Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 592 posts

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#331

Post by gkedzierski »

Spooky23 wrote: post #208
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.

They aren’t evil, it’s just when companies move to subscription they turn into mini insurance companies focused on the spreadsheets. They model out your lifetime value and know that every $1 they chisel out of you is worth $1.40 in 5 years. They are brutal in the enterprise space, looking for 10-15% price escalations. They also turn over sales leadership so if you are big enough you can pull stunts for concessions. J…

> They model out your lifetime value and know that every $1 they chisel out of you is worth $1.40 in 5 years.

Even more. Every $1 in MRR is worth around $216 in company market cap. (assuming their current multiple)

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#332

Post by w4rh4wk5 »

Seeing this thread, I just realized how easy the hidden scrollbars in macOS can screw you over. Would the terms and condition page by worded slightly different, the Cancellation Condition heading would not even be visible and you won't even notice that there is still content you are agreeing to.

This feels bad, like really bad!

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#333

Post by lostcolony »

marcosdumay wrote: post #315
ummonk wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it’s just when companies move to subscription they turn into mini insurance companies focused on the spreadsheets. They model out your lifetime value and know that every $1 they chisel out of you is worth $1.40 in 5 years." The term for that is "evil".

"Evil" is normally used for people that do worse actions than overbill their customers. "Fraudster" applies better here.

Nah, evil is fine. It's a low grade evil, sure, but it's still evil. To cite a lovely paragraph from Carpe Jugulum that feels appropriate -

“There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’ ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#334

Post by mrtksn »

mthoms wrote: post #321
mrtksn wrote: post #64

Just 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 ou…

>That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks If you don't cancel a three day trial before the end of the second day, you are automatically billed. That's not a three day trial, that's a two day trial. A full 33% less than what you are explicitly promised[0]: >If you signed up for a free or discounted trial subscription and you don't want to re…

Yes it happens but you get the refund easily. You also get an e-mail before that happens.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#335

Post by vorpalhex »

is_true wrote: post #88
notyourwork wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CC chargeback.

Depending on your card it could be a pain and cost you some money. Mine requires a new card if I want to do a charge back.

A chargeback should be (I would imagine is required to be, but haven't checked) free. If the company wants to roll the number too then fine, but that should be just inconvenient not a cost.

If your credit card company is charging you, leave them.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#336

Post by ziml77 »

Is it really a trick when it says right in the subscription term selection that it's an annual subscription?

I hate Adobe's insane subscription prices and the fact that they don't give any reminders that your subscription is going to renew is evil, but nothing seems wrong about the 1 year subscription.

If anything, it's a courtesy[1] that they're letting you cancel in the middle of the subscription term at all. Imagine if you paid a lump sum for an annual subscription. Do you really expect to get any portion of your money back if you cancel? The annual-paid-monthly option is still an annual term, you just opted to spread the payments out. It's similar to if you bought something from a store using the store credit card to get 0% interest on the purchase for 12 months.

[1] A courtesy while they're fucking you over, but a courtesy nonetheless.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#337

Post by dheera »

arcticbull wrote: post #320
bambax wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can just block the recurring payments and wait for them to come at you? Anyway a "free" trial that asks for your cc number is obviously not free. Better to stay away of those to be on the safe side.

You may get sent to collections and thats a whole pile of misfortune.

Most online services just terminate your service after a couple warnings and don't bother with collections.

In any case just set it as your policy that you don't talk to collectors, you only engage with businesses directly.

Send Adobe a written notice of termination of the agreement, stop payments, and I believe that's all you need to do, but IANAL.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#339

Post by qwertox »

I don't understand this. It's a free 7-day trial. If I cancel during the 7-day trial, the following cancellation terms apply: If you cancel within 14 days of your initial order, you'll be fully refunded.

7 Also, it's not even clear if the 7 days do even count towards the 14 days, since in that case they could just as well state "first 14 days are free". But they are not free, since they belong to the first subscription month. They'd be 14 consumed days of the first month if no cancellation is made.

This should mean that the 7 days are not a part of the initial order. The initial order would get placed automatically after 7 days, you are just expressing your intent to automatically order after the 7 days of trial.

If this is not true, then they are definitely scamming their users, but I doubt that they would risk going to court for this.

But what I definitely think is a big scam is the 50% cancellation fee of the initial order, with the condition that you only get to use the remaining days of the month.

For example, if you cancel in the third week, you still have to pay around USD 300 (the tweets indicated a USD 600 per year cost), but you only get one week for that, instead of being able to use the full 6 months (50% of a year) you are actually paying for.

---

If I go to that page, there is the following text (it's also in his Tweet):

Cancel before --> 26 Feb [today is 5 Feb] This means that they are actually giving you a cancellation right of 7+14 days, just as mentioned in the "subscription and cancellation terms" plus the 7 days.

According to Wolfram Alpha "today + (14 + 7) days" = Feb 26, 2022

So no, you are not getting scammed with this free trial.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#340

Post by barbazoo »

hunter2_ wrote: post #149
barbazoo wrote: post #45

At some point they switched from "free 7 day trial" to "if you cancel after 14 days" so I don't know what's really going on there.

I assume this means days 1-7 are completely unpaid, days 8-14 you've begun paying but without annual commitment, and after that you're both paying and annually committed.

Seems like it shouldn't be surprising then having to pay something after the 7th day?
Post reply on HN