AgeFotoStock

Photographers stay far away! AgeFotostock has gone from bad to worse over the years!

Sales have been going downhill for a long time, with commissions and sales rapidly declining. Some sales have approached pennies. Sales reporting is even worse, with many uses going unreported and unpaid for many months, if at all.

To make matters worse, the management practices are absolutely horrible– The owner blames his bad business practices on photographers. He refuses to answer simple inquiries, and if you are 'lucky' enough to receive any reply it will be very likely entirely unhelpful and written in a rudely critical tone.

I and many other photographers are owed money by agefotostock for unpaid invoices going back years that they refuse to pay. They don't respond to emails, these people are just ripping off creators. How they are allowed to stay in business is beyond me.
If any of the other photographers who have had their royalties stolen by agefotostock want to start a group action, count me in. There is something very wrong with a company ripping off so many people and still continuing to be in business.

The incompetent and incredibly rude CEO Alfonso died in December 2023. He allegedly left an instruction to declare AGE bankrupt. Very suspicious. Where has the money received by AGE from clients gone, yet no commission paid to photographers? AGE never paid me a single Euro for images sold - they owe me around 2,000 Euros. Terrible agency. Alfonso's legacy is that he contributed greatly to destroying the reputation of Stock Photography, making it look like a sleazy, untrustworthy, business to avoid.

Avoid at all cost. If negative rating was possible, I would give that. Agefotostock is not paying to contributors but keeps all the money. The manager Alfonso try very hard to be the most arrogant and rude person in the internet. And succeeds in it.

I have been a contributor for almost 10 years. Apart from the poor sales figures, there are a lot of photographers whose commission invoices have not been paid, some of them for over a year and more. Furthermore, pictures that have already been sold are not accounted for, critical inquiries are not answered or are dismissed with flimsy and cynical comments. The agency, or rather the owner, will surely close down soon.

Alfonso Gutierez is an arrogant, nasty, rude man and obviously a misogynist. I don't think I have ever dealt with someone who was more unprofessional especially after doing something as a courtesy. Good luck to anyone who does business with this train wreck.

... still they are one of the best agencies I know. Great web, great people and great commission split for today´s standards. Obviously they have a contract that is hard to overcome when they edit your images, add keywords, review Model and Property Releases and even correct technical glitches that "great" photographers make. It would be innocent to ask them to return the images with a three years signed agreement after all the work they put on my images. Go, age fotostock (www.agefotostock.com), go. You work great for me.

I was an age contributor for years. After several years of no sales I cancelled my contract with them and asked for my images back. They are responsible for returning my original slides to me as specified in the contract. I have never received my originals. It has been years. Please do not do business with these people.

Photographers haven't been paid for almost a year now. Worst agency in the business for photographers. Still waiting for 8 (eight) invoices to be paid.

If you receive a reply from the CEO Alfonso Gutiérrez, the following is the level of communication you might expect:
"Maybe you are mentally too old to understand that the world has changed so much that brick brains like you don´t have much space today. For the moment, you seem to be the one in trouble. You have tried to get paid by all possible means and failed.
However, don´t worry, we will pay you when our "excuses" are finally resolved.
Or maybe not, and I´ll decide to close shop and go fishing one day

Have, again, a wonderful weekend, Pierre.
Alfonso"

Age Fotostock is not very good at selling photos so they consigned some of my photos for sale to another agency (where I already was a contributor). So I resigned from Age Fotostock. They clip their photographers and deduct 24 percent of the payment due, allegedly for taxes. I find that hard to believe, as I have been a contributor to numerous stock photo agencies, of various countries, and no other agency has withheld taxes from an independent contractor.

Agefotostock is clearly bankrupt but for some reason keeps pretending not to be. As a photographer, if you were fool enough to upload your images to this site, the only thing you can do now is sit and watch Agefotostock keep selling your images and not pay you anything at all. They won't delete your images even if you ask them to, and if you write them and ask for your royalties, the only thing you will get is arrogant behaviour and insults from their owner. Photographers, do not upload anything to this site if you want to keep your sanity!

Good agency for stock photography, they select only the best of your pictures to share for their customers. You must have many good pictures for selling. You have to sign a contract and send it by letter to the agency in spain, but after all it easy, they give you an access to send your pictures with filezilla. You wait one week or a little more to have an answear to your selection, it is long but you are sure to share only the best results. It is a very old agency who work with many magazines. If you make commercial photography, you can earn a lot of money.

I love AgeFotoStock for the tiered pricing approach they have taken with stock photography, the ability to tailor your licensing to meet your needs, the broadest variety of photography from some of the best photographers in the world, covering a wide genre and era, with arguably the best customer service on the planet in the stock photography world. My Account Executive, Kevin, is at the top of the pyramid of customer service and has helped me through countless issues and ALWAYS follows up with me to ensure my needs are met. I use multiple stock photography services and I would say that perhaps Alamy is most similar to Age in terms of content and pricing, but Age wins hands down in customer service! Kevin among the best in the business!

Age fotostock: It's in the name "age"

They are of another age
They have practices of another age: the paper contract and letters to be sent by post to Spain!
They belong to a bygone area: they love stamps
Their website smells good like the 19th century.
Etc.

The godfather who mismanages this joint " Don Alfonso..." is also of naother time, that might explain a lot.

And what about photographers? They'd better stay away from this joint.

Dear collegues,

In order to advice other international collegues who intend to cooperate with this company, I would like to tell them my very bad experience with agephostostock and with their their arrogant CEO Alfonso Gutierrez:

(here you will find many reviews published by collegues who had the same crucking experience)

https://agephotostockwarn.altervista.org/agereviews3/

You can also read in the same blog site his emails refusing to send me my sales reports from 2020 upto august 2023

Best regards

Angelo Calvino

P.S. more than 4.000 images and Alfonso Gutierrez, as he has done with other photographers, refuses to cancel them from their website:

https://www.agefotostock.com/age/en/stock-images-author/avn/angelo-calvino