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Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

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Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#391

Post by culturestate »

paxys wrote: post #284
culturestate wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're employing "ignore it until it goes away" as a debt mitigation strategy you probably aren't in a position to be buying a house (or a car, or whatever) any time soon. Having a 400 FICO score is not a "real consequence" to anyone who's in this situation. At any rate, I'm just pointing out that it's a thing you can do, not advocating it as one you should do. As an aside, I think a lot of the HN audience would b…

People in that situation would also be better off just pirating Photoshop with zero effort.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that this is some kind of legitimate cheat code for cheap software (I'm certainly not), but nevertheless it is possible.

I'm not sure why it's so controversial to point this out, but c'est la vie.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#392

Post by jrockway »

unixhero wrote: post #386
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #380

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.

Another option is to ask your state's attorney general's office to send them a letter. Companies do not like letters from the government.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#393

Post by medlyyy »

anilakar wrote: post #228
greggman3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you click the "buy" button it's made clear https://imgur.com/uUqd9ZY Reminds me of car advertising. They don't show the full price of the lease. They show the monthly payments

Which, BTW, is illegal under most sane consumer protection laws, where the full price of the contract must always be shown. No annual price, no annual contract. Simple.

At the very least, if you are showing the instalment price, you have to show the number of instalments, and the fact that it is an instalment rather than a pay-as-you-go subscription.

You could certainly argue that describing the plan as $x paid monthly is outright false, when it should be "12 monthly instalments of $x".

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#394

Post by Gustomaximus »

walrus01 wrote: post #336
alias_neo wrote: post #319

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 ea…

Sounds like Adobe hired some executives from the cable TV or satellite TV industry, where the fine print on some packages locks you into 24 or 36 month contract terms. They know exactly how to do it with the minimum legal amount of notice to the customer when signing up, and how to write the terms of service for acceptance to make it ironclad. Same with 2-3 year terms on cellular carriers with a "free $0!" new samsun…

Australia brought in some consumer law business that didn't have costs or you don't use, could not lock you in.

So for example a phone on a plan is fine as there's a capital good but a gym isn't.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#395

Post by jrockway »

The downfall of Adobe is interesting to watch. New releases get more expensive every year, but they aren't really adding features. I had to switch to Affinity to get an iPad version, for example. 21,000 employees and they can't port Photoshop to ARM? I think at this point, they're just coasting on brand recognition alone. They certainly aren't adding much value; all they can do is rent you their software at higher and higher prices every year and hope nobody notices. The subscription cancellation shenanigans just show how bad their software is -- people will pay them money to not be able to use their software anymore. If that's not a hallmark of a dying company, I don't know what is.

I'm surprised they haven't started suing people over range check functions yet.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#396

Post by medlyyy »

danShumway wrote: post #151
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'…

> Is this really a cancellation fee Their own site literally calls it a cancellation fee in the linked screenshot. People in the comments here are giving them the benefit of the doubt on everything else, so give their UX designers some credit that they labeled their own fee correctly. ---- But this is kind of a pedantic argument though. One of the big practical issues I see here (aside from whether or not people know…

Wow. If Amazon is being held up as a good example, things are truly bad. My only experience is with Audible, and it is way too difficult and obscure to figure out how to cancel your subscription. Although at least once you do they don't try to pull anything except give you a discount, I suppose.

Although that shouldn't be held up as a positive either. Where I am, it's literally illegal for utility companies to offer discounts or any other type of benefit to customers who wish to cancel or move to another provider. They aren't even allowed to contact you unsolicited after you have requested to cancel the service, as it could be interpreted as attempting to offer enticement to continue. Ending a subscription to a service should not be a difficult thing.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#397

Post by playpause »

paxys wrote: post #56

People are giving terrible advice in this thread. Changing your credit card number or reporting it as stolen doesn't mean you are off the hook for the payment you agreed to. While Adobe probably won't care enough to do it, another company in its place could very well send the debt to collections and ruin your credit score. Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it. Adobe has a no-contract monthly plan…

> Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it.

But that's unworkable in modern life. We often have to agree to multiple terms documents per day, jumping through hoops for urgent things like receiving security updates. 99% of people clicking "I agree" do so without reading the terms.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#399

Post by Vinnl »

dmingod666 wrote: post #297
Kudos wrote: 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…

Why, though? What's the downside of allowing people not to be vigilant all the time? Presumably, all that businesses would lose out on is getting paid for not providing value to someone, which doesn't seem like it would stimulate a healthy market?

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#400

Post by krapp »

playpause wrote: post #397
paxys wrote: post #56

People are giving terrible advice in this thread. Changing your credit card number or reporting it as stolen doesn't mean you are off the hook for the payment you agreed to. While Adobe probably won't care enough to do it, another company in its place could very well send the debt to collections and ruin your credit score. Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it. Adobe has a no-contract monthly plan…

> Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it. But that's unworkable in modern life. We often have to agree to multiple terms documents per day, jumping through hoops for urgent things like receiving security updates. 99% of people clicking "I agree" do so without reading the terms.

I've never had to agree to multiple contracts per day - I'm sure that's true for some people but I doubt it's common. And there is rarely, if ever, a ticking clock regarding accepting software terms of service. People could easily make time to read the terms if they wanted to, it isn't unworkable, they click without reading the terms because they just don't want to put in even the minimum amount of effort.

It's just like everyone suddenly being shocked and surprised that social media companies have the right to ban their accounts and moderate their content for any reason. That was in the contract you agreed to when you made an account.

This is not to excuse Adobe, their tactics here are vile, but pretending contracts don't really exist just because you don't read them even when you sign them is a childish way of thinking.

Companies get away with things like this because consumers have normalized never reading terms of service as acceptable behavior. If they did read the terms, they might see how bad they are, and not use the product. It would be easier for competitors to compete on their quality of service rather than the superficial things consumers do notice like name recognition and aesthetics. There would be some market pressure to prefer honest contracts over dishonest ones. As it is, there is no such pressure from consumers, only regulation.

And even with regulation against dark patterns like the ones Adobe is engaging in, the consumer is still responsible for their own actions. Signing a contract without reading the terms is never going to get you off the hook, at least not in the US. The answer is to educate and empower people to be proactive, not to excuse and normalize their apathy.

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