123RF Reviews 2,139

Feels like a scam. This company charged my insane money for service I did not use and makes it extremely difficult to issue refunds or comply with GDPR requests.

123rf.
It's very bad, unprofessional website with totally fruad.
Because, i am applying a contributor account almost 5 months no evaluation my account but recently let me know, I am very shocked about one thing, yesterday I was informed via email from 123rf that my contributor account has been approved but the most surprising thing is that my account has not been approved yet.
How professional is 123RF?

I've been trying to get my account deleted for months and have been getting no response. So I think it's time to submit a GDPR complaint with the ICO.

Terrible and frustrating website to sell images, don't do it.
I have had 900+ images on hold for review for over 6 months and nothing happens to them. Complete waste of time.
All I have been told for months is that they are improving the upload system. yeah, right...

I just wanted to buy subscription and after all the negative reviews I will not pay a sent. Thanks for every feedback that this is a scam!!!

where to start even. Been going trough issues with uploading, some photos uploaded never showed up, etc. been waiting quite a long time to get to the point, I have enough to get a payout. Well, and here the issue starts. I tried every single channel of "support", discord, live chat, WhatsApp, facebook, emails. (every payout should be done by the 17th day in the month).

well, I started my question on 15th may, and surprisingly, I got an answer, that my payout is scheduled for this month. Since then, a week has passed, no payout has been made for my account, on whatsapp, they are telling me either to write to info@ or submission@ emails, and I do that everyday now, but of course, NO REPLY. and NO MONEY for me. i guess my next step should be talking to a lawyer as this practice, with NON EXISTENT support or resolution is just catastrophic. They actually sell my photos, and I don't get nothing for them. Disgraceful customer support.

123RF is an improper, dishonest, unethical and unlawful company. To cut a very long story very short: In January 2024 I bought a 12 month Plus plan for AUD $96. I turned off auto-renew in PayPal as usual, but then after 2 months I decided to reactive it. I contacted them by email and was told they don't have auto-renew in PayPal. Blatant lie by "Shane". I don't believe they use real names. He eventually agreed that I could renew in January 2025 for the same $96 price. I emailed them last week, a few days before expiry. "Shane" first said they would honor the price, then revoked this. Blatant dishonest and unlawful conduct. I threatened to make formal complaints and write accurate 1 star reviews. They then agreed to honour the $96 price. I'm too busy to note the rest of the details right now, but they repeatedly lied and wasted a huge amount of my time by forcing me to respond to repeated improper emails and other actions by them. They put "Cheque" as the payment method in my online account, hiding the fact that I paid by PayPal, which has the auto-renew option. In the last week, I have had to write a huge number of very detailed emails to them, take masses of screenshots and include them in the emails, and have generally gone through a waking nightmare dealing with these juvenile, unprofessional and habitually dishonest people. Now I am bracing for the next battle, to force them to set up auto-renew in PayPal, so I can pay the original $96 price every year indefinitely, which would already be the case if "Shane" had not lied to me and deceived me and ripped me off. They now charge AUD $319 for the same plan I bought for AUD $96 just one year ago That is a 230% price rise in one year! World's greediest company? When I get time, I will edit and include more details in this review, which is just the first of multiple reviews I will be posting on consumer review platforms about 123RF. I am certain that all of the dreadful 1 star Trustpilot reviews are totally justified. How else can you get a 1.7 star (out of 5) average?! Stay right away from this disgraceful company.

Been trying to get some of my videos removed from their website for over a year now. Never get a response from emails and contributor chat is never online. Shady company!!!

Sent 2 emails on Jan 2024 and one more recently. No replies whatsoever. Use a reliable company for your work.

25th Feb 2025 Update: Still haven't taken my videos down and still no contact from the submissions team.

Photo review takes literally forever, more often doesn't work than work, waste of time and nerves

I thought I cancelled subscription but it remained active and the £198 was taken from my account. I have emailed three times but not received a response I've also tried to call the uk number but it is invalid.
I am now very worried this is a scam site due to the amount of reviews having similar issues.

Writing to their support is like writing into a grave . Pictures are not reviewed for several month .

Worst of all stocks. Almost never respond to emails. Take MONTHS to verify the files sent for submission. Very, very law sales. This stock is ridiculous.

I asked them in April if I could cancel my plan and get refunded. No response. Maybe it's on me for not being more on top of things, but I just noticed that they billed me again.. meaning they've been billing me since my unacknowledged request. I asked them to cancel my subscription and refund me immediately last night. Was billed this morning. Will have to handle this with my bank now, not only costing me money, but also time.

The service is outdated and I can generate images on my own for less.

100% do not recommend

One of the worst website for contributors, Very very low sales compared all other big and small agencies. Very slow website. Takes months to review content.
Always getting server connection issue when uploading videos.

We've used this company for years and they've been great but their business practices seem to have changed. We didn't need a subscription so we would buy one-off credit packs. However, the last time we did this in January 2024, they added a default subscription to the credit pack (they also have a separate subscription option), which I didn't see. Worse, when I went to cancel the subscription, it tells me that I'll also lose all the unwanted credits I've accumulated over the last 4 months. These credits used to be valid for at least a year but now they expire in a month. Absolute rip off!

I signed up for the 7-day free trial to see what 123RF is all about. On the 6th day, I get a notification from my bank telling me 123RF wants to charge $199. Thankfully the bank reversed the charge, but to try and charge such a large amount before the trial ends is extremely shady.

tried to upload several files and got rejected to accept those uploads with reason that the file description is bad. contacted vseverel time the support chat with ask to explain me, what is wrong on all my different description. The support chat empl explaind me, he dosnt have acsses on review team and said me bye bye :-)

I signed up for the free trial, foolishly I forgot to cancel within the 7 day time period. The company used my debit card to charge me 200€ for a years plan! Now you could argue this was my fault, I made a mistake and I should pay for it, but as far I am concerned this is totally unethical and quite shocking. I am now in the process of trying to get a refund, but I will never use this company again and advise anyone to stay away as they have no ethics and use the bait of a free plan to trick the foolish into parting with large sums of money. Stay away!

All it does is send me emails!
This website always sends me emails and it's really annoying. Like can you please stop?!?!? It also just puts adverts up and you have to pay to download images, the art takes too long to load too

I signed up for a free trial, cancelled it and have still been charged £198!!!! The UK number doesn’t work so my only hope is an email. What a SCAM!