I got caught out by Grammerly in a similar way into signing up for 12 months. Any good will I had towards the product is now in the gutter.
Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
111–120 of 592 posts
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#112Use a virtual card if you can, delete that card once you start the 'free trial' then cancel after the trial, or within 1 month to not get charged. Thats some hoops to go through just to get a 'free trial' to see if the products actually work for you! At least back in the CD days you got 30 days to actually try it out, then either buy it, crack it, or stop using it!
That stops the money being automatically taken, but you'd still be legally responsible to pay the contract, no?
Reneging seems like a great way to get yourself sued for the balance, possibly the costs of recovery and even having your credit score ruined in the fight.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Annual plan to me that you're agreeing to pay for the year. Disney did something similar, it was cheaper to sign up for a year. Typically you get 12 months for the price of 10. The screenshot says you can have a full refund if you cancel before Feb 26th, assuming that holds, that's plenty of time to work out what's going on. The US is clear, I've seen that setup several times. The UK one has several red flags 1) Free…
If a user will be on the hook for $300 when cancelling a contract, that should be made quite clear. The only hint that that lays buried in the fine print is small gray text intoning "avoid a fee" that gets shown after plan selection . It's pretty clear Adobe has work to do on their sign up flow, here. That they've already done so on the US side makes it even more inexcusable, frankly.
Very first screenshot says "Starting At"
The point where you enter your email states "Annual Plan Paid Monthly", and "Cancel before 26th Feb for a full refund"
Maybe I'm just cynical, but I would expect if I were to sign up I would be on the hook for a full year unless I cancel before 26th Feb.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#114This isn't a solution and doesn't excuse Adobe's shitty behavior, but I use privacy.com which gives you single-purpose cards. That way, I can just pause the card and subsequent charges will fail. Then let them try to get their money. Pull-based payments are such a bad idea, implemented even worse. Privacy.com at least gives you per-merchant controls and limits, even though this really should have been a Visa default.
Their "free" plan says you can
> Create up to 12 cards per month
Does that mean you can create 12 in January, 12 more in February, etc? Or is it capped at 12 total?
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#115I would be interested to hear an expert opinion about whether such arrangement falls under 'unfair contract terms' descibed by the Office of Fair Trading: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Not sure if such regulation exists in the US, if so it would be worth to probe into it.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't people contact their credit card provider to inform it as fraudulent charge?
Given how low they are already stopping, they likely have a dedicated team for chargebacks that will fight tooth and nail to challenge it. I am currently dealing with a chargeback team for another company, and the amount of time they’ve dedicated into challenging me likely exceeds the chargeback value itself.
> the amount of time they’ve dedicated into challenging me
They likely haven't used much time at all. Big companies get thousands of chargebacks, and can gather evidence all automatically in a matter of seconds. It'll all be templated documents anyway.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#117The billing page does say "annual plan, paid monthly" but it is a bit non obvious at first glance. Oddly this seems to be only in the UK version, the US version has a much clearer pricing layout.
> Oddly this seems to be only in the UK version
Considering this behavior is likely illegal in the UK (where consumer cooling-off periods are 14 days or 30 days), I'd find that peculiar.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#118Earlier 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.
I don’t think their agreement with the CC network lets them come after users for chargebacks the bank has approved. In a chargeback situation, the bank has to agree that the charge was unreasonable.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, they can and do send this sort of stuff to collections since you did sign up for the terms and it's a non-trivial amount of money owed. Gyms do it for far less, so I don't see why Adobe wouldn't.
We had Time Warner send us to collections which then reported my wife to the bureaus, alleging that we had never returned our cable modem (this was just for $60, and it was 5+ years ago!!). First of all, I’m incredibly sure that we did. We had fiber after that, what would I want with an old DOCSIS modem anyway? And second of all, they were unable to offer any proof that we had not returned it. The company that was co…
I had similar encounters with a shitty ISP where their salesperson signed me up on a yearly contract despite explaining very clearly that not only did I only want a 30-day rolling contract but that the reason I'm doing so is because of a temporary issue with the new ISP. Even if they somehow misheard the "30-day rolling" part, a yearly contract just wouldn't make sense given my planned use-case. I can only assume that the idiot simply wanted some commission and I guess they don't give any for monthly rolling contracts.
When it was time to cancel I learnt that I was actually on a yearly contract - this was a month later so past the cancellation period. The support advisor claimed that I not only received an email but actually opened it, at which point I knew they sent it to the wrong address or were outright lying as my email client never loads remote resources, making it impossible for them to see that I "opened" it. He also refused an IMO reasonable demand of reviewing the call recording (it was just a month ago so they should still have it) to determine who was in the right.
In the end, I simply blocked further payments. When collections reached out, I explained the story above and they went away immediately. Collections ended up having significantly better user experience than the original company.
Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're just defending the right of a giant corporation to communicate poorly in a way that enriches them. Thanks for the downvote (I guess) but no, I'm doing no such thing. I'm explaining that the giant monopoly is going to do what the giant monopoly does. Really almost all subscriptions are like this -- they depend on you forgetting to cancel. And this one is a bit more up-front than most. > It's absolutely insane…
What a staggering battery of distortions. Company credit card? You're just assuming that everyone doing this is spending someone else's money? Everything you've written functions to blame the victim and leave Adobe harmless here.
> You're just assuming that everyone doing this is spending someone else's money?
To be fair, you're also assuming that starving artists are paying for Photoshop. A quick "Adobe" search on your BitTorrent tracker of choice may change your mind.