Boring but necessary announcements

Manage Images v2.2 issues

James Allsworth - Content Executive — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:26:00 GMT

We are currently investigating user issues with Manage Images v2.2.

We can confirm there is a known issue with the latest update of firefox (3.6) being used on Mac.

We are investigating a number of other possible issues but for now we can only suggest trying an alternative browser.

Many thanks for your patience.

Scheduled downtime this weekend

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:50:00 GMT

We need to undertake some essential maintenance on Saturday the 6th of March and Sunday 7th March. During this time the contributor facing elements (upload, manage images etc) of the site will be unavailable. The work is scheduled to run from 4.00 am (UK time) on Saturday through to 7.00 am (UK time) on Sunday.

The entire site will also be down on Sunday 7th from 1:30 am (UK time) to 7:00 am (UK time).

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We'll be making sure the site is back up and running as soon as possible but we cannot guarantee that it will not take longer.

To avoid any possible complications for any uploads during this time, we recommend for you to not start uploading any images close to 4.00 am (UK time) on the 6th as they may fail to reach us if they are still uploading during the time that the work starts.

Forum issues - UPDATE - fixed

James Allsworth - Content Executive — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:00:00 GMT

Some of you may be experiencing some issues whilst trying to log in and view the forum in the form of a message saying your account has been suspended. We have not applied these bans to accounts and are currently investigating the issue.

We appreciate your patience whilst we resolve the problem.

Update - this should now be fixed.

Longer QC times over the festive period

James Allsworth — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:06:00 GMT

Processing and QC times will take longer than usual, with some submissions taking up to 14 days to go through QC. Turnaround times for submissions will be back to normal by the 8th of January, and we apologise for any delays experienced during this closure.

Member Services support over this period will also be effected. We will not be able to respond to telephone queries from Wednesday 23rd of December until Monday the 4th of January. Email support will be available during these dates but response times may be longer than usual due to reduced cover.

From all the Content team here at Alamy, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Recent problems with AlamyUpload

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:51:00 GMT

AlamyUpload is the tool you use to upload images to Alamy.

You may experience occasional problems of lost connections or delays whilst using this service, we are aware of this issue and we are working on a solution. We have developed and are currently testing, an alternative system and are hopeful that it will prove to be much more reliable.

We may have to occassionally take AlamyUpload down whilst we are looking into these problems. Please accept our apologies for any frustration and inconvenience caused.

If a sale is 'uncleared' we are still chasing

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:18:00 GMT

We often get calls and emails from contributors asking us to chase up payments on sales that are in their accounts but still uncleared.

We are currently investing a lot of time and effort in seeing where the sale is in our chase cycle and then responding to these queries to explain that we are still chasing.

This doesn’t really seem to be a particularly beneficial exercise, yes it might reassure you as a contributor that we are ‘on the case’ but it doesn’t speed up the process as we take all outstanding debt equally seriously.

It may help to explain our process and current performance. We have varying credit terms for different customers and this flexibility makes sense for us.

The average length of time a customer takes to pay their account with us is currently 49 days. We consider this to be pretty good in today’s climate. We are also happy to share our bad debt statistics with you. Bad debt for the last full year (2008) was below 0.05%, or to put it another way, if you make a sale today you've got a 99.95% chance of getting the money from it.

We vigorously pursue late payments, 99% of our debt is recovered within 90 days of it going overdue. In very rare circumstances, we may have to pursue a legal course of action and this can take a long term, sometimes years even.

If a sale remains uncleared on your balance of account (marked with an x) this means we are still pursuing the money using all the tools at our disposal.

It’s important that we dedicate our time to activities that will bear fruit for us all so please try to avoid sending emails that can only be met with the honest response that we are still chasing the payment.

e-books

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:42:00 GMT

We have made a change to our online calculator so e-books are now included alongside conventional print books. Due to the practicalities with the way in which this was implemented the change does show on all old retrospective sales. We took the decision to implement it in this way to simplify the process and enable us to make this change quickly.

Customers are bound by the terms of the licence at the point at which the image was purchased, there is no retrospective granting of rights.

We also wanted to make it clear that e-books are seen as simply another mechanism that a publisher can use to make their book available to be read. It should not be confused with any 'online' uses.

Quarterly Statement Q3 2009

James West - CEO — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:58:00 GMT

Q3 2009 results reflect what we hope is the bottom of the downturn. It's too early to predict what Q4 will look like, but I can say that September and October numbers have been very reassuring. Until we have more data, however, we're sticking with our earlier forecast of a 15%-20% decrease on 2008.

We're working on some exciting investments for 2010, which include further expansion of direct sales teams, some great new search features for customers, new products, new markets, and a faster service (we'll have more to say about all this later).

Scheduled downtime this weekend

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:46:00 GMT

We need to undertake some essential maintenance on Saturday the 10th of October and Sunday 11th October. During this time the contributor facing elements (upload, manage images etc) of the site will be unavailable. The work is scheduled to run from 6.00 am (BST) on Saturday through to 9.00 am (BST) on Sunday.

The entire site will also be down on Sunday 11th from 3:45 am (BST) to 7:00 am (BST).

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We'll be making sure the site is back up and running as soon as possible but we cannot guarantee that it will not take longer.

To avoid any possible complications for any uploads during this time, we recommend for you to not start uploading any images close to 6.00 am (BST) on the 10th as they may fail to reach us if they are still uploading during the time that the work starts.

Technical problems update

James Allsworth — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:16:00 GMT

On Tuesday (15th September) we discovered a computer virus had infected some of our servers. It quickly became clear that it was a particularly virulent strain and that we would have to take drastic measures to contain it and decontaminate our servers and workstations.

As a result we were only able to offer a restricted service to both our customers and contributors until today (Thursday 17th September). Our priority was to return all customer facing services to normal and so, only in the last hour, were we able to bring Upload back on line. We want reassure you that your systems were not at risk from being in contact with Alamy during this time.

Like all organisations, we take particular care to protect ourselves but in this case, our defences were breached. We are reviewing this outbreak with our anti virus suppliers to understand why it happened and what lessons we can learn.

Although all areas of the site are back to full working order, we still think its prudent to be extra cautious during this time. With this in mind, we may feel it's required to disable Upload again at some point without prior warning. If this happens please be assured that we will be working to make it available again as soon as possible.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience this has caused.