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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

#491

Post by tornato7 »

lelandfe wrote: post #484
victor106 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use https://privacy.com/ for this. One of the best discoveries I found on hn a few years ago

The “personal” plan is free. I’m always cautious with free things that use my personal data - if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. How are they able to keep this free?

Like any credit card company, they charge fees to the vendor. Something like 1.5%+$0.30 of every transaction. It even says on their website,

> we make money from the interchange paid by merchants

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#492

Post by russellbeattie »

How do people at Adobe justify this to themselves? In addition to management who made the decision to fuck over their own customers, there are dozens of others who were involved in implementing this scam. This is near criminal, if not outright theft.

If you are an Adobe employee, you really should talk to your manager about your misgivings working for such an unethical company, and question whether you should still be working there.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#493

Post by dhosek »

I had a small task that Illustrator would have been the right tool to use. However, with all the [expletive deleted] around dark patterns on the free trial, I decided that I was better off doing it with Affinity Designer instead. I've bought multiple editions of the full Adobe suite (dating back to before it was called Adobe CS or whatever it is now) and they've since lost me as a customer.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#494

Post by Syzygies »

sibit wrote: post #58

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.

This also works for American Express. They won't pro-rate the annual fee after thirty days, but you can drop from Platinum or Gold to a Green card and get back the difference.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#495

Post by CrendKing »

jsf01 wrote: post #447
rabuse wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always just create a virtual number through my CC, set the maximum to $1, and have it expire within a couple months. Works like a charm.

How do you do that?

About 6-8 years ago, all major credit card companies in US has the virtual CC service: BoA, Citi, Chase, you name it. Passing one period, they all started to shut down the service, saving Citi.

I don't know why Citi still has this service, and seems to keep developing it (it used to be a Flash page, and since Flash is out commissioned, they rewrote the whole service into HTML).

So if you are in US, get a Citi CC or something like privacy.com.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#496

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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.

I haven't worked at Adobe, but I have worked at other places with somewhat similar subscription policies, and I highly, highly doubt they would send it to collections:

1. There is an extremely low chance they would collect anything anyway, so it's not worth it to them.

2. If someone actually challenged their collection, there is a good chance, of it went that far, that the judicial system would find this type of agreement invalid given the dark patterns involved.

Basically, what Adobe and other companies are trying to do with these onerous auto-renewal and ridiculous early termination fees is just to make more money from people (a) forgetting to term their subscriptions and (b) not wanting to go through the hassle of fighting the early termination fee.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#497

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ssss11 wrote: post #428
josephcsible wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway a "free" trial that asks for your cc number is obviously not free. There is a legitimate reason to do that: to keep people from making a bunch of accounts and getting free trials with them forever.

Couldn’t you make the free trial useful enough to show off the product, yet _incomplete_ in such a way that continually making new accounts is not viable? An example.. a marketing mail app where the trial only allows you to mail 1 or 2 campaigns with a max of 5 email addresses (recipients) for each. In that scenario you’d see the full capability of the product but couldn’t use it for a full email campaign. Creating m…

But you'd want to test that the mail campaign manager handles large campaigns efficiently, etc.. I guess there's a suggestion here that two trial options should be available a "trial with CC" where you get access to the whole product and a "trial without CC" where you get access to a simulcrum of the product, like you can use Netflix but it only shows the first 5 minutes of all shows or something.

I'm moving web/email hosting providers at the moment and the range of trials available is interesting. Two examples to highlight the range: Linode offers a $100 USD value to use in a time-limited trial (one month IIRC); OVH wouldn't even give me a trial on request and have a minimum 12 month upfront charge (I can't believe they're serious, every provider has given a free trial in the past even if only for a week or two [which is not long enough for me to get a proper view of someone's service]).

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#498

Post by nkellenicki »

anon23anon wrote: post #318
cpach wrote: post #68

If 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…

I've bought both Acorn and Affinity over the years. W/ Affinity they're license is only good for the platform you purchased it on e.g. you can't use a windows license on your mac - you'd need to purchase 2 separate license. Considering I have a work mac and a work windows this was kind of annoying but whatever. The thing that I encountered w/ Acorn was their license was tied to a particular version. For example a new…

> The part that irked me here was I only got like 1 years use out of the software.

Surely it doesn't actually stop working after a year? ie. You can keep using the version you bought after a new version comes out. I presume it still does what you bought it to do?

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#499

Post by laumars »

jeroenhd wrote: post #218
laumars wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know, I opened their page and the drop down was clearly labeled as an annual subscription to me. It also told me the exact date by which I should cancel not to infer any costs. The drop down offered me to pay the full year upfront, or a monthly plan which is cancellable at any time. I don't think this stuff is illegal at all. What they effectively did here is put the email address and personal information for…

The thing is, that kind of fine line between deception while still presenting just enough detail to claim the customer should have looked at the details might wash in an American court, but it wouldn’t in the EU. In the EU the rules state that the responsibility is on the company to ensure the individual is aware of what they’re signing. And you cannot reasonably say that is what is happening here.

Also I wouldn’t be so sure that a class action suit of this nature wouldn’t be successful. Large companies have lost flimsier cases.

> or a monthly plan which is cancellable at any time.

At any time, sure. But it’s the $300 dollar cancellation fee thats the issue.

> Complain to your browser vendor about the lack of scroll bars if that's what's gotten you.

This whole “dont hate the players blame the game” meme is pretty tedious. If an organisation is abusing a feature for their own gain then they should be responsible for abusing a feature for their own gain.

> I don't think anyone was getting tricked, but I do believe people were entering a subscription without looking at the details.

“Tricked” is a loaded term. I think the real question is whether Adobe intentionally made it easy for people to misunderstand the details.

Given what I’d seen I’d argue that was the case. This might not be an issue in the US but it is in the EU, where larger organisations have had to pay out because of less.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#500

Post by posguy »

ed wrote: post #381
estro0182 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CapitalOne offered this feature too, which I used heavily. Then they _got rid of it_. Blows my mind, it was incredibly nice.

They're still offered through the Eno extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/eno%C2%AE-from-cap...

Is there a way to use this outside the Chrome browser?
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