ShutterstockReviews 532

I have only written one other bad review before, so I'm careful in doing it with this company, but honestly, i must. Their customer service is just terrible. There is an "auto-renewal" notification feature with the photo services of this company and so a customer has to know this to be able to go into their account and turn OFF the notification and avoid the $29.99 annual fee. I did not know this and after making sure I had not used the service in that 12 mo window, I did a "live chat" with a customer service person who said she could not help me. Then I called the customer service number and she said they do not give reimbursements even though they recognize that auto-renewal feature is defaulted ON. I think it's a pity for customers as well as these customer service people that this is the case. Our company is switching services as a result. :(

These guys are totally unethical in the way they conduct their business. They turn on the Auto renewal button the time you register. Normally people would not pay attention to such things.
Most of the companies are fair enough to refund your money when you call their customer care. Shutterstock sucks. The staffs are rude. It's a total rip off. Stay away from these unethical guys.

I purchased 3 clips of the same video. First was a web version which was terrible then an SD version which was just as crap as the web version. I then bought the HD version and still very little difference. They refused to refund me for the HD version but did for the other 2 clips. For a company that makes its living of footage you would expect it to be HD. They must have blind chimps working for them because this video was grainy and not sharp at all. They said it was withing their guidelines. Well maybe improve your bloody guidelines. Theiving scumbags. Do yourself a favour an do not buy anything from this site. No help and no customer service, just scripted responses.

I'd give zero stars if I could.

A shutterstock subscription is expensive, but they seemed to have a reasonable service so I've been with them for a couple of years. I've finally cancelled because I'm sick of being hounded about 'multiple employees', that I don't have, meaning that I apparently need a corporate licence.

I've told them numerous times that I have no employees - does it stop them, no. Phone calls, emails...

They are a complete fraud. Please go to someone else unless you want to be hounded by these jokers. They're not happy with you buying a license and paying for the images you use, oh no, they want more and more money from you.

Shutterstock is the company with the worst customer service ever! Shutterstock would never help you but only take money from you. I canceled my subscription after I realised about autorenewal scam and images not rolling over to the next month. I wrote to Shutterstock "Customer Care" that I was misinformed and kindly asked for 1 more day to download the images as they expired which I didn't know about. Shutterstock would never help me. They kept saying:
"in this case an extension could not be granted". 1 day! 6 images. For a company that has 145 million images. For 6 images they lost me as a customer and hopefully all those who read these reviews. Please, stay away from this company and never give them your card data. Shutterstock should be taken down by organizations that protect consumers.

I've used Shutterstock for years. Most recently, I purchased two five packs and a two-pack download for a project requiring 11 pictures. Keep an eye on that little 'auto-renew' button, because as I downloaded the pictures, one after another, the website defaulted to using the two-pack and autorenewing 4 times. I realize part of that is on me for not locating the little auto-renew button, but it should be obvious I did not want to spend extra money when I had a couple 5-packs still available. I contacted Shutterstock, and their policy was not to refund the multiple 2-download packs and use the remaining credits I still had. In other words, once they have your money, it's more important than helping and ultimately keeping a customer.

Shutterstock scams the customers.

Their policy is to charge the customers couple of days before the renewal every month. Right there it is not right to charge before renewal. But in my case they actually charge me almost 7 days before. Which is ok with me. But when I cancelled 3 days before renewal, they blocked my downloaded images from re-downloading. I am entitled for re-downloading anytime once downloan the images under the plan.

I am taking the case to my credit card company for refund.

This company stole money from me by signing me up to some subscription unknowingly on 11/29/16. I NEVER signed up for any subscription. I tried to login to the account that they sent the payment confirmation email to, the same email which alerted me about this unauthorized payment in the first place. There is no account in that email? Ok, so no way to turn this subscription off. I tried contacting a million times, nothing. So, I opened a dispute with my bank.

Their customer service took a week to contact me and they said they got it sorted out and since I opened a dispute I thought I was all good.

WRONG.

They just charged me for this unauthorized subscription again on 2/17/17. Still no way to login. My bank says I can dispute it but need to turn off subscription for these subscription payments not to happen in the future. Well, that's not possible as I have no account or at least access to one, and it's especially not possible when you have customer service tell you one thing and they do another.

This site is stealing people's hard earned money. They stole $320 or so from me on unauthorized subscriptions I have no way of turning off. I'm headed to the BBB right now to submit this claim as well.

Stay away from this company! The reviews below should be ENOUGH PROOF!

Poor business practices. They do very sneaky things like try to get you to buy more than you want. When I used my last image they automatically charged my credit card for 2 more images without asking for my approval. When I complained they refunded me. I gave them one more shot the next time I needed an image, and purchased what I thought was a 2-image package, but they charged me for 5 images, again, without letting me know. When the purchase went through, I was never given a confirmation of what I bought, so didn't find out until my credit card statement came. So now I had this 5 image bundle which I didn't want but decided to use (and never purchase from them again), but when I went to get an image, the site did not even recognize that I had available images and said I needed to purchase a bundle. Called customer service, indefinite hold, finally left a recorded message. They didn't return the call. Finally, I was able to contact them and they refunded my entire purchase price. A lot of energy wasted on my part.

Istock photos was my go to, until their image prices started climbing, then I switched to Shutterstock, however istock finally caught on to losing their customer base and now has inexpensive images available. I won't use Shutterstock again.