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Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

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Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#101

Post by laumars »

damontal wrote: post #82
hedora wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And what if they then send you to collections? Now you’ve got bill collectors after you and your credit affected.

I can’t see Adobe going to those lengths because they’d know there is a good change they would lose any class action lawsuit that would come about. Which would not just cost them in damages but also in bad publicity plus likely get them ordered to remove the dark patterns too (thus removing any future revenue this dark otters generates).

I’m not as clued up on consumer laws as I once was but I’m pretty sure in Europe their sign up page is actually illegal. Not just immoral but literally classed as false advertising or something similar. And even if that’s not the case, we do have protections against being tricked into signing an unclear contract and this would easily fall into that category.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#103

Post by fitnessrunner »

This isn't just Adobe. Unity3d does this too. While I like the Unity product, I was trialing others too (Unreal) and didn't realize I was being locked into an annual contract. They don't even have an early cancellation fee; you are on the hook for the entire year, no way around it. Be careful.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#104

Post by CharlesW »

civilized wrote: post #66
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #56

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…

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 putti…

> 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.

"Annual plan, paid monthly" seems pretty clear to me too, so help me approach this with a new perspective.

Is there a SaaS provider using the "annual plan, paid monthly" who does this "right"? Are you against this pricing model in general?

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#105

Post by londons_explore »

judge2020 wrote: post #47
prirun wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they report you to a credit bureau and get your credit score lowered? I recently had my credit score lowered, I think because I canceled a Chase / Amazon credit card after only 1 month. Apparently that is a credit faux paus. No balance owed, but I did hit the measly $500 limit once - another thing bad for credit scores. When my car + homeowner insurance renewed, it had a special section about how Lexus Nexus had…

In general, they can and do send this sort of stuff to collections since you did sign up for the terms and it's a non-trivial amount of money owed. Gyms do it for far less, so I don't see why Adobe wouldn't.

I'm surprised gyms don't do it... It is my understanding that credit reference agencies pay money for this kind of information, and pay even more if they get to guarantee that the same debts won't be reflected on competing credit reporting mechanisms.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#106

Post by Kliment »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #28
hirundo wrote: post #9

Apropos of nothing, GIMP is pretty darn good, no charge, no subscription. Ditto Darktable, Inkscape et. al.

> GIMP is pretty darn good GIMP could be pretty darn good if they gave 20 UX designers another 10 years to redo their entire UX. As is, it's a usability nightmare. Whenever I'm forced to use it, it feels like I spend 70% of my time fighting with the horrible UI, 25% of the time Googling how to do trivial things because it's very much not obvious, and 5% doing what I actually want.

That's exactly what made Krita so good. Every once in a while they'd shut a bunch of the developers in a room with a bunch of artists/users, have the users complain about everything that pisses them off, and get all those things fixed. The resulting application is obviously driven by what artists enjoy, and it feels that way. Strongly recommended.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#107

Post by Jare »

torstenvl wrote: post #63
av8avenger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> because they didn't know about them

I want to agree with this, but can't in strict terms. "Annual plan, paid monthly" item description next to the price is hard to defend as something unreadable. Maybe it's just me, but anytime I see "annual plan", I know I'm signing up for a year, and that commitment pretty much always comes with advantages (less total price) and disadvantages (cancellation fees) compared to shorter commitments.

It's hard to deny the pileup of dark patterns in this and many other subscription services is disgusting and I wish the legal precedent was clear that customer clarity and control always trumps service clauses. Over a decade ago I established as a rule for myself that anything "free" that requires me to enter my credit card is in fact not free. Anytime I consider sidestepping the rule, I know I have to be REALLY sure and read everything. Yep, "limited trial with pre-accepted subscription but hey you can cancel anytime!" which is common in mobile, is always a no no from me.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#108

Post by pcurve »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #14

I've been working at detangling myself from the Adobe lineup of products. I really like (or liked) Adobe AfterEffects, it's been very helpful for me in compositing trailers for my computer game business, but it's totally been replaced by the free version of Davinci Resolve. Which I've also found is an excellent replacement for Adobe Audition, which I was using for editing the Voice Over and raw Sound Effects for, aga…

That's the problem. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects have almost no competition and they know it.

Even if there were, companies can't just jump to different tools because they would lose ability to open all their past work files. The migration will be slow.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#109

Post by daniel-thompson »

lukevp wrote: post #87
judge2020 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, they can and do send this sort of stuff to collections since you did sign up for the terms and it's a non-trivial amount of money owed. Gyms do it for far less, so I don't see why Adobe wouldn't.

We had Time Warner send us to collections which then reported my wife to the bureaus, alleging that we had never returned our cable modem (this was just for $60, and it was 5+ years ago!!). First of all, I’m incredibly sure that we did. We had fiber after that, what would I want with an old DOCSIS modem anyway? And second of all, they were unable to offer any proof that we had not returned it. The company that was co…

> We also spent a bunch of time on the phone with TWC directly, and they had no account in our name or any history of our account

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