Download portfolio on closure of account?

[Blade_R]

Hello

I am in an unfortunate situation where I have lost my main storage and my backup.

I have contacted support to ask if I may download my files and was told no, but that I may be able to purchase them with a special agreement. This was then escalated only for me to be told that I wouldn't even be allowed to purchase them. 

I fully appreciate that shutterstock doesn't want to be used as a backup service and can understand why they don't allow everyone to download their work. But its really disappointing that this cant even be done through support. I cant see having to go through support to be allowed to buy your own products being a commonly used backup service. 

I expect I have signed away any rights to access them but does anyone know exactly?
If I close my account is there any chance of downloading my work then as part of the account closure?

Thanks

[Ackab Photography]

I guess you could ask a friend to open a SS account and buy all of your photos at the most convenient rate available. Can't see anything wrong with that. Needless to say, this should be done before you close your account.

[Darla Hallmark]

I don't know why Shutterstock wouldn't help a contributor recover lost files.  It's not like you even have a huge number of files.

I asked Dreamstime for three images, and they sent me my entire 1500 image portfolio. 

I hope you can get your images back.

 

[Milo J]

On 7/29/2020 at 8:27 AM, Blade_R said:

I have contacted support to ask if I may download my files and was told no, but that I may be able to purchase them with a special agreement. This was then escalated only for me to be told that I wouldn't even be allowed to purchase them.

In the past they allowed people to buy their own images with a large subscription plan. I'm surprised they would not let you do this, maybe its because you told them you intended to close your account.

Having a friend buy all your images is against the TOS and could result in closure of your account. (Hint, hint.)

[HodagMedia]

21 hours ago, Milo J said:

In the past they allowed people to buy their own images with a large subscription plan. I'm surprised they would not let you do this, maybe its because you told them you intended to close your account.

Having a friend buy all your images is against the TOS and could result in closure of your account. (Hint, hint.)

Buying your own photos is also against the terms.

On 7/29/2020 at 10:27 AM, Blade_R said:

Hello

I am in an unfortunate situation where I have lost my main storage and my backup.

Just looked and unless something changed, there are only 36 photos, 15 videos, getting a large sub account would be more expensive than just buying some image packs.

So just asking, you lost the original photos, the edited photos and the backup of everything? That is unfortunate. Did you upload anywhere else? Maybe they could get them back for you?

 

[Blade_R]

Hey, thanks for all the responses.

I have since heard back from support and it looks like the original responder was mistaken in saying it couldn't be done. I can contact someone else for licensing discussions. This is good news however I do get the feeling it wont be at a reduced rate, so I might have to just accept them as lost.

 

[Blade_R]

On 8/1/2020 at 3:29 PM, Milo J said:

In the past they allowed people to buy their own images with a large subscription plan. I'm surprised they would not let you do this, maybe its because you told them you intended to close your account.

Having a friend buy all your images is against the TOS and could result in closure of your account. (Hint, hint.)

Well I hadn't mentioned closing the account to SS. it was more of a last resort idea mixed in with some frustration.

[Blade_R]

6 hours ago, HodagMedia said:

So just asking, you lost the original photos, the edited photos and the backup of everything? That is unfortunate. Did you upload anywhere else? Maybe they could get them back for you?

 

Sadly the videos aren't anywhere else online.  It was a mixture of human error and some bad luck. I brought new storage with a RAID 5 setup, I moved my portfolio from my HDD to it with the intention of then copying them back onto a replacement HDD so it was in two places. A few days later when the new HDD arrived I checked the RAID to find everything corrupted. No drives on the RAID actually failed so there were no errors, it seems like the controller messed up and was overwriting data. I should have just done it all the same day and made sure the files were always in 2 places at one...  I did manage to recover some of the data from the original HDD but a lot of it is damaged. 

Data recovery companies are quoting around $1000 to recover it which is more than I think the contents are worth. 

 

[oleschwander]

1 hour ago, Blade_R said:

Data recovery companies are quoting around $1000 to recover it which is more than I think the contents are worth. 

There are free data recovery apps. I just recovered data from a memory card and it functioned great. But sadly I don't remember if it was "StellarDataRecovery.app" or  "Data Recovery Free.app".