iStockPhoto

They designed their checkout with the 12 MONTH CONTRACT in a tiny font BELOW the fold of my 4k display! Who scrolls down past the checkout to read the fine print? There is no total listed in the checkout either.

Any other "annual subscription" will let you cancel at any time, so by habit most of us will assume you can cancel monthly. You can't. These ghouls will flat out refuse to cancel it and argue with you in customer support, sending you screenshots and justifying why they aren't predators. They are clearly using deceptive business practices. Customer service is bad and the signup process is predatory and uses bad UX design – likely on purpose – to lock you into 12 months ($1000+). Even Adobe refunds 50% to 80% of the year subscription. And in the past has let me cancel with no termination fee. Gettyimages are borderline scammers. I guess that is to be expected when Koch industries are one of your major investors. DON'T FALL FOR IT!

Don't believe me? Check out the screenshots I attached. I didn't see the fine print because I had to SCROLL DOWN TO READ IT CHRIS! I'm so angry.

Misleading about trial subscription! One month trial was not over even I asked in the actual date! Don't trust!

Read the fine print, WORST online service EVER. If you do not cancel before the Free Trial ends, they will charge you for the FULL year (more than 700$) without any possibility to cancel. SCAM.

Took money for year for service that i dont use. Scammers! This is so bad idea to manipulate people. I hope someone close them,.

Interested in signing up for iStockphoto's videos, photos or illustration subscriptions? Be careful! Their sign-up page is a classic example of "dark pattern" Web design.

I'm one of many, many angry customers who found themselves saddled with non-cancellable "annual plans" that they did not realize they were buying.

In my case, an imminent retirement means I have absolutely NO use for iStock's product after this month, and I would never have extended this subscription for nine useless months. Even in the face of this evidence of mistake, iStock played hardball.

I had to fight like a tiger to get any help at all--and most folks in this situation get screwed over with NO resolution. In my case, I had downloaded only 7 images--little cheap one-star $10 pieces of clip art--while iStock made off with $350 of my money.

So I'm out over $250 for... NOTHING. I call scam.

They'll argue that "you signed up for this" and claim contract. But their Web site obscures the information on the subscription sign-up page--and countless Internet reviewers are reporting similar issues.

Take a look at the screenshot below: the "annual plan" link is small, greyscale and not obvious. This kind of visual manipulation on a Web page--followed by the countless stories of user mistake on online review sites--is called "dark patterns".

Even worse? The rip-off doesn't filter down to the content creators: the photographers and artists who sell their work on the site. The ONLY one benefitting here is iStockphoto.

When you visit https://www.istockphoto.com/plans-and-pricing, you're being manipulated. Beware! If you're considering any of their digital image subscriptions, be prepared to be ripped off.

The WORST! As a marketing professional, who has worked with many programs like this, I can honestly say, they are the absolute worst. After years of paying into the subscription, the large corporation I work for decided to take a different direction. Switched off Auto-Renew and somehow it was turned back on and it renewed for another year. We aren't using the images and pay $199/month. Called customer service, asked to speak with someone who could help. Was told, he was chatting with the person. I then requested that person (won't mention the name) contact me so this current person I was speaking to doesn't have to be a middle man. I was told (Monday) the request was submitted. I was also told if we cancelled our subscription we would have to pay a penalty which is the difference between a month to month monthly rate and yearly plan monthly rate ($30). I would have to pay this for the months used since the "renewal" that no one did. Fine. Thursday came, still no word from other guy so I called back. Finally Friday I hear from someone who now said I had to speak with someone who deals with corporate accounts - fine! Was also told could cancel but would have to pay penalty -fine! Please have the person contact me.
Oh, forgot to mention, when we first inquired, received an email using a yoga studio in Calgary as a comparison - completely irrelevant.
Today- now over a week later I get an email that they won't cancel our account. I've asked why and the answer is we can't cancel annual subscriptions because they are at discounted rates. Fair, that's why we are happy to pay the difference ($30). I have now asked for a copy of our annual contract and the legal documents (terms) that lay out the cancellation (or lack of) policy.
What I am getting is, if you want to try something out and choose to capitalize on the discount by signing up for a year, you are stuck - even if you agree to pay a penalty.
BRUTAL- Try Adobe stock images or any other - we also use that, which is far superior. Do not expect to get any help, unless you want a gym comparison.

Extremely expensive auto renew if you forget to cancel the trial. Rather than going into a monthly renew, you are put into a yearly plan for $70/mo.

Tricks you into a yearly subscription for $70 per month. You can't cancel Until after a year. Do not use!

IStock is a scam. After your subscription ends you will lose any unused downloads but they will still charge you for each one.

They will steal the money from you trust me, no matter how clever you are. Please dont waste your money on istock

If you forget to cancel free trial, they will charge you $70 monthly for a year. They will not allow you to cancel subscription.

Do not send photos to iStockphoto. It is no longer the most powerful in terms of sales, indeed Fotolia and Dreamstime can do better. I have been contributor in iStock since November 2007. At the beginning all was at its best, I uploaded lots of photos and my sales increased. Then I became exclusive and my sales kept growing from 80 files per month to 120 in January 2009. But on February 17th, my sales dropped from an average of 5/day to less than 1 per day. Since then I could not sell more than 2 files peer day and last week was dreadful with only 8 files sold. I worked hard to upload 500 files - in fact 1000 because 50% files are rejected - and when I began to earn some money, they threw me by the window. Impossible to know why my sales dropped in one night. The support says that its because the quality of other contributors has increased, but if you look at the database, you don't see a significant quality increase and anyway the quality on the files could not increase 10 fold in one single night, on February 17th. What they did with me. They used my files to draw traffic via Google paying me only 25% of the price and when I could earn some money they pushed my sales down. In iStock there are some happy few who sell 300 files a day or more and earn several thousand Dollars per month. These contributors are protected and most customers are directed to these contributors. The new ones see their best files rejected when the risk to compete with those of the happy few, I was here only to make volume and to attract people from the net. Other contributors took the money and iStock make fantastic profits without any risk.

Wish I could go lower. Disgusting scammers. Everything below is true and much worse. I set a reminder in my calendar to cancel if I wasn't impressed and I definitely wasn't. The images are very average and daggy.
When I went to the page, there was no option to cancel. I searched every corner of the page. When I went to the payment section, it said there was no payment details to display, so I assumed that I musn't have entered any. It also still offered me the option to sign up for the three different plans and didn't show that I was signed up for anything.

After I received the $90 charge (they charge an $8 processing fee for gods sake), There was suddenly a tab with invoices vissible.

The scammer with the fake name that I spoke to on the chat said that even though they gave no cancelation option, it was somehow my responsibility to email back and forth to discuss cancelling my trial, so it was my fault. She said she would make an exception for me (a strange word given that every other reviewer that got scammed had the same exception made), but it was somehow impossible to return the money they'd stolen from me.

I cancelled the ongoing payments via my PayPal, so I told her to get f%$cked.