Have you faced Bad Customer Support as an Adobe stock contributors

[rajatch]

I have an image in my Adobe stock portfolio which was sold a couple of days ago. See snapshot below.

This picture was sold within 2 weeks of its upload. And I have it uploaded on other stock agencies like Shuttestock/getty etc. When it got sold, I noticed that the picture has some dark pixels around the corners. I wanted to provide good quality photo to my customer on all stock agencies, so I decided to fix those dark pixels in editing and resubmit the picture. I had the raw file with me so I fixed the dark pixels and my picture looked much better now. I resubmitted it to shuttestock and then to Adobe stock.

1) Shutterstock rejected the re-submission saying there is an exact same image in my portfolio already so this new copy cannot be accepted. They asked me to delete the old file and resubmit. I did exactly what they said and my new improved got accepted the second time.

2) Adobe stock however, decided to reject my submission of the improved image with "Lack of aesthetic or commercial appeal". I was surprised. Why is this image being rejected now for aesthetic appeal!! It has already been sold once on Adobe's own platform.

I decided to reach out to customer support of Adobe stock and tell them that there is a confusion. This is what I wrote:

"Today Adobe stock rejected another image of mine with the same reason, and that image is actually already accepted by Adobe stock when I submitted it last month. Yesterday I corrected few things in post processing of that image and resubmitted with better quality and the image got rejected with a weird reason of "Lack of aesthetic or commercial appeal". How is that possible now!? An image that is already on my Adobe Stock portfolio, is not commercially or aesthetically appealing, if I submit a better/improved version of it?"

And the reply I got was something I didn't expect from Adobe.

"As we have mentioned to you in the past, the moderation team works independent of customer service. We do not provide specific feedback on individual rejections and no appleals process is in place on rejected files. The decision of the moderators is final. As per our previous communication I recommend posting some examples in the critique forum and asking for impartial feedback from other contributors. It's best to learn from the rejections and move on to new content.

I'm not sure I understand why you uploaded a new copy of an image that is already online in your collection. if there is a critical change that is necessary you would need to delete the file that is online before resubmitting. As you have already discovered, previous approval does not guarantee success on a later upload so I strongly advise against this practice.  It's also important to note that resubmitting files that have been rejected or approved can be perceived to be image spam and is strictly prohibited. This can result in your account being closed which is not in either of our best interest. "

Now I am not sure if I delete the existing image in my portfolio, and try to re-submit, will it be accepted!? If they keep rejecting the second submission with the "lack of appeal" reason, I'll never be able to have that image in my portfolio again.

Leaving aside this image, I felt Adobe Stock has a very cruel, no way out kind of policy; which is against a healthy contribution environment. Have you had such experiences. Furthermore, they right away closed the case, without ensuring satisfaction on their answer/resolution of my query.

[Moved by a moderator from the critique forum (since there's no image to critique per se) and into the Adobe Stock Contributor's support forum.]

[MatHayward · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the feedback. I've sent you a detailed explanation in response to the tickets you have sent. It's very important that if you are going to replace a file that is already online in your portfolio with a new version you must first delete the online file. Doing so does not guarantee the image will be approved upon secondary review. It is a subjective process and all content is reviewed by human eyes. As a result, I strongly recommend the changes you make are essential to the success of a file before you attempt to resubmit something. 

-Mat

[rajatch]

Thanks Mat. Your second response is much more considerate than the first one. I've responded to your email in greater details.

I will ensure I delete the image first before submitting the new version. The only bad part is that I loose sale-history of that image.

I wish there was an easier way to replace an image with improved quality. That's a good feature Adobe Stock can work on. That way we preserve the sale-history of a file as well.