Getty Letter Advice

[blackknight]

Hello All,

I have been hit with 2 letters from Getty Images, the first one was the take down letter and the second one is demanding £900, sent both on email and through the post (non-recorded delivery)

I've been reading a lot of stuff on this forum and it's really great there's something out there that gives you advice (kudos to those who run maintain and help).

The second letter states that I have 14 days to reply to their request for immediate payment of £900, do I keep on ignoring this or action it with a reply to Getty before they bring in the collectors? either with a phone call or a letter back.

If yes (i should reply) can you recommend any boilerplate templates to reply back to them with?

Thanks again in advance,

John

[geezer123]

Read the forum and educate yourself.

Your call obviously but my experience is and I have had half a dozen of these letters last relating to the same number of images is to ignore them completely.

I do take the images down but never respond to the letters. I am aware they can follow up and actually force me to court but I am comfortable with that knowing they never have yet.

[Hayleyc]

Hi I've received the letter to and they have replied saying I need to pay £450.00

Can anyone help, i'm really scared as its for some social media work that I do for a company and I'm worried about them getting hassled from the lawyers. What would you recommend, that I try to negotiate a lower deal or just ignore them?

HELP!

[philpotts99]

IGNORE once you engage they have you on the hook and do not give up as we know from painful experience. It is stressful having to deal with this sort of thing but it looks like they send thousands of these demands every week so ignoring is the right way unless you get picked on and end up with the solicitors.

All I would say is:

Getty employees do not know how to write a proper letter/email or address it in the correct or most respectful manner. Slight comical to be greeted with a Hiya and you first name then they threaten to sue the pants of you!!! Spent months responding to a their letters highlighting their typos, poor grammar and inability to string a sentence together. Different employee every time but they were real people as was checking them on LinkedIn to ensure they bona fide.

Their debt collectors are clowns and try to extort even more money out of you to include their fees but it is all hot air.

If escalated to their solicitors you end up with hundreds of pages of legal documents (no kidding). We could not risk the action even though all advice seemed to suggest we would not get to court. Guess they know this is the course of action most small businesses will take hence we settled with the solicitors albeit for a lot less than Getty asked for in the first place Just hope their bill to Getty was a hefty one.


Guess we were one of the unlucky ones in ending up with solicitors but cannot see anyone who has had the solicitors involved coming back here and claiming a success hence why we settled.

Doesn't help much I know but good luck.

[victim2]

Its quite likely that Getty's claim is perfectly valid from a legal point of view. ( If it wasn't they could be committing fraud under the Fraud Act 2006 ) The problem Getty has is that in the UK most claims under £10,000 are handled in the Small Claims Track in which legal costs are extremely restricted. Thus to bring about a case in the IPEC they may well have to spend £20,000 on their own lawyer only to win £1000 which is simply uneconomical.  Very many posts on here seem to suggest their strategy might be simply to bluff and threaten legal action when they have no intention of carrying it out. The catch is, for their strategy to work, they will need to actually bring at least some cases to court to prove they are legally valid, otherwise nobody would pay their settlement demands.

Thus your correct course of action all depends on whether you feel lucky or not. If you choose to ignore the claim, then anecdotal evidence here suggests there is a very high probability they will give up. Unfortunately if they don't it will be expensive.  Do bear in mind that under the Civil Procedure Rules, Pre Action Conduct, https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/pd_pre-action_conduct you are expected to respond to a valid letter of claim so it won't help your case  if you fail to do so. Conversely they are also required to issue a valid letter of claim before issuing a claim. An email saying pay us some dosh does not cut the mustard in the High Court !


Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer !

[Matthew Chan]

Getty is an American company. As such, Getty USA tends to set the general direction for how Getty international subsidiaries operate.  Getty in the U.S. has been much more measured in recent years.