I am going to tell you that $250 for a settlement is about as low as it gets.
If that is too much, then at this point, you might as well just ignore and ride it out. Free websites are simply suspect as far as I am concerned. It is too problematic. Better to find a cheap image website and have an online receipt to show for it.
There is no easy way to verify the integrity of any freebie website.
Hello,
I'm experiencing something similar and I'm already glad to have found this forum! Pixsy contacted me last week to complain about an image I've been using on my non-profit blog. They are asking for $250 to expunge the unlicensed use and to allow for a further year's use. Lots of issues with this: to me $250 is a lot of money, I don't really want to continue to use the image if it means paying for it, and there are multiple free alternatives out there as it's only a picture of sheet music. But the BIGGEST issue is that I got it from Pexels.com, which is a free license website! I explained this to Pixsy and sent evidence, but they've come back to say it's still my responsibility to contact the original photographer to confirm that an image is free license. Having looked into the law I now realise this to be true, though incredibly unfair. Who thinks or has time to double check free license websites?!
I'm arguing my point and trying to at least get a reduced fee considering $250 also seems a lot for a license when I didn't earn any money from its use. I'd be interested to know how this pans out for you as it sounds like you've been in conversation with them about similar unreasonable-ness for much longer!
Tiff