Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

Meh. It’s not great, could definitely be clearer, but it’s also bordering on intentionally obtuse to claim you have no idea what ‘annual contract paid monthly’ means.

I mean, all of the words are right there. Any time I sign up for an annual contract I assume I’m in it for, well, about a year.

If I didn’t want an annual contract, or wanted to see if there were options, I’d simply hit that little drop down box there and voila - it’s even clearer.

Difference is a mobile view is often designed with that in mind, so it works across the board.

On desktop, I've had random horizontal scrollbars even on big sites like GitHub. Non-functional as the content had enough space, but still there, because no one bothered to test.

I do think hiding it on mobile devices is bad as well, though. Leads to exactly the issue in the twitter thread, with more content not being noticed.

Found an old discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24293421

Working link: http://web.archive.org/web/20210226184710/https://svenkadak....

I am not quite sure why people don't grasp that it's an annual plan for really expensive software.

"Annual plan, billed monthly" is about as easy as it's going to be in four words on a button or by a button.

If you could rent it for just a month now and then, wouldn't you only rent it in the months you need it?

They make it so you can't.

There's a solution: DON'T USE IT.

Ask yourself seriously: what is it you want to do that the Affinity Suite (which costs about, what, £150 and then £20 each for the two iPad apps) cannot do for you. It's not toy software; it's enormously capable (and improves on Adobe's approach in several places). It has surprisingly complete PSD and Illustrator import, it runs Photoshop plugins, it's cross-platform and it runs well on old hardware (at least on the Mac).

Failing that, you have Krita, Inkscape, Scribus, Darktable, Rawtherapee, GIMP if you must, and they are all pretty surprisingly good. Plus there are video options that are cost-effective or free (Resolve, for example, runs on Linux). There are all sorts of viable competitor apps on other platforms.

Adobe aren't really evil -- they are a giant, slow-witted, largely benevolent monopoly, weighed down by a lot of cruft. (They are also fairly reasonable on the phone and support portals). But you don't need to use their stuff; you can create a sane workflow that routes around them with decent tools.

Complaining about a "dark" pattern that up front tells you that you're getting into an annual commitment for something incredibly expensive strikes me as missing the point; the point is subscriptions are tricky and you shouldn't expect to be able to game them.

Vote with your feet.

For anyone stuck in this dark pattern here is a trick I've used in the past:

Adobe won't let you cancel without paying the remainder of your subscription fee however you can switch to a different plan. As soon as you switch you'll have the ability to cancel your "new" plan within 14 days. If you cancel after 14 days they'll charge you the early termination fee.

For future reference, just tell the vendor "I did not authorize this charge. Please refund me". Don't engage them further.

When that call fails (or, if they don't pick up the phone in a reasonable amount of time), call your credit card company and say "I want to issue a charge back". They'll ask if you tried to work with the vendor. Answer "yes", full stop.

There should be a phone number associated with the charge on your credit card bill. Start (and end your interaction with the vendor) by calling that number.

Edit: You can also say "this service wasn't rendered", or "I never received the product I ordered", as applicable. Those are specifically listed as valid reasons to issue a chargeback. The person at the credit card company has to enter a numeric reason code for the charge back, and by using those phrases (or similar), you're making their lives easier.