So, if my earnings decreased means, their earnings also decreasing even they are taking large percentage.
So, how to they cover their earnings to maintain same level they getting before they introducing those plans?

Are they really making 3 to 4 times more sales to maintain same level, after they introducing subscription plans?

I find it hard to believe a major agency would so blatantly and obviously pocket royalties belong to the contributor. Because the legal consequences would be huge if this was found to be true. Would they risk it for a few cents per sale?
I wouldn't be surprised if either one of the following scenarios is true:
1) The claim is a lie
2) The 'control purchase' was not conducted properly or one of the buyers made a mistake
3) The sale was delayed due to a system error or some flagging and will show up sooner or later

You must have been very surprised to learn Enron was cooking the books.  Giant companies cheat and lie all the time.  They are seldom caught because there is negligible oversight.  We have no access to sales data apart from what SS or other agencies tell us and they have a very good incentive to lie.  The best we can do is conduct these risky unscientific experiments to try to get a little more data.  I'm not saying OP's post proves anything but its one more data point than we had before and you're welcome to believe it or not.  I'm tempted to try it myself but I earn so little from SS that it would cost nearly all my earnings to buy a single pack.

So if this happened, one has the purchase date, the ID of the asset bought. Screenshot both, maybe even do a screen recording of buying the assets. If they don't appear in your sales after a month - voila, you've got yourself a case against SS and potentially millions in reimbursement.

Just like that. You could prove it if you wanted to, especially as it was alleged that work was affected that had never been sold before. Screenshots on both pages.

Quote from: Noedelhap on February 13, 2024, 17:40

I find it hard to believe a major agency would so blatantly and obviously pocket royalties belong to the contributor. Because the legal consequences would be huge if this was found to be true. Would they risk it for a few cents per sale?
I wouldn't be surprised if either one of the following scenarios is true:
1) The claim is a lie
2) The 'control purchase' was not conducted properly or one of the buyers made a mistake
3) The sale was delayed due to a system error or some flagging and will show up sooner or later

You must have been very surprised to learn Enron was cooking the books.  Giant companies cheat and lie all the time.  They are seldom caught because there is negligible oversight.  We have no access to sales data apart from what SS or other agencies tell us and they have a very good incentive to lie.  The best we can do is conduct these risky unscientific experiments to try to get a little more data.  I'm not saying OP's post proves anything but its one more data point than we had before and you're welcome to believe it or not.  I'm tempted to try it myself but I earn so little from SS that it would cost nearly all my earnings to buy a single pack.

Cooking the books is something entirely different than pocketing money from stock sales. Enron used shady constructions with hundreds of daughter companies to pull up a smoke curtain. But anyone who carries out a properly conducted test purchase can check if SS actually steals sales. It would lead to million-dollar court claims if this was found to be true. No giant company would be THAT stupid.

It's all speculation until it's proven of course. One of the reasons I'm (slightly) leaning towards believing the accusation is, I see about 150 downloads every month and that number hasn't gone up or gone down for over two years now. My port has grown by over 50 percent during the period. I find that sort of consistency a little difficult to believe unless there's some algorithmic/human control over how shutterstock distributes sales.

Of course, these are serious accusations and would need more than mere personal/anecdotal evidence to prove. But judging by how normalized sales on my port have been and how long I've been thinking about how it, I wouldn't be surprised if the accusations were indeed proven to be true.

Why haven't my sales stayed the same? I've been doing this since 2008. I added files last year. I'm making now, in three months, what I used to make in 1 month. Maybe less. How come only some people are normalized?

"It's all speculation until it's proven of course." That would be something to help us all decide.

Cooking the books is something entirely different than pocketing money from stock sales. Enron used shady constructions with hundreds of daughter companies to pull up a smoke curtain. But anyone who carries out a properly conducted test purchase can check if SS actually steals sales. It would lead to million-dollar court claims if this was found to be true. No giant company would be THAT stupid.

Well aside from the stupid or not part, because we've seen people like Holmes with Theranos technology, defraud some pretty smart investors and faked the whole company documentation on the device. Worldcom, Bernie Maddof, Tyco, frauds are not uncommon. But that has nothing to do, or associate with ShutterStock sales or commissions. Not the same at all.

Why doesn't someone or the group of + people here and all over, that just know, without any proof, that the claims are true, get together and run a documented, independent test? The truth is out there...

On the side for dessert:  Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act 

It created a new, quasi-public agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, charged with overseeing, regulating, inspecting, and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. The act also covers issues such as auditor independence, corporate governance, internal control assessment, and enhanced financial disclosure.

In other terms like the rest of us use, if there's something wrong or illegal, it's not just the top heads that will roll. The accountants, the auditors, and many others are liable. There will be some explaining to do that will be very uncomfortable, and end with jail time.

And they would do all of that, and the risk, so they could steal dimes from the poor artists? Really?