Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee • Hacker News Board

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#311

Post by michaelmrose » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #180

michaelmrose wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost is the users money. If the company got a customer at 53 dollars for 10 months that they would never have acquired at the higher $80 monthly rate and the user cancels they didn't lose the 270 they would have hypothetically received in the imaginary world where the user subscribed because maybe money isn't real. They profited the $530 they received less the cost of providing the service to the customer which i…

If I promise to pay you $100 for a job (and sign a contract saying so), you spend $50 of your own money in preparation for that job, and then I back out saying "that money was imaginary since I never actually paid you", are you not entitled to some compensation?

Why would you believe that adobe spent meaningful sums of money in preparation to service a license to run software on the users own hardware?

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#312

Post by vr46 » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:55 AM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #47

vr46 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on a similar plan, and same machine funnily enough. I downgraded to the Lightroom only plan and then cancelled - hopefully that should still work for you.

I just went through the process and they only let me switch to Lightroom annual (which I suspect starts a new annual subscription starting today). Curious, what did you choose as a replacement for raster graphics? GIMP is a no-go, as its slow and buggy as well.

Yes, that was it - I switched to Lightroom Annual before cancelling. Moved to outright buying Capture One, not for speed but image quality, colour rendering and controls are first rate, and Photo Mechanic for ingest.

Raster graphics - Affinity and an older Mac with Photoshop CS something :D

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#313

Post by systemvoltage » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:57 AM UTC

wst_ wrote: post #307

systemvoltage wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you travel even 10 miles (16 km), sales tax changes. It is at the county level. The manufacturer cannot afford to analyze this level of granular market and the associated sales tax. Ideally, the seller should list the price + tax if it is physically sold in a store. This should be fixed (along with the tips culture in US). Online retailers still have this problem. Sales tax is literally based on the zip code you e…

You could pay consumer tax not by the place you live in but by the place where business is located. Any additional taxes could be added by independent institution. Something like customs, just on local scale. Living in couple of countries In EU and Asia, I can't imagine not knowing total price up front. It's pushing legislation problems on the end customer.

It creates a massive market force to drive down sales taxes. You could imagine that most companies would want to be established with lowest sales tax so as to increase their profit margins or to beat the competitive price of goods and services.

So, now, you have a new problem. Top counties with lowest sales tax in the US will massively attract more businesses forcing the rest of the counties to reduce their sales tax too.

The entire problem boils down to federal vs. local control. US is structured with a balance between local, state and federal powers.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#314

Post by maxbaines » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:58 AM UTC

Right or wrong, I found the initial subscription confusing and not clear the commitment was minimum 12months. I stopped using Adobe because of this.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#315

Post by hnbad » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 8:01 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #294

inetknght wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it would be unfair to expect retailers to charge the MSRP and eat the tax themselves because some areas have zero sales tax but others have a 10% tax. I disagree. If you want to sell something to a market then you should tailor your product to that market. That means doing some basic research about what the local taxes and laws are.

If you travel even 10 miles (16 km), sales tax changes. It is at the county level. The manufacturer cannot afford to analyze this level of granular market and the associated sales tax. Ideally, the seller should list the price + tax if it is physically sold in a store. This should be fixed (along with the tips culture in US). Online retailers still have this problem. Sales tax is literally based on the zip code you e…

I think you're being disingenuous. It's not on the manufacturer to make sure the product has the right price tag on it, but on the seller or shop. European shops put price labels on the shelves and their own tags on discounted or specialty goods.

The online retail problem is also trivially solved. If I got to the US version of any online shop as a EU resident I'm usually first greeted by a "which version do you want to browse" popup asking me if I really want the US version and not a different country. This affects the default language, currency and locale as well as pricing. There's no reason they couldn't ask for your zip code if they already have to do these calculations at checkout anyway.

The problem is that there's no reason US companies should do this because there's no competitive advantage in having transparent pricing. This would require legislation (probably at the federal level) but once there's regulations, you'd see these solutions pop up everywhere overnight.

It's funny to hear Americans lament about how it's hard to do business in the EU because of the many differences between countries and then turn around and use state or county differences as an excuse why it's "just too hard" to do what companies are doing in the EU. At this point I wonder if Californians are seeing the same "sorry, we can't figure out how to show you this website without harvesting your data" error pages on US news sites given how strict their new privacy laws are.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#316

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 8:02 AM UTC

greggman3 wrote: post #50

Is this really a cancellation fee or is it just honoring your contract? AFAIK it's very clear on Adobe's page that your options are (1) Annual plan paid monthly, (2) Annual plan prepaid, and depending on the product (3) Monthly plan at usually 150% higher price. https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html If you signed up for a yearly plan paid monthly, the cancellation fee is finishing your contract. If you didn'…

[deleted]

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#317

Post by burnished » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 8:04 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #294

inetknght wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it would be unfair to expect retailers to charge the MSRP and eat the tax themselves because some areas have zero sales tax but others have a 10% tax. I disagree. If you want to sell something to a market then you should tailor your product to that market. That means doing some basic research about what the local taxes and laws are.

If you travel even 10 miles (16 km), sales tax changes. It is at the county level. The manufacturer cannot afford to analyze this level of granular market and the associated sales tax. Ideally, the seller should list the price + tax if it is physically sold in a store. This should be fixed (along with the tips culture in US). Online retailers still have this problem. Sales tax is literally based on the zip code you e…

Its because your argument fundamentally does not hold water. "It would be too hard for manufacturers..." just is not true. You are trying to tell us that the only way to price something is printed on the original box (not even the product! just the box) and that it would be too onerous to expect them to price at each location accordingly. Are you really trying to insist that a sticker is too hard? Too onerous a task?

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#318

Post by hnbad » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #293

DominikPeters wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting lots of replies from (I presume) Americans, who are used to much scammier business behavior than what I know from Germany and you describe in Australia. One related example is the pervasive practice in America of displaying a price without fees (like "resort fees" for hotels that can be +50%) and of course taxes, with the actual price only becoming apparent after additional effort is invested in the ch…

The exact same thing (monthly fee, 12 or 24 month contract) is very common in Germany for mobile phone and home internet plans.

True but this would indeed be considered very unusual and surprising for software if it wasn't indicated explicitly.

I just checked and while they do only indicate "X €/month" on the product page, as soon as you enter the checkout process it says "yearly subscription, monthly payment - Y €/month" with the additional options "yearly subscription, advance payment - X €/year" and "monthly subscription - Z €/month". I'm not sure how they're getting away with the misleading prices on the product pages tho (usually there's at least an asterisk indicating this comes with additional conditions and obligations).

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#319

Post by alias_neo » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 8:16 AM UTC

I got hit with this a few years back. I signed up for Ps CC for a month (I thought) to create an anniversary gift for my wife. I used it ONCE. Tried to cancel and they told me I had in fact signed up for a year, and that if I didn't cancel now, they'd give me two months free.

I didn't want it at all! Anyway, I sucked it up, got on with the remainder of the year, because they wouldn't let me put the cancellation in early, had to do it X months before the end. Then life happened and I missed the deadline to cancel and got suckered for a second year!

Fuck Adobe and this practice is all I have to say, I stick strictly to Open Source options now. It may have been my fault for not reading the first time, but robbing me a second time by counting on me missing the cancellation because they wouldn't let me do it there and then is just scummy.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#320

Post by teekert » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 8:17 AM UTC

I had the same, they wanted me to pay the rest of the year (after 2 or 3 years?). Problem is, that is against Dutch law, after an initial year, one is only allowed to prolong a contract by 1 month at a time. I reminded the person on the phone (who only spoke English, so imagine what happens when you are not as fluent in it as I) that they broke Dutch law, I told that to 3 other persons and they finally told me: Ok, we'll cancel. Finally.

Edit: I had to call them, because the website indeed only showed me these options where I had to pay the rest of the year. Email didn't help, they offered me some discount for the rest of the year. Very strange as a Dutch person, it has become so normal to not worry about this (I really like this law, a nice example of citizens before companies.)