iStockPhotoReviews 196

I've been using istockphoto on and off for about 5 years. In general, the site works well and the selection is great. I am not certain about this but it seems to me that their prices went up - alot - recently. They are much less affordable. That isn't a big deal since I can make my own decision not to shop a more expensive brand but it is their lack of customer service that led me to write this review. I bought an image for around $25 to use in print. When I downloaded the image, it became clear that it was slightly our of focus at full resolution. For a small banner, this would not be an issue but for print, it is. I contacted the customer service to ask for a refund since the photo was not usable for my purposes. I never heard back from them.

They sign you up to pay $100 a month for ten downloads a month. Like a logical person, when I saw that I had 23 downloads built up that i hadn't used, I cancelled my subscription so I could catch up. It made no sense to keep paying them $100 a month for something I wasn't using enough. When I pulled up their site, all those downloads I had paid for were gone. F*CK YOU iStock! I NEVER would have signed up for a subscription service if I had known these were the terms. Maybe they bury this fact in their legal, but an ugly deceitful business practice and they should end it immediately.

istock.com has been a staple of my design department for years and years, and I must say each year they get worse and worse with their manipulation. I have subscribed, paid as I go and bought signature series. It turns out istock.com has concerned with catch 22's and not stock anymore.

Recently, I purchased $100 in Signature 'subscription' which means that I cannot go back and download past signature purchases unless I subscribe again for images I don't need. This is unlike their credit system in which you can re-download. So stay away from subscriptions, and high-priced Signature collection as you cannot re-download what you paid for.

I hate this company and I'm switching to Adobe stock.

I hope you'll join me and put this greedy, manipulative company out of business. They suck!

I'm in Australia, and by Australian law pricing must not be misleading or deceptive, it must show all included taxes and charges.

IStock advertised that a particular subscription would cost $230 AUD. I spent 3 weeks choosing images. When I went to buy the subscription they charged an additional $23 in tax, and then I also found on my credit card over $5 in foreign exchange conversion fees. Unfortunately I needed to continue with the purchase as I had already committed time to finding the images I needed.

I have written to iStock twice to get them to refund the additional money, I have also spoken to them several times and they are not interested.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission agree that iStock is in breach of Australian law and I am currently taking up the matter with the Office of Fair Trading.

I suggest you don't deal with iStock as there are plenty of honest businesses out there you can work with.

IStockPhoto has the worst customer service I've ever experienced anywhere. I was locked out of my company account - exactly one day after purchasing their most expensive subscription - and when i called to unlock it, they refused to do so and instead kept asking me questions as if i was a thief violating their copyright laws. They told me that if i download an image and email it to my coworker, i am in violation of their copyright laws. Really? I purchased this photograph and I can't even share it with someone who is on the same work project that I am on? Eventually after hours of talking to them, we tried to cancel because i'd rather pull all my teeth out then have them talk to me the way they do. And they said we were stuck with them for a year because we had already downloaded 32 photographs. They would not let us pay for the photographs we downloaded and cancel our subscription. So we're stuck. With terrible service and nasty operators. Run away from this company! All they want is your money and they don't care about helping anyone.

IStockPhoto has been nothing but trouble for us. Their site never works, they are constantly changing their rules, the customer support team is NASTY, and they don't have as many unique images as they seem to think they do. Do yourself a favor and RESEARCH your options before just going with a known name like iStock. I can't rate them poorly enough.

Istock/Getty has been treating its customers like a number and treats the overall Graphic Arts Community poorly. They took low cost access to quality images and increased prices dramatically. I continually read how Getty extorts websites that cannot prove they purchased an Istock image for hundreds or thousands of dollars, when the original image may have cost $10-$30. If you've been in graphic arts for any amount of time there is no doubt you don't have every receipt for every last image, graphic, software or digital material you have purchased. While they may collect on a few cases here and they Getty has alienated more buyers and sent them to other resources.

I have been using Istock for years and I have to say this is the FIRST REVIEW I have ever written. I am not sure if it is be cause I am so irritated about how they changed the pricing procedure but it was a good deal for us at one point. Our company invested a lot of money into Istock but now it seems very over priced. We don't want a subscription because we operate one project at a time. Some months we will need 12 photos and others, none. As far as I am concerned we will get our stock images elsewhere. Nice work, you ruined our opinion of you.