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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

#521

Post by patmcc »

chrisseaton wrote: post #289
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.

What does 'annual plan' mean to you? How can you misinterpret those words?

It could easily mean "we will bill you monthly 12 times, for one year, and then stop billing you". It's not immediately clear that it means "we will bill you monthly forever, if you cancel within a year you owe us big money".

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#522

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

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.

Also pirates, be reminded that Adobe indulges in very aggressive practices to target you.

At least in India I've met people on unrelated events working for companies claiming to be contracted by Adobe to target small-business, raid their office and make them pay huge sums of money on the pretext of suing them for piracy of their products.

One such person, told me that they got their previous employer into trouble with Adobe due to bad blood. It's definitely not legal for a private entity to raid a premise in India, But I guess these companies have 'what it takes' to make that happen.

So it's not worth it to pirate adobe products, Especially when there are better tools available[1].

[1] https://startuptoolchain.com/#design (I maintain this).

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#523

Post by stubish »

acherion wrote: post #509
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 l…

I wouldn't call an organization that makes companies 'fold over instantly' toothless. Companies fold if they are in the wrong or even if things are in doubt, because losing at arbitration is an indelible black mark.

I know those 4 letters got me a full refund the next day when brought to the attention of the parent company after failing to deal with a local franchise owner. Before hand having followed the ACCC guidelines trying to get the order back on track (and creating the paper trail to ensure there was no doubt I was in the right).

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#525

Post by peeters »

legalcorrection wrote: post #415
peeters wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There need to be laws that you cannot advertise anything as "free" or "introductory price" if it's amortized into a longer contract. A common tactic in Canada is to say "$4/mo for the first three months" but when you sign a contract for $12/mo over a year commitment. This should be treated as straight-up fraud. The price is clearly $10/mo and they're just deferring some payments.

What if it’s $4 for three months and then $12 in perpetuity, with no commitment.

Then it's not lying and I have no problem with it, as long as the continuing price is clearly presented at the time of sale.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#526

Post by brainbag »

fernly wrote: post #475
chongli wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I intend to avoid Adobe's services for the rest of my life. If I ever feel like I need Photoshop or Illustrator I'll find an alternative. There are a lot alternatives to these, both open source and proprietary from small businesses.

See https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

As a multi-decade Photoshop user, I find Affinity unusable. I know it comes very highly rated, but my muscle memory is so ingrained that I don't think I can make the switch. Not a single thing worked the way I'd expect, and trying to adapt to it was hours of constant digging through forums to do the most basic things, like move the canvas.

I started using Krita instead, and it's a good replacement without being so utterly different.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#527

Post by brainbag »

asdefghyk wrote: post #349
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.

A person meeds to have a cc where transactions are disabled. ( My bank via its online customizer accounts - allows a person to turn this on / off for security )

I do this with privacy.com. Every site gets a unique credit card with a custom limit.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#528

Post by somat »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #515
2ion wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a good idea if you, in the future, may actually need Adobe's services again.

>Not a good idea if you, in the future, may actually need Adobe's services again. #Monopoly Any advice, alternative PDF editor for Windows?

PDF editor? I have always regarded pdf as a terminal file format, the place data goes to die. Only half joking but pdf was always the final form from some other program, the internal editable data was never pdf. I have never seen a program works on the pdf directly, Probably because I have never had that much exposure to adobe software. the few times I have needed to do so I had to use a pdf programing library.

If you mean desktop publishing software that outputs a high quality pdf scribus works fairly well.

https://www.scribus.net

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#529

Post by Shank »

wolverine876 wrote: post #464
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…

Krita is exceptional (and it's FOSS): https://krita.org/ It's targeted at drawing more than image editing (though Krita handles both raster and vector in one document), but more than any other graphics application, they make relatively advanced features[1] discoverable and usable. And being FOSS, it's extensible and has an apparently active community. Really a gem of usability among FOSS applications. After I tried i…

Was Krita always available on macOS? I'm shocked -- I swear I checked before and I'm happy to see it is! It looks like Kdenlive is also available on macOS, for video editing! [0]

Edit: Kdenlive is really only for Intel Macs. Unfortunately, it crashes under Rosetta :(

[0]: https://kdenlive.org/en/download/

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#530

Post by ovao »

yokoprime wrote: post #84
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…

Thank you! Acorn looks pretty solid, I've got Pixelmator on my iOS devices, so I was wondering if i should go for Pixelmator pro on macOS. For very lightweight stuff, I've often used https://www.photopea.com/ , even when i had photoshop installed. Works pretty well for å browser image editor I've moved away from Adobe recently, both because of their scummy business practices (but when you know how it works, its predi…

I resisted moving to Pixelmator Pro for a long time since I was a bit miffed at how they handled the original Pixelmator to Pro transition, but it is genuinely a better product, and I now understand the rationale for getting charged again.

Ultimately, it’s okay as a consumer to get back to the old “pay for healthy updates” model that I’m sure software developers are very hesitant to try anymore. So long as the value’s there, this is a healthy approach for all parties.

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