Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions • Hacker News Board

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#11

Post by f001 » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #3

chancek wrote: post #2

A great idea of a product is some sort of unified system for companies to correctly manage subscriptions. There needs to be standards for what makes a user flow acceptable or not when it comes to cancellations.

Paddle? https://www.paddle.com/billing/subscriptions Stripe? https://stripe.com/billing/subscriptions Paypal? https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/manage...

To add to this, Apple has the subscriptions panel on iOS in the settings app showing you everything on your account including third party apps as long as you subscribed through apps instead of websites.

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#12

Post by recursive » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

chancek wrote: post #2

A great idea of a product is some sort of unified system for companies to correctly manage subscriptions. There needs to be standards for what makes a user flow acceptable or not when it comes to cancellations.

Why would a company participate in this? Most don't seem interested in making cancellation easier.

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#13

Post by exabrial » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#14

Post by IneffablePigeon » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #7

whh wrote: post #5

Adobe needs to be next. I had to cancel a card because that was easier than cancelling Creative Cloud.

Adobe isn't hard to cancel if you sign up for monthly subscriptions. I do it fairly regularly because I need PS in short bursts. A lot of people sign up for discounted annual commitments though then complain when they can't cancel before the year is up.

I had been paying monthly for 13 years straight and they still demanded a cancellation fee because it turned out I was on an annual commitment (which by the way they hiked the price of by 50% with a month’s notice and by the time you notice the larger payment go out you are in a whole new 12 months).

So yes, I complained about that.

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#15

Post by charcircuit » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

whh wrote: post #5

Adobe needs to be next. I had to cancel a card because that was easier than cancelling Creative Cloud.

Canceling a card isn't the same thing as canceling a subscription. Most businesses will have you still pay via a different payment method to resolve your debt.

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#16

Post by bpodgursky » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:29 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #4

Did Shutterstock come out money ahead? Is 35 million and the potential for future punishment a sufficient deterrent?

Look at the stock history. The company is on life support. This is basically an entire year of earnings.

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#17

Post by ktallett » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

If your business is only viable due to shady subscription practices then it doesn't deserve to be running, whether it's Adobe, gyms, or whatever.

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#18

Post by cryzinger » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #7

whh wrote: post #5

Adobe needs to be next. I had to cancel a card because that was easier than cancelling Creative Cloud.

Adobe isn't hard to cancel if you sign up for monthly subscriptions. I do it fairly regularly because I need PS in short bursts. A lot of people sign up for discounted annual commitments though then complain when they can't cancel before the year is up.

If you only need PS in short bursts, may I recommend https://www.photopea.com/?

It's not at 100% feature parity with PS but it's pretty darn close.

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#19

Post by sanswork » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

IneffablePigeon wrote: post #14

sanswork wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe isn't hard to cancel if you sign up for monthly subscriptions. I do it fairly regularly because I need PS in short bursts. A lot of people sign up for discounted annual commitments though then complain when they can't cancel before the year is up.

I had been paying monthly for 13 years straight and they still demanded a cancellation fee because it turned out I was on an annual commitment (which by the way they hiked the price of by 50% with a month’s notice and by the time you notice the larger payment go out you are in a whole new 12 months). So yes, I complained about that.

Ok so you were on an annual plan to save money and when you cancelled you had to pay an exit fee to account for the annual discount. Seems reasonable to me.

They gave you a months notice of the price increase and you didn't cancel until after it went into effect?

Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

#20

Post by sanswork » Mon, May 18, 2026, 9:35 PM UTC

cryzinger wrote: post #18

sanswork wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe isn't hard to cancel if you sign up for monthly subscriptions. I do it fairly regularly because I need PS in short bursts. A lot of people sign up for discounted annual commitments though then complain when they can't cancel before the year is up.

If you only need PS in short bursts, may I recommend https://www.photopea.com/ ? It's not at 100% feature parity with PS but it's pretty darn close.

Appreciate the suggestion but I'm terrible at editing so I just stick with PS because the cost for a month or two when I need it isn't much and it's really easy to find videos walking through exactly what I need to do. Even a single hour spent trying to translate a tutorial would more than wipe out the savings.