Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products • Hacker News Board

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#21

Post by DonHopkins » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 1:40 PM UTC

Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem.

Why, after the many years the problem has been repeatedly reported, doesn't Adobe fix their apparently terribly designed and maintained web site, which sends many of their customers who are trying to unsubscribe into a frustrating infinite loop, instead of manually unsubscribing the few persistent squeaky wheels who one by one eventually find their way to the forum to complain and demand a refund?

Could the reason be that Adobe's staff is unable to fix the looping bug in their own web server that their users keep reporting? Do they not employ anyone who has the appropriate skill set to fix that problem? Do they not have a bug reporting and tracking system in place? Does Adobe, of all companies, not consider the web to be important enough to devote sufficient resources to competently maintaining their own web presence? Or perhaps there is another reason?

The reason is because it's a dark pattern they've purposefully implemented and maintained in its broken yet lucrative state, because it makes them a hell of a lot more money that way by systematically fucking their customers on a large scale, while also saving them money paying their staff to fix their "broken" web site that's actually working as designed, by making them more and more money each time it "malfunctions".

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#22

Post by pschastain » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 1:49 PM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #20

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #14

I recently tried to subscribe with Adobe. I really only wanted access to two apps: Illustrator and Photoshop. I have absolutely no use for any of their other apps, and I hate all their cloud stuff. Unfortunately, that forces you to buy a $50/mo plan. Regardless, I thought it'd still be worth it, so I was willing to pay the price. After subscribing I download their Creative Cloud installer, only to find out it doesn't…

Your comment about a case-sensitive filesystem on macOS made me curious. Are you using APFS or anything else? What's your motivation to using a custom filesystem?

Case-sensitive HFS+ is an option when formatting a disk.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#23

Post by muninn_ » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #21

Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem. Why, after the many years the problem has been repeate…

I think what it boils down to is that it's just a low priority for them to fix, versus working on their products. They probably have a fix in the works as part of some new redesign and have judged the current annoyance to not cost enough money to fix immediately. I'd chalk it up to incompetence versus malfeasance.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#24

Post by DonHopkins » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:10 PM UTC

muninn_ wrote: post #23

DonHopkins wrote: post #21

Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem. Why, after the many years the problem has been repeate…

I think what it boils down to is that it's just a low priority for them to fix, versus working on their products. They probably have a fix in the works as part of some new redesign and have judged the current annoyance to not cost enough money to fix immediately. I'd chalk it up to incompetence versus malfeasance.

This has gone on for too many years, and makes them too much money, to be a mistake. They completely ignored and refused to acknowledge the original subject of the thread, which states explicitly: "how to cancel monthly subscription to photoshop? Website leads you in a loop".

I don't think Adobe's incompetent when it comes to maintaining their own web site. It's the business they're in, and what the tools they make do.

So to be charitable, I'd chalk it up to competent malfeasance.

But on the other hand, maybe they're suffering from eating their own dog food! Perhaps ColdFusion web sites are so buggy and hard to maintain that they can't even fix their own infinite looping problem after all these years. Perhaps it's so hard to hire competent ColdFusion programmers and interaction designers, that even Adobe doesn't have any on staff.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#25

Post by Bombthecat » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:10 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #21

Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem. Why, after the many years the problem has been repeate…

I think it is more along the line to make more money: replace engineers with sales

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#26

Post by andybak » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:12 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #21

Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem. Why, after the many years the problem has been repeate…

Alternatively - it might be typical big company bureaucracy. These staff members might simply not have an effective way to communicate with anyone that could fix the underlying problem - without going seriously out of their way and maybe missing a few targets as a result.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#27

Post by DonHopkins » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:17 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #26

DonHopkins wrote: post #21

Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem. Why, after the many years the problem has been repeate…

Alternatively - it might be typical big company bureaucracy. These staff members might simply not have an effective way to communicate with anyone that could fix the underlying problem - without going seriously out of their way and maybe missing a few targets as a result.

The excuse of "our sales people have no way to contact the web developer who's on vacation, and we don't have a bug tracking system in place" might work for a dentist's office, but not a company that prides itself in developing online software and tools for maintaining web sites, and brands its products with the buzz-word "Cloud".

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#28

Post by greenspot » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

It gets even worse if you need to do subscriptions for your team. The management console is an utter joke. Adobe owns some of the killer apps of the creative industry but there are alternatives:

Photo editing (Photoshop):

- Windows: Gimp, Xara Photo, Affinity Photo, Corel Photo. Paint.net

- macOS: Pixelmator, Affinity Photo, Gimp

Vector editing for digital (Adobe had Fireworks but abandoned it, Illustrator is rather print and clumsy):

- Windows: Affinity Designer, Inkscape

- macOS: Sketch, Inskape, Affinity Designer

Vector editing for print (Adobe Illustrator):

- Windows: Inkscape

- macOS: Inkscape

Desktop Publishing (Adobe InDesign):

- Windows/macOS: QuarkXPress which is even more expensive

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#29

Post by username223 » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

This is why you should never sign up for automatic billing. I had an issue with Verizon some years ago, and was glad I had taken the time to explicitly pay my bill every month. I told a customer service person to cancel my account at the end of my contract. When this didn't happen, and I kept receiving bills, I spent some time trying to navigate customer retention (i.e. "customer disservice") without much luck. Fortunately, I had made sure to never enable auto-billing, so I simply stopped paying, and they eventually took a hint and cancelled my service.

I'm glad I have a pre-"Cloud" version of Lightroom, so I don't have to deal with this nonsense.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#30

Post by benologist » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #24

muninn_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what it boils down to is that it's just a low priority for them to fix, versus working on their products. They probably have a fix in the works as part of some new redesign and have judged the current annoyance to not cost enough money to fix immediately. I'd chalk it up to incompetence versus malfeasance.

This has gone on for too many years, and makes them too much money, to be a mistake. They completely ignored and refused to acknowledge the original subject of the thread, which states explicitly: "how to cancel monthly subscription to photoshop? Website leads you in a loop". I don't think Adobe's incompetent when it comes to maintaining their own web site. It's the business they're in, and what the tools they make d…

Maybe like Valve / Steam they do it because they can... until someone with a lawyer drags them through court and they're held accountable for building theft and fraud into their business model.

http://www.pcmag.com/news/350574/valve-fined-3m-in-australia...

Before it even went to trial they globally overhauled their refund system, presumably after realizing EU, USA, CA etc also have consumer protection laws designed to protect consumers from companies that are committing fraud.