Shutterstock, Inc. shutterstock.com, Mr. Jon Oringer Shutterstock Auto-Bills without Permission New York Internet, NY

A few hours after this posted, I received a call from Shutterstock. They refunded two of my $199 payments. Hurray!!!

I had the same thing happen to me. I believed I was subscribing to an annual plan for $199, but it turned out to be $199 PER MONTH! My business only uses maybe 25 images PER YEAR, and each time I have paid $49 for 5 images, so I thought, hmm, I could save a little money by going to this annual plan. When a month passed and my subscription auto-renewed, I immediately called Shutterstock to cancel this plan - it wasn't what I thought it was. They instructed me to turn off auto-renew on their website. I followed their instructions, ordered ZERO photos that month despite not receiving a refund, and then it auto-renewed AGAIN on the first of the next month. Again, I called to cancel the plan. This time I was told, "Oh, turning off auto-renew for that plan means that it won't auto renew NEXT YEAR, not next month, because it's a 12-month plan." I explained that I did not purchase any photos for the past month, nor did I intend to purchase any photos for the coming month. I was told that a refund was not possible even if I paid $398 for NOTHING - NO PHOTOS!  $398!!! When I explained that this seemed grossly unfair, explained that when I called last month and they gave me the wrong instructions and did not explain this to me, the customer service representative said, "I do not have the authority to give you a refund. The system won't allow that. However, I can refer your case to one of my leads to see if they can resolve the matter," and then she closed the conversation with, "OK, good bye." So, she didn't forward my call to a supervisor, but simply promised to bring it to the attention of her "lead". This is not okay! This is a RIPOFF.