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Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

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Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#471

Post by brailsafe »

d110af5ccf wrote: post #304
brailsafe wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally never heard of a case where you'd pay out the year's lease. Usually you just forfeit a portion of your deposit, which half a month's rent or so, in Canada at least.

I think that's the typical outcome in the end. I've never actually heard of anyone being charged the full amount (not that I would have any way of knowing though). Also sometimes local law will place an upper limit on the size of the fee. Several of my past leases specified that if broken I would be responsible for monthly rent on a prorated basis until a new tenant moved in.

In my current province, it's regulated that after the first year's lease is up, it defaults on an ongoing basis to a month-to-month agreement, whereby only a month's notice is required and that's it, unless you explicitly agree to another term lease. That's what I'm on now. Our deposit is the regulated max of half a month's rent.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#472

Post by inetknght »

systemvoltage wrote: post #313
wst_ wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't see the problem here.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#473

Post by daemin »

csunbird wrote: post #355
TomSwirly wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, there was a wine store in New York City that tried to post the real prices and had some legal issues, so they would post _both_ the "price before tax" and the actual price (in some format that allowed them to evade the laws, so stupid). I now live in the Netherlands. All prices are what you pay, _and_ the receipt breaks down how much of that goes to taxes, which I think is completely logical.

I think, showing the taxes separately is a very good idea in principle, so that you know how much tax you are paying. I usually hate the fact that I can not see how much tax I am paying, although, in Germany, the amount of tax is shown in the checkout pages.

There are a few details with that:

Does the sticker have to show all taxes or just the sales tax/GST/VAT? I know that pretty much every country in the world has an alcohol tax that is applied to things like wine. So should the sticker also include that?

In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view.

But yes I completely agree that the sticker price should include what you actually end up paying for that item. I also like it in some countries where there's a unit or weight cost with the item, so you can more easily compare different branded products. Though they usually make this number comically small on the price tag to make it harder to compare.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#474

Post by inetknght »

fastball wrote: post #296
inetknght wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not getting use of something before you've paid for it Except... that you are. > You're paying for something as you use it, and getting a discount because you agreed you'd use it for a year. So... you're getting the use of something before you've paid for the full year. That's a loan.

> Except... that you are. Hmm, no, you're still not. You are paying for the months as you use them. You merely agreed you'd use the service for a certain amount of months in exchange for a discount. Is paying rent on a year long contract is a loan? Is paying your monthly phone bill (which is on a 2 year contract) a loan? No. The phone company is not loaning you money. They're just providing the service at a certain r…

> You are paying for the months as you use them.

If that were true then there wouldn't be a cancellation fee.

> You merely agreed you'd use the service for a certain amount of months in exchange for a discount.

That's disingenuous anti-consumer corporate bullshit.

> Is paying rent on a year long contract is a loan? Is paying your monthly phone bill (which is on a 2 year contract) a loan?

They both should be considered worse than loans. They're not only demanding that you pay all the money if you want out but they're also fully necessary in a modern tech society.

> Agreeing to pay something in the future for services they will render in the future is not a loan.

It is if you have to pay for those services even if you don't want them any more.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#476

Post by michaelt »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #372
csunbird wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, showing the taxes separately is a very good idea in principle, so that you know how much tax you are paying. I usually hate the fact that I can not see how much tax I am paying, although, in Germany, the amount of tax is shown in the checkout pages.

The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker? I'd argue no - it's not like you can opt to not pay it. I assume your sales tax works like ours (Poland), i.e. per product/service category, so it's also not like you can buy a substitute product with lower tax. I like the solution we have - price stickers have full price, and printed receipts carry tax breakdown.

Bizarre though it may sound, some politicians in America are in favour of badly designed tax systems, for anti-tax reasons.

By making tax as difficult as possible, they recruit supporters for their anti-tax stance, and they can claim they're delivering on their anti-tax policy by 'making the system collapse under its own weight' or 'making everyone aware of how much tax they're paying' and they can allow loopholes and fraud opportunities and they can collect donations from tax preparation companies.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#477

Post by Dylan16807 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #303
pacifika wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay for the year up front like Dropbox and App Store subscriptions

That would de facto exclude a lot of people with a tight budget. Just sayin.

Paying a multi-hundred-dollar cancellation fee or being unable to cancel is also really bad for people on a tight budget.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#478

Post by [deleted] »

cbmuser wrote: post #227
paxys wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will have access to 100% of the service if you hold up your side of the contract you signed.

Exactly. It’s a contract. If you cancel it early, the other contract partner has the right to get a compensation fee. That’s perfectly normal and also practised by other companies.

[deleted]

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#479

Post by sofixa »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #372
csunbird wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, showing the taxes separately is a very good idea in principle, so that you know how much tax you are paying. I usually hate the fact that I can not see how much tax I am paying, although, in Germany, the amount of tax is shown in the checkout pages.

The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker? I'd argue no - it's not like you can opt to not pay it. I assume your sales tax works like ours (Poland), i.e. per product/service category, so it's also not like you can buy a substitute product with lower tax. I like the solution we have - price stickers have full price, and printed receipts carry tax breakdown.

> The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker

Especially considering the fact that usually there are 2-3 rates tops, so one can easily remember that 5-10-20% of what they pay goes to the country coffers depending on the product being bought.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#480

Post by danShumway »

paxys wrote: post #179
danShumway wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, then give me access for 50% of the remaining year. If I'm being charged money for a service, I should have a comparable level of access to that service.

You will have access to 100% of the service if you hold up your side of the contract you signed.

So it's kind of sounding like you agree with me that the fee is a punitive measure designed to punish people who leave early?

Adobe is the one that wrote the contract, if they added cancellation fees that are honestly pretty unusual for the software service/subscription field, then that's on them. Their hands aren't tied by the contract, they wrote the contract. It's their choice to charge people money for a service they no longer have access to.

But whatever, I'll extend yet another olive branch. I'll pay for the remainder of the year as long as I can cancel auto-renew immediately and put down in writing that I will not be charged for the next year. Not too surprisingly, Adobe also doesn't allow its customers to do that, because of course it doesn't.

It's obtuse to argue that all of this is about fairness and not about taking advantage of customer mistakes to bleed them dry for a service they don't want anymore. But I suppose it's just in my contract that I have to argue with a representative at a specific date and time in order to signal that I don't want to renew for another year of service. Nothing Adobe can do about that. /s

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