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Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

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Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#381
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what dark patterns rely on, why the hell would you be in support of companies taking advantage of people? Have you never had anything like this happen to you? Maybe you were tired or in a rush and a dark pattern ended up costing you money you didn't intend to spend? It's happened to me, and I'd dare day most people reading this.

I use this product and this plan. I knew what I was getting into when I bought it. Scammy companies shouldn't be protected, but if people don't bother to do the most basic due diligence before buying products, it's on them - like forget reading a terms of service. He doesn't even read the product name or description. Gets into a yearly contract for a cheaper price and then complains about the cancellation fees. At so…

So you're in favour of people phone-scamming the elderly? They just need to take personal responsibility and do their due diligence, right? Or do you want to take away the ability to buy things of people you deem incompetent?

It is a basic necessity for beneficial trade to occur that the terms are made clear, not just technically available, to the people potentially wanting to undertake that trade, before anything legally binding occurs. The issue is not that there are cancellation fees, it's that they are not made clear.

The exaggerated, but still representative, example might be the Earth demolition plans in Hitchhiker's Guide, which were "available for 50 years in the local planning office in Alpha Centauri." Totally fair, right? Anyone could have just gone there and read them.

Demanding "personal responsibility" as a solution to avoid bad deals is the same as accepting that it's OK for some people to be scammed. No one is perfectly on guard all the time. If it is permissible for companies to engage in scammy behaviour, and scammy behaviour increases profits, then in order to be competitive, companies will engage in scammy behaviour. So it will be everywhere. Since, as noted, individual humans aren't perfect all the time, eventually someone will get scammed.

The obvious, morally superior, and more economically beneficial solution is simply to not allow scamming to be profitable. That, among other things, means ruling in favour of the consumer when companies perform shady practices.

Postscript: People with this kind of "libertarian" stance really annoy me. To give the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume that "personal responsibility" isn't just thinly veiled personal exceptionalist elitism. If that's the case, the only reason you can even have these beliefs is because you take so much about the modern world for granted. There is a lot going on in order to create an environment where mutually beneficial trade can happen.

In the absence of strict, neutral enforcement of fair trading rules, people scam the shit out of each other. It's way easier, and more profitable, than actually creating something of value that people want to buy. The total effect of this, if it were allowed to occur, is that it creates an environment of distrust and uncertainty, which means mutually beneficial trades that would otherwise happen won't happen, making everyone poorer. Advocating for "personal responsibility" as a solution to avoiding scummy business practices is directly advocating for this situation.

Historically, before commercial law was explicitly codified, the means of ensuring that merchants were trustworthy was essentially reputation. The way this scaled was with merchant groups, where the reputation of one member going bad affected them all, so they all had incentive to police each other (or alternatively, collude). Plus the fact that people in general were much less dependent on markets for necessary goods, the labour force being mainly agricultural. However, this made opportunity for trade highly exclusive, and largely only available to the privileged ("merchant class").

I guess my question for you is, do you want to have to read every single EULA, thoroughly scan the terms of every transaction every time you buy something, and otherwise do a lot of work and research any time you have to make some vaguely commercial agreement to avoid getting into an agreement you, in retrospect, didn't want? If not, I suggest you carefully re-examine your beliefs and what they imply.

A final remark. The economics of scamming are highly asymmetrical. If individuals have to do a lot of due diligence even for routine transactions, that is a massive cost to that individual. In contrast, organisations willing to partake in scummy behaviour can spend almost endless resources optimising their ability to ensnare customers, because once the process is developed, the marginal cost is very low if not zero. So individuals cannot be expected to "keep up" in this environment.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#383
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I was thinking. If you want to get out of a contract early, you'll usually lose some money. That's true for rent, public transit passes, and many other types of subscription. If there are no consequences for bailing out of a contract, it makes them rather pointless.

But then there's always some kind of a cool down period, i.e. a time during which one can cancel a subscription without penalties. At least this is how I expect things to work here, in the UK.

There's a 14 day cancellation period after you sign certain contracts, but I don't know the details.

Beyond that, a contract is a contract.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#384
Horrible, I only have a Creative Cloud subscription because some of clients send Illustrator files instead of Sketch.

Just checked and it seems I can only cancel my subscription during a fixed period around the renewal date - if I miss it, I get to pay the remaining term as a cancellation fee!

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, and I agree that they should include the total payment expected but at this point the goalposts have moved from "adobe charges subscription cancellation fee" to "adobe doesn't show the difference between monthly and annual" to " adobe only shows the difference on the actual payment page" to" adobe doesn't display the annual total on the payment page". Im no adobe apologist, but this entire thread is a witch h…

I'd argue the goalposts are related. "adobe charges subscription cancellation fee" — Adobe do not tell you how much the fee is ahead of time. In the conditions of the Australian purchasing page, the monthly price isn't even written in them. They can also renew it for another year while increasing the price without telling you. "adobe doesn't show the difference between monthly and annual", and "adobe doesn't display…

> All of this could be solved by saying "You are agreeing to pay a total of $923.88 over 12 months at $76.99 per-month. If you cancel, the minimum cost to you is $461.94 (50% of the total Annual plan), this decreases evenly each month.

And presumably this must be on primary pricing page, not below the fold, have different options for with and without vat, and they must display this for the up-front annual sub, pay-monthly annual sub, and monthly sub with no commitment? The monthly sub needs to be clear that you're actually not signing up for 12 months, because you may only want/need it for 6 months rather than 12, so the other options need a monthly equivalent breakdown for comparison? FWIW, I did a super quick inline edit of Adobe's HTML to show what that looks like [0].

Also, the $461.94 is actually the _maximum_ cost, not the minimum.

> Adobe do not tell you how much the fee is ahead of time.

Yes, they do. [1] clearly says " If you cancel within 14 days of your initial order, you’ll be fully refunded. Should you cancel after 14 days, you’ll be charged a lump sum amount of 50% of your remaining contract obligation and your service will continue until the end of that month’s billing period.". There is so much detail in that page, it would be impossible to put all of that on the purchase page without being accused of burying it in the fine print.

> They can also renew it for another year while increasing the price without telling

This is exactly what I'm talking about - you're moving the goalposts here. We're talking about adobe's cancellation fees, not their renewal policy. I'm not defending their renewal policy, it's awful, but it's off topic.

> They don't show you total price that you are committing to, they don't show you minimum amount to you must pay if you cancel. You're right, they should show it. They _do_ have it linked at [2]/[3] where they clearly show the annual cost, and the option to pay it monthly.

> they don't show you minimum amount to you must pay if you cancel. Lets assume they _did_ show that amount. Reading this thread, are you telling me that people wouldn't find another axe to grind? e.g. "They don't make it clear that they can autorenew at a higher price". So now they need to add _every_ detail to the purchasing pages, where they're now accused of burying it in the fine print. But the reason they don't is because the amount is "50% of your remaining obligation", which is a minimum of 1/24th of the annual sum, which is misleading to display. What they _do_ do is clearly show you how much they'll charge you to cancel before you actually do so.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/C2fnRvg [1] https://www.adobe.com/uk/legal/subscription-terms.html [2] https://www.adobe.com/uk/plans-fragments/modals/individual/a... [3] https://imgur.com/a/YRwoaB6

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may work in the US (does it, really?) but mostly not in Europe. If the service provider thinks you are a subscriber and don't pay, you will eventually end up in collections. You can't just "stop paying", that will not terminate your subscription.

This is true, but Most of the time it doesnt make a difference. You can make up any persona on the account and they wont know who to pursue. The account name and address can really be anything... and this is also true for the CC on file.

Although this is true and will work. It also amounts to some degree of fraud.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but Most of the time it doesnt make a difference. You can make up any persona on the account and they wont know who to pursue. The account name and address can really be anything... and this is also true for the CC on file.

Although this is true and will work. It also amounts to some degree of fraud.

Fraudulently avoiding being defrauded? Poetic.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a very simple solution for this: whenever I'm handing my credit card information to some service, if there is a slightest chance of such bullshit (which is always the case with any subscription-based service), I just use a virtual card with just enough money on it to pay for whatever I intend to pay. Then they can prolong the subscription, sneak their stupid extras all they want.

This may work in the US (does it, really?) but mostly not in Europe. If the service provider thinks you are a subscriber and don't pay, you will eventually end up in collections. You can't just "stop paying", that will not terminate your subscription.

It mostly work though, although it might not be legal, most companies will drop your subscription after some time if you stop paying. You might receive some letters from collection agencies, but as long as the sums in question are an order of magnitude lower than what is worth bringing in front of tribunal, they will stop after some time.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#389
On the next step of the process:

When offered a discount or to switch to another plan, choose the cheapest new plan (for me it was photography)

Once your membership is updated, start the cancellation process again immediately

The cancellation fee is now $0.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but Most of the time it doesnt make a difference. You can make up any persona on the account and they wont know who to pursue. The account name and address can really be anything... and this is also true for the CC on file.

Although this is true and will work. It also amounts to some degree of fraud.

I would agree that in most cases this is true.

But we are talking about really deceptive sales practices by Adobe. Fighting fire with fire in this instance seems particularly reasonable.

That aside, engaging this tactic on transactions with merchants with reasonable cancellation terms would be borderline fraud. If you use the services and they satisfied your needs, you really should be paying for them.

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