This month – or rather the whole first quarter of 2024 – is not my friend regarding the online world. My Facebook account is still blocked by Meta with them not answering to any of my support tickets, emails or younameit. I have even started to send snailmail to their offices now.
Next in line is Copytrack. A service I had always loved, cherished and even recommended to other print on demand designers and stock photographers. They offer (or HAD OFFERED) a free service to hunt down your images online with the possibility of opening claims in case of copyright infringements.
I have been using them for years and I had one successful case with them where they could sell a licence to an online blog that had used one of my images without permission. I am currently having a second open case – cases can be open for months depending on how fast/slow everyone works. Or at least, I had a second case open. I have no idea whether this will be prosecuted any further or not, but let’s not begin at the finish line.
Since January 2024, I have received a few automatically sent emails stating that I need to check the found hits within the next 10 days. I needed to sort them (illegal or legal use) and open a case for illegal hits. Well, I really wondered about these emails because I tend to check my hits at least once a week but due to a vacation in January I had thought that maybe that was a one time thing. In February, I received another of those emails and started to write to support. I did check my hits several times per months, so why would I get this email? You must know, that those emails also stated that failure to sort my hits would result in deactivation and eventually deletion of my whole account. Uhm, HUH?
After one of those emails from February I started to get really irritated. I logged in and saw the “Action required” button with unclassified hits but when I wanted to sort them, my inbox was empty with zero hits. Did write to support again and they answered something like “our system does not show you hits that do not have a success potential, you will only see the ones that need to be converted to a case” and “open a case within 10 days or your account will get deactivated”. What – the – actual – fudge ??? How am I supposed to open a case when the hits do not appear in my inbox? I have asked Copytrack’s Neki this exact question more than once and he does not answer it without using the same generic answers over and over again. Open a case or your account will get deactivated and deleted. To avoid this, choose one of their upgrades.
I felt like stuck in a hamster’s wheel or something until it dawned on me. They obviously want to force me into a paid plan. Since my long history with them starting with a connection from EyeEm, I had been allowed to have more than 500 uploaded images. Am I getting to expensive for them?
A few days ago, I had asked Neki how the impeding account deactivation/deletion would affect my current open case. Neki commented on the case to stop prosecution since “user wants account to get deactivated”. Uhm, NO! I insisted to keep my case open and that I object to this case getting closed but now support does ignore me.
To make it short – at this point in time, I cannot recommend using Copytrack anymore. There is no way for me to pay for their upgrades with only one successful case in more than 3 years. And behaviour of support is definitley not acceptable. I would rate them with one out of five stars over on Google but Copytrack gets reviews removed quickly. They probably know why – I recommend you check out the few remaining reviews yourself.
Zizzling Zazzle - Christine aka stine1 blogging 