iStockPhoto

If you pay for a subscription, good luck trying to access the site to actually download any pictures. The site is always down when I try to access it. There is NO customer service. You will lose your credits if you don't use them yet you can't use them because the site is always down!

You have a hard drive full of photos and you have no idea what to do with them? Sell them. Put the best ones on istockphoto and make sure you tag them with the proper words and someone in the world will find it useful and buy it from you.

I've been using them for many years and have been suckered into buying their annual subscription. But since then the quality of their photos has seriously gone down hill. Before I could I could find nice newsletters to use for our n ewsleters quickly, but now the pickings are paltry and totally AMATEUR.

If someone has a better site they know about, please share.

Access to the Getty Library has always been a dream; this may be the most affordable means to get your feet wet. The iStock collection is a cross-section of the famed Getty Library and modeled after the subscription micro-stock sites... except... it costs a little more! But the quality of the photography stands out! This is a luxury for me, maybe not so much for a larger business, but I cannot say anything but good things regarding my subscriptions.

Offer free trial for a month promising a reminder before the end of the month to cancel. The intentionally forget to send the reminder and then charge for a full year subscription. If you ask to cancel within 14 days they still charge the first month and hide behind customer service rep and Terms and conditions of their own.

Evil business, they seduce you in with a free trial period, but they will not send you notification before your free trial end and ask you to confirm your subscription. And even the subscription is monthly charged but it's a yearly plan, you cannot cancel the subscription from their dashboard unless you reached out customer support and ask them to do so. When you try to ask a refund, the agent will tell you you agreed the terms when you enter the free trial bala bala etc. The company intendedly did this in the term so they rob the customers with this trick.

Echoing other recent reviews: been a member and contributor since'02. Not a huge contributor or user, but Always made enough in credits to support(convert) my modest image needs. Today I login to start another light box and only see a $3 balance. WTF?. Dig around and see ALL my credits and purchases have expired! Even though they display a "credits never expire" statement on the pricing page. They've been receiving income from MY work and continue too without compensating me! Hello state attorney general & FTC, have I got something for you! Maybe John Stossel too.

And the pricing is increased too. Dang Getty corporate crap.It used to be a community of artists, now its the Suits running the loony bin. Somebody needs to start another Stock site modeled after the original iStockphoto.com. Artists helping artists.

Don't buy from iStockPhoto!
I didn't purchase anything from their site after 2015, but recently they started charging me every month. Charged me 3 times $40.4x3= $121.2 USD during last 3 month. They doing it silently, without any invoice or any email.
I contacted them in 3 ways, contact form, phone, email.
I talked with a person named Deepak Tyagi, who told me (at 20 Aug 2017) that they will take care of it within 2 business day and the money will be refunded. But till now they didn't done it. And yesterday they charged my card again.
Also, looks like they don't have any customer support person.

Ever since GettyImages purchased iStock it has become too expensive. And the recent 5:1 conversion was a big hit (without any notification), my 50 credits went down to 10. It doesn't make much sense for a web designer. I used to purchase the small image for a couple credits ($2-3). Now I have to spend $15-45 for the same type of image.

Try BigStockPhoto.com or CanStockPhoto.com

I paid over $1100 for credits and received nothing because when your subscription expires they will not let you use your credits. I did not plan on spending a monthly subscription and they got my credit card info with a free trial and charged it over $1100 when I canceled my unapproved subscription they canceled all my credit with no refund of the $1100, I Stock said you lost your credits when canceled your subscription however I was welcome to spend additional money and buy the credits again.

Dear All,

I took 1 month free trial that i used it only on the first day and was not happy with it.
After a month i didnt receive any notification the free trial will end. They charged be for extra month and removed me all access. When i asked to give me access for the next month i was charged so i try to use, i was refused. I sent them several emails but as a fraud company they kept saying the same thing. I was shocked by they fraudulent actions.

They make it difficult to cancel your free trial and usually end up charging you. They have terrible customer service and will not refund your money if you have issues. Stay away!

This site is a total scam and I honestly can't figure out how it's even legal. They rope you in with a GIANT banner about their (oh so generous) free trial. After that, it's $70 per month. This is where it gets tricky, because even though it's $70 per month, they won't let you cancel it for a year. I don't understand how something like an online photo gallery can have such a high monthly fee and then require that you pay it for a whole year. I used one photo from their gallery during my free trial, which I have now paid $70 for. After going back and forth with them with no success, I finally had to cancel my credit card so I wouldn't end up paying them $700 for that one photo. To add to the ridiculousness, their photo gallery isn't even that great. I have a pro Canva subscription that rivals it, and I pay way less money for so much more value. I usually always read reviews before signing up for something, but I was in a time crunch with my website and needed an image that I didn't have readily available. It was a pricey lesson learned, but a lesson nonetheless. I promised them I would be posting negative reviews, so I'll need to repost this in a few places, and then off to the fun task of contacting all my monthly subscription services and creditors to give them my new credit card info.

I cancelled my subscription a month ago and now they are charging me for a full year subscription. They are giving me such a hard time to cancel it. Its over $700 a year! Insane! Don't subcribe to this company!

I purchased a photo which istock said would be in my account the next day by noon. Eight days later and here I am with no photo in my account. I call customer service and the barely English speaking customer service says I have to go in my browser and find the photo I purchased eight days ago and click on it. What? I looked at hundreds of photos for a book cover. I canceled the order. 4 to 5 days for the refund to appear on my card (yet the charge when I purchased was instantaneous!). Terrible customer service. I have read negative reviews on this company post-purchase. Shame on me, but never again will I waste time and money on these hacks.

I signed up for what I thought was a monthly subscription, only to learn minutes after paying, it was a really subscription you may monthly for. I immediately contacted customer service, having not downloaded ANY images or using the subscription AT ALL. I said I'd pay the first month but wanted the subscription cancelled as I don't need it for a year. They REFUSED to cancel my subscription, saying I was locked in for the full year and that there policy is clear. What kind of company doesn't honor a genuine request from a customer who HASNT EVEN USED YOUR SERVICE and tried to cancel within 5 minutes of signing up. AND if you don't want to have the annual subscription automatically renew, you have to go in and shut off automatic renew because it defaults to on. This is so shady on so many fronts.

September 2014 istockphoto changed the credit system. Before the 5:1 conversion my creditsBalance was 17. After the 5:1 conversion i've got 4 credits.

I'm only used 2 credit images in the old system, so for 17 credits i can download 8 pictures.

In the new system i can only download 4 images for those 4 credits.

Conclusion: istockphoto ripped me of for 50%!

I spent over an hour pinning images to an image board, and went to Join and get the 30
Day Free Trial. The site would not allow me to go to a free trial, it directed me to plans and pricing. I did a chat with a customer service rep named Rebecca, and she first tried to keep asking questions about what I was asking. I asked point-blank is there a 30-day free trial or not. Rebecca stated No! The Company Does Not Offer Any Free Trials, but that is how iStock, advertises there brand in the online search.

This is a huge scam. If you forgot to uncheck the Auto-Renew within the first month of trail period, they deduct the entire years subscription fees every month and you simply cannot do anything about it. Below is the email I recieved when I requested to cancel since I accidently forgot to uncheck the Auto Renew button.

After seeing that the website was "by Getty Images" I mistakenly assumed this would be a valid business with a business plan and some sort of structure and culture attempting to sell a service or a product.
The misleading signup process led me to believe I had signed up for the FREE Trial and then afterwords would be on a basic monthly plan. The flow of the checkout somehow led me to default to the mid level plan on an annual billing cycle...OK. All of this is fair game in my opinion and I should have paid more attention.
Where they become a low rent money grab site is this...I contacted them and notified them I had only downloaded 1 item during my free trial and the item did not work. So I had not logged in since then and had not used their services and had gained nothing from them and used nothing of theirs and generated no cost for them. When I requested a refund they denied me and said flatly it was against policy.
This company has no confidence or belief in the product hey have created. Their goal is to use recurring billing to make money from customers who forget to cancel or are unable to cancel regardless of whether customers are satisfied with their products and services. It is the exact opposite of everything I have designed my own businesses to stand for.

I'm in Australia, and by Australian law pricing must not be misleading or deceptive, it must show all included taxes and charges.

IStock advertised that a particular subscription would cost $230 AUD. I spent 3 weeks choosing images. When I went to buy the subscription they charged an additional $23 in tax, and then I also found on my credit card over $5 in foreign exchange conversion fees. Unfortunately I needed to continue with the purchase as I had already committed time to finding the images I needed.

I have written to iStock twice to get them to refund the additional money, I have also spoken to them several times and they are not interested.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission agree that iStock is in breach of Australian law and I am currently taking up the matter with the Office of Fair Trading.

I suggest you don't deal with iStock as there are plenty of honest businesses out there you can work with.

I did a free month long trial and was misled on my account by an expiration date that was actually the the day after charges would occur, not noticing that it was set for a year later, after the year long subscription would end, and thought it was my trial expiration. When I was charged $70 for the first installment of the year subscription on the day I was planning to cancel the trial, I called and they wouldn't reimburse me due to the mistake, and made an "exception" by cancelling future charges for the year, but I had to do it immediately so they just ate my $70 and I didn't get the images.

IStockPhoto has been nothing but trouble for us. Their site never works, they are constantly changing their rules, the customer support team is NASTY, and they don't have as many unique images as they seem to think they do. Do yourself a favor and RESEARCH your options before just going with a known name like iStock. I can't rate them poorly enough.