Last month, without any warning, the stock photo service I've used for at least 10 years made a small, nearly-unnoticeable change that very efficiently sucks money out of their customers' accounts.
They offer stock images in a variety of file sizes. Because I purchase them almost exclusively for use on the web, I have always bought the smallest and least expensive file size. For as long as I can recall, that was the size that was set as the default when I'd go to purchase an image.
Sometime in September, that changed. I noticed that an image I was using on a blog post for a client was taking a really long time to upload. No wonder -- it was huge. I went and looked at my download history at bigstockphoto.com, and saw that every image I'd purchased for the previous two weeks was much larger - and four times more expensive - than the images I'd always purchased before, and intended to purchase each time.
Every time I go to purchase an image, the default is set on this four-times-costlier option. It's a hard habit to break to move that default setting, and twice I forgot and ended up with a huge, expensive image I didn't want.
Sure, you can say that's my problem now that I'm aware of what they're doing. But you and I both know it's deceptive and unethical to make this change knowing that many customers won't notice at first, new and occasional customers might never question the default setting at all, and plenty of customers like me who noticed will nonetheless forget to move that check mark at least now and then.
In short, they implemented a change that will make them money by ripping off their customers.
Unable to find anywhere to control the default setting, I emailed support to ask if it was possible, and complain about the change. I heard back the next day; my complaint was ignored, and my query about setting my own default was all he addressed:
At this time there is not a way to set the default download size of images on our site as it is up to our customers to always ensure when downloading images that they make sure they are selecting the size they require.
I will make sure that you feedback is received by management as we always want to hear from our customers on how we can improve our site to better fit the needs of our customers.
Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.
Best regards,
Joseph T.
Customer Care Advocate
Bigstock
350 Fifth Avenue, 21st Floor
New York, NY 10118a
So if you use Bigstock (which, by the way, is owned by Shutterstock), check the download history and see if you got caught by this. If not, be sure you don't. And consider switching to a different stock photo service. It's not like their aren't plenty of them out there.
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