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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

#221

Post by iam-TJ »

CharlesW wrote: post #155
civilized wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject the idea that everyone should know from these words that they will be subject to an enormous early cancellation fee if they forget to cancel before the 7 day trial period is over. Adobe has a moral obligation to explain that up-front, so that consumers who cannot easily pay the fee are adequately warned of the danger they are getting themselves into.

> I reject the idea that everyone should know from these words that they will be subject to an enormous early cancellation fee if they forget to cancel before the 7 day trial period is over. I hear you, and I want to dig in on that a bit if you'll be kind enough to indulge me. I'm currently helping a SaaS vendor define their pricing plan, so I'd like to know what you would like to see in order to feel comfortable wit…

As another interested in this aspect, how about an 'info' tip alongside that states the minimum cost with an asterix?

"Yearly plan, paid monthly, £678" --> [ minimum cost £456 [[ a href="terms-cancel.html" ]] if cancelled early ]

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#222

Post by chrissnell »

bradleyjg wrote: post #152
achow wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It is a constant wonderment why Adobe is not called out ‘evil’ more often like its other SV brethren. They are not even good at software engineering and UX.

Evil is thrown around way to much. If you are going to use it for dishonest business practices what’s left for ISIS?

Yes. It’s all rooted in narcissism. Calling something “evil”, makes you a hero when you fight it, whether that means going on patrols in the streets of Raqqa or calling out a shitty SaaS pricing scheme on an internet bulletin board.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#223

Post by ushakov »

oytis wrote: post #200
ushakov wrote: post #8

pretty sure this is illegal in EU/Germany gotta show the investors that revenue growth thou!

That is literally the first thing I've encountered as a new immigrant to Germany. This scheme is ubiquitous here that nobody even considers it especially dishonest, it's up to the customer to be careful.

we have a 14 day "Widerrufrecht" Adobe must comply with and return 100% of the funds

they can't just override the law with their own Terms and Conditions

but yes, the scheme is very popular among telcos

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#224

Post by tux3 »

renewiltord wrote: post #219
tux3 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not a limited number of slots for who gets to be called evil. It's a threshold, not a competition. Sometimes the threshold changes, but crossing it is enough. No matter that other people might be even worse.

This is true. It’s a threshold. So sometimes when I think to myself “Should I be spending time fighting to ensure people are not dying at the hands of a fundamentalist religious organization or should I be spending my time lowering prices for a high end graphics editor?” I always try to remember that these are equivalent tasks. It doesn’t matter which I do. I am bringing the same amount of good to the world.

Pears are sweet. Yet Coca-Cola is sweeter. Both deserve the label, that doesn't mean some things can't be even sweeter than other.

Similarly, there are shades of evil. Inventing some new greater evil does not invalidate the regular kind.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#225

Post by boingy »

I found a loophole to get out of their contracts for free online and was amazed it worked. Tell them that your employer now pays for your Adobe subscription so you don't need it anymore. They must have a policy around this because these magic words seem to get them to cancel for you no questions asked. Also, the easiest way to contact them (good luck finding a live chat on their website) is via twitter DMs. Sounds bad but using this method I got my account cancelled with no fee in around 10 minutes and with just two messages.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#226

Post by suifbwish »

whimsicalism wrote: post #209
bradleyjg wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil is thrown around way to much. If you are going to use it for dishonest business practices what’s left for ISIS?

If you're going to use evil for ISIS, what's left for the Nazis?

If you are going to use evil for the Nazis what’s left for the Romans?

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#227

Post by Nextgrid »

jeroenhd wrote: post #198
Nextgrid wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are welcome to sue, but they'd have to justify their shenanigans to the court, which I'm sure would take a very dim view of intentionally tricking the user into signing up to something they didn't understand. The business model relies on most people not escalating it there and making noise about it. If they start getting hit by chargebacks or start clogging the legal system with these cases it will end pretty ba…

Why would they need to sue? Can't they just send invoices to your email, followed by debt collectors? The annual subscription is in plain sight. The cancellation terms are the result of bad web design for people using browsers whose browsers have made the idiotic choice to hide scroll bars by default (i.e. all mobile browsers and Safari) but that can be defended if the devs used Windows to make the website. Actually,…

You can trivially ignore the debt collectors. If they still want their money after that, they can sue. At that point it's ultimately down to the court to determine who's in the wrong and who owes what.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#229

Post by oldstrangers »

Graphic designer here: I got hired at an agency recently, signed up using my company's account so I could save $50/m doing away with my subscription and ran into this issue. Very fun.

Anyways, the future isn't going to be kind to Adobe. Figma has replaced a lot of my Adobe workflow, it's just infinitely a more pleasant experience. Canva has replaced things that require 3 different Adobe products to do. For serious video editing I'm using DaVinci Resolve. InDesign kind of remains a necessity but I can see Figma filling that gap too. That really just leaves Lightroom and Photoshop that get a lot of use, and the things they're necessary for are decreasing by the day.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#230

Post by Taywee »

bradleyjg wrote: post #152
achow wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It is a constant wonderment why Adobe is not called out ‘evil’ more often like its other SV brethren. They are not even good at software engineering and UX.

Evil is thrown around way to much. If you are going to use it for dishonest business practices what’s left for ISIS?

It's an adjective. Adobe is bad. ISIS is bad. That doesn't equate the two (or imply that it's the same degree) any more than calling them evil is. Evil is just an adjective that means "deliberately very morally wrong".

You could easily make the argument of ISIS being less evil than Adobe, given that many of them have conviction that they're doing the right thing, but Adobe couldn't possibly believe that this is anything but duplicitous, misleading, and scummy. Killing for religious beliefs is much more complex than simple "evil". Scamming your paying customers by intentionally misleading them with dark patterns is a very simple and obvious evil.

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