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

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#71

Post by aendruk » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 4:47 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 ran into a similar issue with Spotify. Reported a bug in their unsubscribe process and they would only respond with "don't worry about that, I'll do it manually" as if that was the norm.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#72

Post by cdevs » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 4:50 PM UTC

Maybe the answer is being able to control is via the payment processor like this subscription supports Apple payment subscribe /opt out or whoever and that middle man can kill off the account.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#73

Post by jmiserez » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 4:55 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #64

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux gets no love?

Because Adobe CC products don't run on Linux? Think before commenting!

You don't need Adobe Cc on Linux if you're going with one of the alternatives. And both Gimp and Inkscape are Linux applications, GIMP is even part of the GNU suite!

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#74

Post by Glyptodon » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

One of several reasons I left my first job out of college is that the boss made me remove the ability to cancel a subscription from our web application. I thought it was pure jackassery to make people call and then try to wheel and deal to keep them on, but it did make a surprisingly real difference to the bottom line.

No doubt something similar is at play with Adobe. Personally, I'm not sure I'd be opposed to a law or regulation of some kind that any subscription you can sign up for from a website you can also cancel from the website.

The whole "let's make it hard to cancel" play is so slimy.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#75

Post by markonen » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #36

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm using case-sensitive HFS+. When I last reinstalled macOS on my laptop it was one of the options available. I thought about it and thought a case-sensitive file system was more sensible. Any problems with case-sensitive file systems must be solved if we want a smooth migration to APFS, which is case-sensitive. I've already reported or helped fix a handful of minor bugs related to case-sensitivity.

The APFS developer preview in Sierra is indeed case sensitive, but we don’t know if that’ll continue to be the case […] in the upcoming general release.

I’d like say that it’d never ever happen on the Mac, but since iOS also uses a case-sensitive filesystem, I wouldn't be that surprised. Sad, but not surprised.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#76

Post by redleggedfrog » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

I'm a custom software developer, mostly e-commerce, and over the years I have been asked numerous times to implement similar schemes.

The most popular is a recurring payments, such as for health supplements, that you cannot cancel on the web site. Not a broken system, but just no way to do it. You have to contact them via email. And many of them have a unspoken policy of not cancelling on the 1st, or maybe even the 2nd, request.

My suggestion is contact your credit card and declare the charge fraud and stopped.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#77

Post by kylehotchkiss » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 5:10 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…

> 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?

Our culture loves the safety of recurring revenue more and more every year. It's not a technical problem, it's a business one. How can eliminate market uncertainties in our cash flows? Easy! Auto billing! People are busy and miss line items on their credit card records.

I sort of hope card companies start to look into people's frustrations regarding recurring revenue and implement policies based on it. Or the FTC. Policies such as 3 click cancellation, or maybe even higher merchant fees for recurring transactions.

I'm not afraid to report recurring transactions to credit card company. They just block your number with the charging company if you explain to them that their site didn't allow you to. Eventually they're bound to set a nice letter to Adobe if we all start doing this.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#78

Post by tajen » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

redleggedfrog wrote: post #76

I'm a custom software developer, mostly e-commerce, and over the years I have been asked numerous times to implement similar schemes. The most popular is a recurring payments, such as for health supplements, that you cannot cancel on the web site. Not a broken system, but just no way to do it. You have to contact them via email. And many of them have a unspoken policy of not cancelling on the 1st, or maybe even the 2…

It's important to contact the CC and declare fraud, because there often is a $15 chargeback in addition to reimbursement. If enough people could do that...

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#79

Post by nickbauman » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 5:19 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…

Maybe sign up with a stored value card, instead of a credit card.

Re: Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

#80

Post by alphabettsy » Sun, Jan 08, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

I refuse to ever pay for their products again because of this. I shouldn't have to call the phone number to unsubscribe from a web product.