ViewBug / Golozo
Reviews and Complaints

My viewbug account I have been using for over a year with accumulated coins over 2,000, my followers over 1,0000, all my photos have disappeared along with my rewards ect. It's not even worth getting on viewbug anymore. The sad thing is that was my light in my life that I loved an enjoyed and actually felt amazing to be part of such a fun amazing website(app). An so I'm glad I didn't pay for a membership bc of this reason rite here. I am now super depressed bc what I enjoyed everyday an looked forward to doing each day is now no more? I have reached out so many times so many ways an got nowhere with anyone there at viewbug. I am soooo disappointed an let down once again in life...nothing or noone is ever real anymore

My complaints for ViewBug(VB) are the following:

The customer support email is a joke. There is NEVER a response to any of my Emails.

I would like to remove my pictures from VB. I can NOT even get to my pictures without paying them more money.

It is impossible to remove your pictures without going thru each pic One at a time. Honest.

Posting of pornography is not "not allowed" - this is a joke. I don't want my kids on VB.

Marking a picture of porn is not addressed or removed or cancel offender.

Unless you have a studio with staff, don't even think about the contests. You will never gain enough recognition. Try it, You'll not like it!

I asked for a refund on my subscription as you can have one within 30days as per the website. This complaint is now with my bank who will be making enquiries on my behalf. My advice do not upgrade or subscribe because if you change your mind all you get from Viewbug is radio silence.

I have emailed, submitted requests on their website. I have done everything to contact them and you receive no feed back from them at all. Once I have my refund the card I paid them on will be changed and they will not be taking any more money from me. as my understanding was it would be taken monthly not in one lump sum. which I can ill afford as a lump sum.

They do not offer a refund even though it is clearly stated that if you are unhappy you can request a refund. They do not send out emails stating they are going to be renewing your subscription so you can go in and cancel it. They also steel pics from subscribers and sell them for themselves. I am beyond upset with company as I have not used viewbug in months.

I emailed them to cancel my subscription because they had a subscription that was like $3 a month it was not the pro+ membership. They then charged me $49 and said that they didn't have a monthly charge option which it said that it did when I chose the option. Now she's saying that they can't refund it because their terms said so. I never saw where it said 49 would be taken out of my account but then it was taken out.

I was charged $72 on 2/19/20 without any notification that my account would auto renew (no notice even on their website) and I have not heard back from customer service. I emailed twice - early on 2/20 and again today 2/21. I called the number given from my bank yesterday and today, and it states that I just need to email viewbug and that their "awesome customer service is busy." No option for voicemail or call back, get the same automated message every time I have called.

Unauthorized credit card payment, after I notified them that i did not wish to renew my membership
Support replied to my email telling me that if i did not click the box it would not be charged, but they charged my account. Totally deceiving and dishonest
I would like a refund of the $107 charged/in the process of been charged.Totally inappropriate

Wednesday I went to apply for $6.92 Pro+ plan. And they went and took out the $83.00 off my debit card. And though I was getting the $6.92. And I have sent about seven emails asking for this Pro+ to be canceled and to put my money back into my bank account. And they still have not responded back to me at all today. I want my $83.00 put back in my bank account on Friday. If the money is not back in my account by Friday, I will have to file a complaint with the BBB.

I was probably stupid enough to subscribe to a PRO membership at a "special" summer discount price (70 $). As I have a business, I asked them to send me an invoice.
Know what? They can't ! They say they don't have the "software" to generate invoices, while all you need is Word and a free template you can find in the internet...
So I asked a refund which of course they refuse...
In my opinion this whole ViewBug thing is a scam... Any normal business would be happy to serve their customers, but apparently ViewBug has no customers but only "pigeons" (french for "scammed people").
Living in Belgium, I was wondering where I could file complaint in the US against a company that doesn't want to send proper invoices to their customers?
Isn't it a legal obligation in the US as well to send invoices, at least upon request?

Veuwbug Invoice Id: 753585 on July 3rd, 2018

ViewBug, please, stop spamming. I don't need your endless emails and notifications, I don't care about your contests and new photos, news and so on. I regret I discovered your website one day and that I was so stupid to subscribe. I didn't think it would be so hard to stop you.
I click the unsubscribe button and it says that my email was deleted, but I get your emails next day.
Your customer service is useless, they don't listen to me, no one cares.
Please, stop this idiocy!

I cancelled my account as I have had no internet for months I had no email telling me you was going to renew this, on the 6th November you took £106.61 from my bank account without me knowing this, I want that back my name is Colin Ritchie

contact email is Colin.andrew.[protected]@btinternet.com

or contact email is Colin.andrew.[protected]@icloud.com

and I can't login as I have no idea what the login is anymore

I won 3 big contests in Viewbug but never received ANY prize what so ever. I have contacted them but am getting the run around or they do not respond. I won the contests for the Staff Winter Selection of 2015, Image of the Month June 2017 & Image of the Month for July 2017. All three of these contests said there was a prize valued over $500.00. I received NOTHING and I emailed them about it. Still nothing.

Up until nearly 2 months ago, I was receiving daily email notifications about results of contest, voting, notifications but now receive none. Could you check to determine if a email communication link has been disabled or broken. I checked my spam box and emails are not there.. Is there anything I have to do to correct the problem?

thanks,

fking
[protected]@aol.com

They truly do have no concern for their members. I had an account for 6 months. I do boudoir and pin up photography. My photos have some tasteful nudity (which is allowed). I had a photo shoot on a beach in aruba and one of my photos was very popular, it had 1500 view had many rankings in photo trifecas. Viewbug even gave it the summer selection award. Then one day it just disappeared off the site. When I contacted them about it numerous times, they ignored me or just gave back generic they were looking into it notes back. I eventually gave up and stayed off the site a couple months. (I am a paying pro member as well). Last week I went on and they had a female form contest. I submitted some black and whites. They were in no way explicit. You could see a breast in 3 of them thats all. Within two hours they disappeared. I had them marked as adult. So I contacted them, they insulted my creative works by telling me nudity for the sake of nudity was not allowed. I took screen shots of other peoples work which showed open vagina, and masturbation and asked how that was more offensive than the breast in my picture. They appear to pull pictures based on complaints without looking at actual picture. They refused to even look at what I sent, but cancelled my account on me. My pictures have been used by artists to paint and are sold as prints. They are in no way pornographic and I am disgusted by how viewbug has different standards for different members. One of the pictures they pulled of mine was in week 3 of being top 10 trifecta, if given awards one week how is it offensive the next week? Do yourself a favor and don't support viewbug as they are unprofessional and a joke in the photography world.

I have nothing good to say about this site ViewBug. In my opinion ViewBug is just a waste of time and there are better photo sharing services. I won a contest on this site and was supposed to get a reward of some kind but I did not receive anything. I tried to contact customer service about my reward, but they simply did not reply. It really seemed that there was no customer service and that ViewBug didn't care about anything. I regret that I wasted my time on this site. There are many contests on ViewBug and with that they try to attract new users. Better stay away from this place.

I was attracted to Viewbug by their long list of expert judges. There was virtually nothing to tell me about how the site operates, but I expected it to be similar to other sites that offer juried competition for a gallery exhibition or other prices.

This site is different. Most winners are decided members votes. Members range widely in skill level and experience. Look at the work posted on Flickr and similar sites to get an idea. If you are an advanced photographer, these competitions are not very useful and similar to the ones you can get for free elsewhere online. The juried competitions involve members narrowing the selection down to about 50 images (from thousands) and a more experienced juror (a website staff or other) just looks at top 50 images.

I found the nondisclosure of that up front together with listing of great many expert judges creating an impression that the competitions are juried by experts. Even when you do become a member, it is difficult to find out how the competitions are organised. By that time it is too late and 3 weeks after I signed up for a year, I was offered only about 1/4 of what I paid back. I found this deceptive. I hope that you did better research of this site than I did and that you learn from the experience.

When I just found ViewBug I really liked the idea and thought that it was a really nice place to share photos. There were also many interesting contests for photographers with really cool prizes. I've tried to participate in some of those and I actually won something.
I was shocked when customer service rep told me that I have to pay some money to get the prize! Beyond ridiculous! What kind of contest is that where you need to pay for the prize? Total joke!

I have tried to cancel my account and find no way to get in touch with these people. I do not want any of there services anymore.

Yesterday I got multiple emails from the site that said they have other people that submit photos now following my photos.

How do I get them to stop bothering me and how do I get confirmation that I am NO longer a member.

I would like to become a paying member but the service only accepts creditcard. This may be common in the US, but there's a big wide world which doesn't have or needs such a card.
For those people there's a (almost hidden) paypal option, but while I have more than enough money in my paypal account it keeps on bothering me about, guess what, linking a credit card to my paypal account before I'm allowed to pay viewbug. Guess this has to do with the "subscription" thing..

I even tried to give myself a year as a present, hoping that the subscription would be necessary there.. But no luck..

So becoming a member needs having a credit card. No credit card, no membership. Tough cookies..

I paid for and became a "Pro" member at Viewbug. I had originally signed on several years ago and after reading some negative reviews decided not to upload any of my photos. Recently a friend of mine signed on and encouraged me to do so as well and I did so thinking I had initially overeacted. Well, lo and behold, as I was going through the photos I recognised some photos I and my friend had uploaded on facebook. I immediately reported the theft and had absolutely no feedback from Viewbug. We have the original photos with Exif data and the stolen images had none so we are confident they are ours. What we want is confirmation that our complaint is being dealt with, after all, we are both paying a premium to use the service.