J S.

First, I've never written an online review of a company before, but I have had such a horrible experience with iStock recently that I had to warn people. Hopefully I can save someone from the painful, stressful experience I just had. I signed up in June 2015 for the monthly subscription. At the time it was $199 to download up to 200 images. It's now only $166 for 750 images, which seems like a great deal, right? Well, it's NOT! Don't do it! It's a trap. Here's how it worked for me... Many of the images I wanted were "signature" images. So, I had to upgrade to the "premium subscription" and pay another $150 to access the images I wanted. I downloaded approximately 40 of my 200 images. A few weeks later, a very "nice" rep by the name of Eric Niederer called me, offering to help me and give me some great offers/specials after he better understood my graphic needs. A few minutes later after I explained what two projects I was using the images for (a corporate brochure and refreshing our corporate website), he turned from "nice" to evil, telling me I was out of compliance, and had voided the terms and conditions of the agreement because I had allowed our website developer to upload a few of the images to our development site. He said that I was the only one under that program who could touch the images in any shape or form. By letting anyone else touch the image, even if only to upload it, I wash in breach of the agreement. He then went on to tell me that unless I paid their company $3,600 I was going to regret the legal problems I was going to have. Meanwhile, I hadn't even used or published any of the images and had only downloaded 40 of the 200. He also explained that I could only use the images for a period of 30 days (only while the subscription was in effect). Any image not used in "final" content within the timeframe that my subscription was live (for 30 days) needed to be destroyed and could never be used. I was in complete shock. I explained that I hadn't read the terms and conditions, but that a reasonable, rational person would think you could use the images in corporate materials because they had been purchased. I told him I was shocked and confused and had to think about what he had said and talk to my boss. That was on a Thursday. They next morning (this past Friday) he emailed asking what my decision was. I said I hadn't spoken to my boss yet (which I hadn't as it had been less than 24 hours and I only meet with my boss weekly). He said that was fine "if that was my answer", but he was going to send over a second "out of compliance issue" and that I only had five days to make my final decision. That was last week. Today he called almost hourly (I didn't answer because I recognized the number). I have never been treated so poorly by a company and literally felt violated, harassed, and entrapped. He even admitted he knew I hadn't done anything malicious, and that he doesn't usually read the fine print in the terms and conditions either, but regardless I can either pay them $3,600 dollars or "take my chances". Wow. Not the kind of company I will ever do business with again. Completely misleading advertising and really unethical business practices if you ask me. I am not going to use any of the 40 images I downloaded. They basically got $350 from me, and then threatened to sue me for an honest mistake. Let me add that Ghetty images recently bought iStock. I have been told by several others that Ghetty has been doing this sort of thing for years (calling people and threatening to sue them unless they pay thousands of dollars). For your protection and peace of mind, please do yourself and your company a favor and use another image provider other than iStock or Ghetty. I am still in complete disbelief that businesses think they can operate like this in 2015. Misleading marketing, awful customer service, very poor long term strategic planning. IStock did the complete opposite of what you want to do to retain and wow customers. They wowed me for all the wrong reasons. Hope this review helps someone...