iStockPhotoReviews 196

DO NOT SIGN UP AT ALL! I signed up a free trial so I can try it for work. However we chose not to continue. A month later, I was charged $90. So I asked support why I was charged, apparently even when you sign up for a "free trial", they'll still charge you AND won't give you a refund at all.
TERRIBLE SUPPORT AND TERRIBLE SIGN UP PROCESS, just go elsewhere

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.

I subscribed for a free trial - 30 days, to use a few images, and I had set a reminder on my calendar to cancel before being charged. I though the last day was still valid, turns out I was charged the day of. So I reached out to chat, explain and ask for a refund, if it were a mistake from my end. They would not accept, saying they need to be consistent with their policy. A little common sense, would be appreciated in understanding the context, but they wouldn't budge. They know all the facts and downloads, which was 5 in total, meaning I wouldn't use it because of the nature of my work. I think it's a scam to acknowledge the situation and still decide to take my money. Other companies would gladly wave it off. I feel robbed! I am beyond disappointed, & disgusted, I would never recommend them to anyone. Shame on you!

You see the quality of a service when the only way to make money is by almost secretly charging people after a free trial. They mention in the contract in tiny letters no one will see about their cancellation policy. Horrible!

I agree with everyone else's reviews below in how no cancellation reminder was sent! There's no option to remove your credit card! So I had to ask my cc company to block them incase they try to charge me again. I downloded a few photos on the first day of trial and never used it again. Had auto-subscribe off, assuming that would mean i no longer want to continue to use their service. They charged me one month fees, I contacted them immediately asking for a refund but they said it's against trial period policy which is complete bs. They said canceling my one year subscription is already an exception they're doing for me. So I better not get charged again. I've never had any issues with something like this with other big companies. STAY FAR AWAY FROM THIS MONEY GRABBING COMPANY!

It doesn't matter what you do, as all the other reviews said, once it is past day 1 after the trial you'll get charged in full. And it's $100 CAD (which is their second highest tier) of their plans. I attempted just to voice my dissatisfaction but it seemed like the customer support just wanted to add more fuel to the fire than actually being helpful. Instead of consoling, or at least apologizing that there was nothing she could do, she went on to specify that there were higher tiered plans than the one I paid. I have no issue with living with my mistakes and making the payment, but the treatment by the customer support today really put a bad taste to the company. Hope this review helps, and let people know there are a lot of other alternatives to finding premium stocks such as adobe stock, freepik etc.

The Free Trial is a trap.

I thought cancelling auto-renew would disable it but it doesn't. There's no warning given to you of trial expiration date, and if you pass that deadline, according to the tiny letters you are not entitled to stop for a year.

Of course in the busy adult life such things are very easy to forget, and the vast majority of companies allow you to withdraw nonetheless, even after giving you warning.

These ones want to trick you out of your money.

Stay. Away.

Will change this review if I get prompt help on cancelling. Otherwise I'm blocking them from everything and will cancel any bank account that ends up being charged by their scammy policy.

Money grubbing company, unethical company. Do not risk signing up - they will look for any excuse to take money, even if unused, you will be charged nearly $100AU with no allowance for a refund when implored.

Be sure to carefully read all fine print before checking any box! I'm stuck in a year long subscription. Can't cancel unless I pay a large fee.

If your reading this then DO NOT buy anything from them. I put my card details in because I only wanted to download ONE photo for free and forgot about that free trial or whatever then they charged me out of the blue. They don't send out email reminders or anything like that at all.

I called them and they said that the $93 AUD I paid was for the whole year and that they would turn off my auto renewal so that they wouldn't charge me again. This could not be further from the truth. They charged me again exactly a month later out of the blue with no warning. This was after they had said I wouldn't get charged anymore. I had to cancel my debit card and get a new one because of this company.

I want everyone to know that istock are LIARS and THEIVES. All they care about is profit. Do NOT buy anything from them ever.

I initially signed up for a free 30-day trial but unfortunately didn't have the chance to use it as much as i planned before forgetting about it. My subscription began on April 27,2023, and was scheduled to end on May 27. According to the agreement, I had the option to cancel at any time during the trial period, which meant I could have canceled on May 27. However, to my surprise, they charged my card on May 27 instead. When I brought up the issue and explained that I should still be in the trial until midnight on the 27th, they canceled my subscription but refused to provide a refund. They didn't even offer me any credits for the 93.50 AUD they had withdrawn from my account, so essentially, they took the money without providing any service. Additionally, I was disappointed that they didn't send a reminder email notifying me that my trial was ending.

UPDATE:
IStock reached out to me and offered a genuine explanation of what happened and also made a refund. So I cannot fault their customer services.

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!

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.

Do not sign up for a free-trial. I thought I had cancelled by turning off auto-renew however apparently that doesn't do anything and I was still charged, unable to get a refund.

When you sign up for a free trial subscription, they charge you for the full year! You are unable to cancel the subscription in the first month and this rolls over. WARNING: DO NOT SIGN UP TO ISTOCKPHOTO

Very bad way to do business! They lure you in with a free trial period, but it's only mentioned in TINY letters that you will then be billed for a yearly plan, which you can't cancel because their customer service is very impersonal. At least, if you offer a free trial, have the decency to charge by the month, so that if an error was made, or the deadline overlooked, you don't have to pay over a thousand dollars for a plan you don't even want!

I used the trial for only 1 day, I'm locked in for their 12 months useless subscription.
They charge automatically once hits the 30th day without any notice.
I contacted them for a refund within 15 mins after I got a notice from my Paypal and their response is NO REFUND and a link to their T&C...
Stay away and DO NOT signup anything with them, unless you are prepared to pay for their RIP-OFF charges for 12 months useless service.

AVOID this company!
I accidentally forgot to cancel my free trial - they've charged me $85 and will not budge on a refund although I contacted them about the mistake immediately. I will not be using this service, so what am I paying for? Their greed.

Unauthorized charge. I've contacted their support 3 times to cancel the subscription to no avail, they're just ignoring me. I've been trialing the product, but have no intention of using it.
Of course, without any heads up, all of a sudden I was assigned an annual description, and they started charging me.
It's virtually impossible to hear from them, so don't fall into the same trap by picking this service, and don't dare to trial it. I'm going to file an official complaint with the consumer frauds dept.