I think customers are a bit to blame for such shady companies. So many good alternatives to Adobe ecosystem exists but customers are mostly unwilling to switch to them and as result Adobe doesn’t have to worry about keeping customers satisfied.
Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
61–70 of 592 posts
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#62Is it legal in the EU?
I guess not, just tried that and there's an additional step at the beginning - where you have to explicitly choose if you want monthly billing ($79,49/mo), yearly but billed monthly ($52,99/mo), or yearly paid upfront ($599,88)
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#63This isn't a solution and doesn't excuse Adobe's shitty behavior, but I use privacy.com which gives you single-purpose cards. That way, I can just pause the card and subsequent charges will fail. Then let them try to get their money. Pull-based payments are such a bad idea, implemented even worse. Privacy.com at least gives you per-merchant controls and limits, even though this really should have been a Visa default.
You're right here, they won't be able to charge you automatically via the credit card, but you're still legally obligated to pay for the subscription since you have agreed to the terms of service during sign up. Depending on the action that they would take, you could easily end up paying a higher amount than the original subscription price if they put additional charges on you...
> you're still legally obligated to pay for the subscription since you have agreed to the terms of service during sign up
Except they didn't agree to them, because they didn't know about them, and they might not be legally obligated to pay, depending on the jurisdiction.
It's pretty clear that there wasn't a "meeting of the minds" in most of these situations.
I don't use Adobe but if I got bit by this I'd definitely take them to small claims.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#64Just yesterday, on a local streaming platform that has a series that I want to watch I was offered "7 days free". Great, I can watch the accumulated episodes and if I still feel like watching the new ones that come weekly I can keep the subscription, right?
Nope, the "7 days free" wasn't a a trail but 7 extra days when you purchase a full year subscription. I was considering to get a monthly subscription to try it out but since they tried to trick me into a yearly one I simply decide to Torrent the crap out of their content. Sorry not sorry.
That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks, it's standart on every app: If there's a trail period you get the trail and if not you directly start paying. Also no tricks in the cancelation process, it's all in one place so you can review and cancel easily. You can also change plans right from the same screen. If somehow you manage to purchase something you don't want, get refunded easily.
I really hope that if Apple is forced into allowing 3rd party payments, we end up getting a standardised interface like the one we have currently on Apple's platforms but with an option to choose the alternative payment method(in the same screen but a different card or account kind of thing, like choosing a card in Apple Pay).
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#65This happened to my wife and I. We both have advanced degrees and write software for a living. The fact that it had these cancellation terms was not at all obvious to either of us, and only realized it when she went to cancel. It’s one of the few trials that I absolutely remember and I’m so glad it was just the photography bundle and not the whole creative suite. It’s absolutely designed to trick you and it works. Fuck them for doing this. At least it wasn’t a lot of money to us, but what about struggling artists/photographers who sign up for creative suite trial but plan to only buy one or two apps, and are now on the hook for a year of everything? It’s pretty dang close to a scam if you ask me.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#66I 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…
You're just defending the right of a giant corporation to communicate poorly in a way that enriches them at the expense of customers, who are often struggling artists.
> "Annual plan, billed monthly" is about as easy as it's going to be in four words on a button or by a button.
It's absolutely insane that you think Adobe has fulfilled their obligations to communicate to the customer what they're getting into by putting "annual plan paid monthly" in a drop-down next to a button.
Adobe should warn the user of the early cancellation fees in big red letters. We all know why they don't: because they benefit from some users taking a deal that they don't realize is very bad for them.
That's what you're defending.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#67OT rant: > Ooh, I can scroll. That was not obvious at all. It is if you use a proper browser+OS combo. Why some designers thought it was a good idea to hide the scroll bar in their OS (which some browsers adopt to) is beyond me. It's also an annoyance as a user with a browser that display scrollbars. The amount of random scrollbars appearing because the devs never tested anything but Mac+Chrome is staggering.
> the devs never tested anything but Mac+Chrome Which Android browsers show scrollbars?
> Which Android browsers show scrollbars?
How many people develop web sites on Android?
Meanwhile, there are a lot of web developers who use Mac as their dev machine; and the majority of them would never check how the website looks on Windows or Linux.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#68If you’re on macOS and just want a good and convenient image editor, I warmly recommend Acorn. The Muellers (owners of Flying Meat Software) have put a lot of effort to make it feel like a really solid Mac application. The price is good and from time to time they offer discounts. The whole experience reminds me of using good old Paintshop Pro back in the late 90s (^_^)
Other options are Affinity Photo from Serif Ltd and Pixelmator. IMHO Acorn has much better GUI though. (FWIW, Affinity works fine on Windows too.)
I realize that some people need the features from Photoshop and then I guess they have to pay the “Adobe tax”. But if you’re not a photo/graphics professional, you can come a long way with the above options.
AFAIK there are also lots of good alternatives for Illustrator and InDesign.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#69This isn't a solution and doesn't excuse Adobe's shitty behavior, but I use privacy.com which gives you single-purpose cards. That way, I can just pause the card and subsequent charges will fail. Then let them try to get their money. Pull-based payments are such a bad idea, implemented even worse. Privacy.com at least gives you per-merchant controls and limits, even though this really should have been a Visa default.
This is why last year India's policy for auto debit rules for credit debit card makes very good sense.
Under the new norms, banks will be required to inform customers in advance about recurring payment due and transaction would be carried following nod from the customer (will need additional factor authentication from 1 April). This rule is likely to impact your monthly subscription charges for different streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+...
https://www.livemint.com/industry/banking/debit-card-credit-...
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#70This isn't a solution and doesn't excuse Adobe's shitty behavior, but I use privacy.com which gives you single-purpose cards. That way, I can just pause the card and subsequent charges will fail. Then let them try to get their money. Pull-based payments are such a bad idea, implemented even worse. Privacy.com at least gives you per-merchant controls and limits, even though this really should have been a Visa default.
You're right here, they won't be able to charge you automatically via the credit card, but you're still legally obligated to pay for the subscription since you have agreed to the terms of service during sign up. Depending on the action that they would take, you could easily end up paying a higher amount than the original subscription price if they put additional charges on you...
The problem is only that they can throw lawyers at you. Normally a contract is invalid if one side can show to have been deceived.