Photobucket has a rating of 1.2 stars from 211 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers complaining about Photobucket most frequently mention 3rd party, customer service, and free account problems. Photobucket ranks 93rd among Photo Sharing sites.
Okay there was something seriously wrong with Photobucket. It was slow, clunky, and images kept disappearing and re-appearing. However, I contacted them and they told me to log into their new site. I did, and it looks much better and seems responsive enough. (My old rating was a 1 star, but I am editing it now to 5 stars because they obviously put in some effort to make this site work again)
I was a customer since Photobucket first started online and I had no issues with my account for many years. One day I went to log into my account and got a message that they no longer offered free accounts and if I wanted my photos I had to purchase a plan for $5. This is ridiculous! I was a customer for many years and this is how they treat you for being a loyal long time customer? I paid the $5 just so I could access my photos and get them removed from their website and then I got another message saying I was over my allowed storage limit and I would have to pay more money to upgrade to a higher plan if I wanted to see my photos. Are you kidding me? I reluctantly paid to upgrade my account. When I was finally allowed to log into my account a lot of my photos were missing! I contacted Photobucket about this issue and they were no help at all. They said that all of my photos were in my account and they do not delete photos from customer's accounts unless they're asked to do so upon deletion of the account. Where did my photos go then?! Who knows. I never got my photos back. So they took my photos hostage and made me pay twice and still didn't let me have access to all of MY photos. This is not a good way to treat your customers! I would stay away from Photobucket for storing photos because they may decide to take them hostage or your photos may disappear and you'll never see them again.
I was a customer since Photobucket first started online and I had no issues with my account for many years. One day I went to log into my account and got a message that they no longer offered free accounts and if I wanted my photos I had to purchase a plan for $5. This is ridiculous! I was a customer for many years and this is how they treat you for being a loyal long time customer? I paid the $5 just so I could access my photos and get them removed from their website and then I got another message saying I was over my allowed storage limit and I would have to pay more money to upgrade to a higher plan if I wanted to see my photos. Are you kidding me? I reluctantly paid to upgrade my account. When I was finally allowed to log into my account a lot of my photos were missing! I contacted Photobucket about this issue and they were no help at all. They said that all of my photos were in my account and they do not delete photos from customer's accounts unless they're asked to do so upon deletion of the account. Where did my photos go then?! Who knows. I never got my photos back. So they took my photos hostage and made me pay twice and still didn't let me have access to all of MY photos. This is not a good way to treat your customers! I would stay away from Photobucket for storing photos because they may decide to take them hostage or your photos may disappear and you'll never see them again.
Tip for consumers:
Look for a photo storage service that will protect your photos from disappearing from your account and will help you if something does happen to your account.
Products used:
I tried to use my account to access my photos but they were missing from my account.
I signed up with PhotoBucket when they first started in 2003. It was free to sign up and to upload your photos and their terms & agreement stated that your photos would be stored safely and that the company would never delete your photos without your consent. That was apparently a lie. I received an email today with no prior emails from Photobucket that said my account had been "Deactivated " because they "No longer support free accounts." The email said if I wanted my photos back I would have to pay them. I do not think this is legal and it definitely is morally wrong! I had trusted Photobucket because their own terms stated that photos would NEVER be deleted without my consent and nowhere in the terms did it say that my photos would be held hostage by Photobucket suddenly without warning and that I would have to pay a fee for access to my irreplaceable photos which had been uploaded to my account which never required a fee the entire time I had the account since 2003. I have irreplaceable memories in my account of my children, family members & friends that have passed away that are now stolen away from me by this company.How can these people sleep at night knowing they've taken people's irreplaceable memories and stolen pieces of their lives from them? Photobucket gave no prior warning about doing this so that I could download the photos myself and then remove my whole account from their website.Instead they pulled a cowardly move and deactivated my account without notifying me until they had already done it and then had the nerve to demand payment if I wanted my own photos back. Bad business! They deserve 0 STARS!
Tip for consumers:
This company is dishonest and has no respect for their customers! They are in business to take your money and your photos holding them hostage demanding payment if you want them back.
Products used:
photo storage services and print orders
Photobucket removed their free service to thousands of forums in the past that ruined posts and the forums shut down.
Forget this useless company
They are a bunch of idiots at photobucket. I used them for a year. After renewing my account, they Cancelled my account and kept the money. They look thru your pictures and then cancel you.
Products used:
none
So every year or so i would sometime log into my photobucket account to relieve the old memories. Until recently, they got greedy and now they only support paid accounts. Really low of them to force me to sign up and pay just to relieve those old memories. I would give zero star if I could.
The epitome of "Extortion"!
The once about a time, best code generator site
Now you have to fight for everything, just to retrieve your old photos
Got an account pre-2008 in good faith, now they hold my Video & Photos Hostage
Would love to see a class action lawsuit against them, this is opposite of love thy neighbor
I'm so upset losing so many memories I now can't share, w/o paying the ransom, they can go to Hell
(This review sugarcoated to keep it PG) ~ God bless you all who are victims too, and refuse to pay the ransom
One month late and they are threatening to delete my account? I'm deleting my account myself and will no longer do business with photobucket. Thank you.
Terrible business practices! For years I stored precious work photos on Photo Bucket. Nearly 400 pics. Then one day without telling anybody they change there policy in the dead of night as it were and started charging for their services. The catch is... you can't have your property/Pics back or take them off our site (Download to your computer) unless you PAY US! I don't deal with domestic terrorist. I don't pay ransoms. You want my pics? You GOT THEM! DOWN WITH PHOTO BUCKET!
Like so many online start ups, Photobucket started out like gangbusters. It was THE site for online photo albums and image hosting. I absolutely loved it... and relied upon it. Five stars back then.
Now it has hopped on the "Gimmick and Greed Train"... imposing too many demands upon its users with too many loading and function complications.
I cannot even get into my old albums and collections.
One star now.
But once again for old time's sake I am averaging these scores for a rating of three stars.
Photobucket, get your act together, darling.
Web site is crap. Can't download photos and they continue to charge you even after you cancel service! Scammers!
I am unsure whether it isn't compatible with Google Plus, but everytime I use it it times out, when I manage to get photos up there, it won't allow me to manually order them in story form, keeps going back to the original order. I am ready to take all my many photos out of photobucket and put them elsewhere.
Worst hosting service ever. They have held my photos hostage for YEARS and refuse to let me download them without paying their fees. Even when I DID purchase their hosting services, I was still unable to download or move my photos and all of the promised "features" were horrible and half of them didn't work at all (analytics).
I was unable to access my paid account for almost 6 weeks earlier this year. It was finally restored and worked okay for a short while. For the last three days though, my images are "now you see them, now you don't". Photobucket is unreliable and and inconsistent and treat their customers in a shameful manner. In the "real" world, this business would not last 2 weeks. It's a damned shame and a sham and I feel like a fool for ever getting involved with these pirates. Run, don't walk away from these charlatans!
Terrible business, you kept my photos without my consend and i can not access to it at all unless i pay you for account assess. How rude is this? Sponsor please stay away with this company. Once you not pay them, they will lock you out like my account.
They asked for your photos so they can sell them. Do not use photo bucket. They cannot be trusted. Stay clear or get burned
Tip for consumers:
They have my photos to sell
Products used:
Lost my photos
I was asked to pay $5.00 a month or $60.00 yearly to get my photos from 2012. Photos are not there.
Photobucket.com was unbearable for quite some time, but they appear to have listened to their users' complaints and cut back on the ads that were blocking important content. I'm still using the site for free and it's a lot better now. If they leave it this way, I'll stick around.
I've had it with their ads and poor performance. Hopefully I can download my 2600+ pics to a better hosting site. Time to move on. Don't get started with them.
My wife is not very techno-savvy but has a dance studio and takes lots of photos. A friend of hers tried to use photobucket to share some photos she took. My wife was simply overwhelmed with the complexity of getting onto photobucket: setting up the account, etc. She finally drove to the friend's house with a CD in her hand. I am a longtime (20 year) Linux user. I also could not manage to set up an account and download the files. I tried it on Linux, on our Mac, and on Windows 7. Nothing worked. And I don't think it is because I'm not computer literate. On my Mac, I filled out all the fields, but it kept telling me that I had not filled one of them out -- but would not say which one. I finally gave up as well. This household does not seem to be ready for Photobucket. If PB wants the over-50 crowd to use it, they will have to simplify things a lot and make it more robust.
I'm going to start with my most recent experience and work backwards; months after reaching out via email and having my account permanently deleted, they are now sending me emails about my (non-existent) account being over the storage limit and how I need to pay them to access my own photos. After having been a legitimate free service for many years, functionality began steadily declining at some point in the mid-late 2010's. Ads made it virtually unusable, and they got rid of a feature that allowed you to download multiple photos from your account to your device. A year or two ago, they notified long-time users who joined at a time where the storage limit for accounts was quite high that they were reducing the storage limit to 250 photos and users would have to download their photos before a certain date before they would delete photos that exceeded the storage limit. These crooks conveniently waited until after removing user's access to their own photos to reintroduce the multi-download feature. Many users complained in comments on ther Facebook ads that they had paid the ransom but still hadn't gotten all of their photos back, at least one of which their team responded to with a snide remark. They have also been hiding hundreds of comments speaking out against them on their posts. Fortunately for me, I took the time to go through my thousands of photos one by one and save them all individually, so I had no problem telling them to delete my account (they make that difficult too - there's no link to delete your account, you have to reach out via email and it took them nearly a month to confirm that my account was permanently removed). However, now they're back in my inbox still trying to extort me for money.
Tip for consumers:
If you fall under the category of “might use this site”, just don’t. If they’re holding your photos hostage or have failed to return all of your photos upon payment, consider speaking to a lawyer. I’m sure there are enough of you out there to pursue a class action suit.
Products used:
Free service
Used this when it was a FREE service back when I was 13-15ish in 2007-2009.
Received an email that they are now withholding personal images until they receive payment. They are also not allowing the user to delete images on their database without payment. SCUM of a company.
I read in another review about a class action lawsuit, I HOPE this happens. Absolutely disgusting company with NO morals or regard for the user.
Suddenly eradicates free accounts then cheerfully demands payment to reactivate... holding photos hostage is a dirty trick.
At one point, I enjoyed hosting my photos here, because it was an easy free site that I could use easily to save my photos and post them elsewhere. Then they decided to start pushing their paid accounts - fair enough - but then got to the point where they decided to severely chop back what you could host for free, and hold the photos hostage more or less until/unless you do upgrade.
I am now constantly getting emails about "Upgrade or manage your photos or maybe lose them! (This has been for multiple years now" and yet their interface to actually DO any sort of managing is just... terrible. You have to download any photos you want to keep one by one and then delete them. Without any actual, you know, clear thumbnail/image so you can really see what it is and make sure you need it or want to save it. I have waded through downloading some but I had enough photos saved here that I just haven't yet been able to deal with all the photos, and it's no end irritating to have them attempt to hold my own photos against me like this.
Just... avoid.
Tip for consumers:
Avoid.
Products used:
Photobucket photo storage site
What a miserable website. Words can not accurately express how pissed off I am about this garbage place. The website is clogged to the brim with huge ads, overly complicated support and help pages with virtually no information that is useful. Album links will randomly stop working on pages, have to constantly log out and log back in.
Okay there was something seriously wrong with Photobucket. It was slow, clunky, and images kept disappearing and re-appearing. However, I contacted them and they told me to log into their new site. I did, and it looks much better and seems responsive enough. (My old rating was a 1 star, but I am editing it now to 5 stars because they obviously put in some effort to make this site work again)
PB used to be the PREMIERE image hosting site like 10 years ago. And it still operates like it's 2009. It is complete shet on mobile. It is complete shet on a desktop. Nothing on the site works correctly or consistently. I have a couple hundred photos hosted there. It's taken me 3 HOURS just to delete 80 of them because pb keeps randomly unselecting some and restoring whole pages of previously deleted pics. Why would anyone pay for that kinda crap?
If your not baby sitting it, it logs you out and resets, I had 8000 pictures it said I had 5000 left, then this morning it went back to 7500. People need to do better with these programs we live in a fast past society I should not have to state st my phone all day waiting for pictures to download. Such a waste of time I hate baby sitting
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