Shutterstock

I bought a plan to download images for a month.
At no time did I request the automatic renewal of the plan, as I intended to use it only for a month.
I see now that you have already charged me for four subsequent months.
I signed in to my account today and turned off automatic renewal, which I never activated and should never have been activated without my order and confirmation.

I have signed up for Shuttestock's 'trial period', with 10 images for free and the possibility to cancel within 1 month. My renewal date is set for *** January 2020. Today, on January , 2020, I. e. 4 days before the deadline, I was charged USD 29 by Shutterstock from my card. I didn't want to renew, and that came as a very unpleasant surprise, as I still had 4 days to cancel. Moreover, I found next that I am unable to cancel at all without paying a CANCELLATION FEE. And I cannot stop auto-renewal or remove my card data either. None of these issues are covered in the user agreement and are only stated in the FAQ section. This is shocking how a company of this scale is misleading its customers and resorts to unethical business practices.And I get no replies to my emails, and the chat is unavailable.

Deceptive website and policies. Beware getting trapped in an “annual commitment” when it is nowhere on the monthly subscription option you choose.

You will be scammed into auto-renewal and they give you no options to leave it off or tell you that they will bill you. I used their services once, just found out that they were billing me for annual fee for the past 3 years without me knowing. There are better stock image services are out there, don't choose a scammer. Jut surprised to see that after so many reviews, why they still have an A+ rating!?

I paid $98 thinking I was buying an annual subscription for an unlimited amount of images. This was not true. 5 images only!!

This company is scamming people with promotions. I simply ordered the 10 IMAGES for free!!! I DID NOT know that I was instead singing up for an annual plan that was $30 a month every month. They charged my business account $150 and did not use their services or was made aware I signed up for a year long subscription. I called to cancel and was told I need to pay a $60 cancellation fee to get out of a subscription that I never even ordered. After speaking with a customer agent with a very poor attitude that they will waive the fee but still out $150 for nothing. As a small business owner I feel that this is simply bad business practice.

Shutterstock is selling my stolen images. I have supplied them with the ID numbers of the two people selling my images and making money from my stolen images and they have not removed them. I want them removed now, because they have been selling them and making money from the sale and subscriptions where companies, etc. Can download my pix.

NOT A GOOD COMPANY! Used this for a school project and found that instead of signing up for 10 photos only, I signed up for 10 photos monthly. I for one cannot afford this every month and cannot even pay the cancel fees. I did not even realize that they were taking money out of my account! I got no receipts or emails, plus I checked the dates when they were going to bill me, and they don't even take the money on the specified date! I will be calling my bank, hopefully this will be resolved.

Shutterstock offered a one-month trial period that I tried to take advantage of. Although I canceled the service before the end of the trial period, I found to my dismay that my credit card was charged for $229 which I assume is for a full year's subscription service. When I tried to contact the company, it was very difficult to get through to talk to someone, then the service rep. pretended that he couldn't understand me while I can speak perfectly good English. Then for no reason, the line was cut off. After a few times of this, I got online and did a little research on Shutterstock and found that this is common experice to many others. Now I just want my money back and Shutterstock should refrain from ever charging my credit card again. Since I discover this fraud too late, my credit card company is not able to assist me in disputing the charge.

I signed up for a 1 time agreement with a limited number of downloads per month. I was unaware I was being billed until the recent 2019 Billing. The one time payment was $30.95. I never signed up on the automatic payments. I have been billed since August 2019 until December 2019 and contacted the customer service department to resolve the discrepancy. No resolution provided except SHUTTERSTOCK agent telling me I had to pay a cancellation fee. I have no activity on the account being I thought only a one time payment as my agreement read at the time of the purchase. I'd like a credit and my account canceled without any fee.

Similar to other complaints, I had made a one-time purchase of a few credits but was billed for an annual subscription service. As the charge was not on my personal credit card it took a few months to notice the rogue charges. Customer service has offered to refund 2 months and 30 credits (which must be used writing a month). I have been billed for 5 months. I have not visited the site since the initial download in July. I've asked to escalate the claim, for a full refund of 5 months but customer service has only offered me the two months. I purchase stock photography on a regular basis and am familiar with how the subscription versus credit systems work. I would NOT have purchased a subscription plan, I believe this is a fraudulent online bait and switch.

I cannot cancel my billing plan early.

I am more than willing to pay the cancellation fees but their site just says, "An error occurred. Try again later."

I have been trying for a week, this is Fraud! You have charged me for two months for something I do not use!
Everything on your website support wise does not work, contacting you changing profile details, etc. Nothing works except signing up, so you can trap more poor souls!

Shutterstock intentionally misleads customers to sign up for an annual plan by making the monthly plans hard to find. When signing up, there is no indication of auto renew each month or of any penalties for cancelling the plan, so you are under the assumption that you can just turn off auto-renew. In fact if you try to turn off auto renew it is not possible. By doing this, customers that only wanted a monthly/one-time plan end up unknowingly committing to an annual one. When you contact them (which I did after 5 months of not knowing I was being automatically being billed for a total of $150), you are told that there is a penalty to cancel the plan. Somehow, I had signed up for an annual plan under the assumption that I was signing up for one time/monthly plan that could be cancelled at any time. They refused to cancel my plan without penalty of $100 after discussing this over 4 emails. This is exceptionally deceptive and a terrible way to do business and treat customers. I would simply like to cancel the plan without the $100 penalty.

I signed up for a 1month free trial. Ive tried to email them that I wanted to cancel my plan nothing worked. live chat doesnt work. they give you the run around when you call them. I turned the *** auto renewal off but it came back on and now I cant even do anything about it because its greyed out. Now they have charged me $30 when I didnt even want the *** thing. It is a pure scam!

This service is a complete scam. They set me up for annual auto renewal without fully disclosing the terms up front. Now, they have made it impossible to cancel the subscription. I am attempting to block future payments with my credit card and waiting for the class action against this company.

Auto-renewal is an absolute scam. It isn't made clear when signing up that you can only disable auto-renewal on an annual plan in an extremely small window. This is an obvious ploy to sucker people into an additional renewal period. Absolutely disgusting. How do we elevate this crooked practice?

Their website states a subscription price of $29/month
10 images/month
$2.90 per image

but this is fraudulent. They actually reset the $29 every time an image is downloaded so it's $30.45 per image. This has added up a spend of $1889.55 for the year when advertised as $29 per month.

This is my first time leaving a complaint on Revdex.com, but Shutterstock's scammy business practices warrant it. If you purchase single downloads of images, you are automatically enrolled into an auto-renew subscription service. I'm sure there's language *somewhereinforming you of that, but it is certainly not clear and I did not pick up on it, despite being a careful online shopper.
Even worse, they do not send you emails with account notices and/or receipts. You are forced to notice it on your bank's billing statement. Incredibly shameful and deceptive business practices.

I did not realize that I had "auto-renew" until I went online to cancel my subscription, which means I'm stuck with this company through August 2020. Given that their practices regarding auto-renew which are well documented by other complaints on the Revdex.com site are sleazy at best, I appear to be stuck with this plan. However, even though I am obligated to a 365-day "subscription", apparently shutterstock can raise the price at any time during my 365-day subscription period, which they have done by 8%. My "subscription" renewed September , 2019. The prior year was $29/month. I have made NO purchases/downloads on the site in over a year. Now my rate that was just billed December 2019 is $31.32.

When I looked at the advertisement of being a contributor, it never once said that they got to not pick every picture you up loaded. You have to use 5 English words to describe your picture, then pick at least 7 descriptive words to help find your picture, and at least one category. Once you do that they have to approve your picture. Never did the advertisements say they got to choose when your picture was good enough. I would understand auditing the pictures to ensure nothing bad was in it, but stating the picture wasn’t up to their standards, is ridiculous and rude that you have to be stingy on how you word the description, and when your main purpose of a phone is to focus on specific parts in the photo, it becomes too out of focus for them. Don’t tell me I can upload pictures I took for the public to decide what they want to download when you get to be nit picky about even allowing it to be viewable to consumers.