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

501–510 of 592 posts

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#501

Post by hedora »

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.

AT&T sent me to collections once because of an error on their part. I immediately disputed the charges with AT&T, then explained the situation to the collections officer.

Collections officers can't try to collect disputed debts, so they immediately left me alone.

Then, I spent over 24 hours on the phone with AT&T, and eventually paid them a bit under a hundred dollars that I didn't owe them. There was no credit report ding or harassment from the collections agency, at least.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#502

Post by hedora »

hashimotonomora wrote: post #34
hedora wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, consumer protection laws. I smell a pile of fines and lawsuits in their immediate future. As I understand the charge back process, vendors are generally assumed guilty until proven innocent, and it's not going to be worth Adobe's time to fight these. On the other hand, it costs credit card companies a boat load of money to acquire customers, and failing to issue legitimate chargebacks is a great way to lose cus…

So what’s the chargeback reason?

In the Adobe case, I'd go with "unauthorized charge". Experian was running a similar con, and it worked with that incident.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#503

Post by granshaw »

rgj wrote: post #18

Adobe, a company of the past, playing tricks because they never will understand - or be - SaaS.

I’d wager the opposite, that they have this scheme precisely because through all of their optimization they’ve discovered that this was the most profitable

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#504

Post by boogies »

josephagoss wrote: post #470

On the topic of Adobe and things to look out for: I paid for the full subscription for years as I got a lot of use out of it for many projects. What made me quit Adobe was their iPad Pro apps. I found myself using the iPad Pro for visual art projects more often, and I eagerly awaited Adobes eventual iPad Pro offerings. The only file storage option in the iPad versions of Photoshop and Illustrator is Adobe cloud onlin…

> But Adobe? I’m sorry but any company forcing professionals to store client IP on their cloud offering by definition cannot be considered secure.

Not to mention that they stored and leaked the unhashed passwords of their entire userbase.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#505

Post by arvinsim »

fermentation wrote: post #309
prox wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Affinity Suite professionally, absolutely possible to switch. Have done for three years, it’s really good.

As soon as Affinity releases a Lightroom replacement I will buy it. I've tried using the open source apps and it just doesn't feel as good on a mac.

Same here. The only Adobe app left that I am using is Lightroom CC.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#507

Post by behnamoh »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #405
seafoam wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a new credit card company.

I would definitely switch, it isn't hard and I've done it in the past just to get better terms or rewards several times.

But wouldn’t it affect your credit score?

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#508

Post by megiddo »

bambax wrote: post #241
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.

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.

This is exactly what I did, worked a charm.

I signed up, but their product kept crashing - it never worked.

I called to cancel, they asked for 50%. I said, I don't owe it because the product didn't work - contracts require consideration by both parties. CSR said I would pay. I got his contact info and told him that not only I wouldn't pay, but that Adobe would cancel my contract for free before a year.

Anyways, I blocked the transaction. Within 2 months, they cancelled my subscription. I sent a screenshot to the CSR email. Never heard back.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#509

Post by acherion »

ajxs wrote: post #455

Under Australian consumer law most of what's discussed in this Twitter thread is actually illegal. Just because it's part of a company's business process doesn't mean it's legal. I ran into the same problem when trying to cancel my service, and found myself presented with some utterly onerous cancellation fee. I told them I'd make a complaint with Australia's consumer affairs regulator, the ACCC[0]. They waived the f…

What staggers me is that everyone knows (in Australia) that the ACCC can be quite the toothless tiger in many aspects, yet the mere mention of those 4 letters can make Adobe fold over instantly.

It's so telling that Adobe reacts in this way, when they present their terms of conditions in such a dark-pattern manner. It's like they know what they're doing is super dodgy, but want to toss whatever reputation they have left out of the window, for the sum of just a few bucks a month. It's revolting.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#510

Post by obmelvin »

kevincox wrote: post #427
obmelvin wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (For example by saying that you didn't knowingly enter into a 1 year contract.) I'm also not a lawyer, but I don't think its ever a reasonable defense to say that you didn't know the terms of the contract if you've signed it (or agreed to the terms online - which I'm sure is provable by Adobe)?

I'm pretty sure it is. I believe the technical term is "Misrepresentation". I don't think it would be an easy fight but it seems that you could try to make an argument that they represented the contract as monthly. There are also examples of ToS being declared invalid because no reasonable person read them, this sounds similar where no one is actually reading the fine print. While this case may be hard I'm pretty sur…

I get your point - and also that 'never' is not the right word - but I don't think the defense is that you didn't read the contract. There are plenty of cases where people get screwed over for not reading a contract.

E.g. if ToS said I needed to give up my first born to Adobe, the judge isn't going to side with me because I didn't read the ToS. They will side with me because the clause isn't valid.

Post reply on HN