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Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

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Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#511

Post by holiveros »

charrondev wrote: post #406
peeters wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There need to be laws that you cannot advertise anything as "free" or "introductory price" if it's amortized into a longer contract. A common tactic in Canada is to say "$4/mo for the first three months" but when you sign a contract for $12/mo over a year commitment. This should be treated as straight-up fraud. The price is clearly $10/mo and they're just deferring some payments.

Quebec has separate civil law from the rest of Canada and our consumer protection act prohibits this kind of behaviour (with very clear case law and precedence siding against companies). As a result though there are a fair amount of companies that will have these trial offers everywhere except Quebec. Spotify is one that comes to mind.

Indeed, yet it sometimes gets annoying; you see a nice promotion somewhere only to find out "not available in Québec" :(

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#512

Post by aceazzameen »

apollo1213 wrote: post #441
acidburnNSA wrote: post #159

Screw those guys. At least for amateur/hobby work, I've used the following for years and love them. I also try to regularly donate to them. Instead of Illustrator for drawing, use Inkscape https://inkscape.org/ and/or Krita https://krita.org/en/ . Instead of Lightroom for developing digital photos, use Darktable https://www.darktable.org/ Instead of Photoshop for touchups, use GIMP https://www.gimp.org/ . Instead of…

For pdf reader and annotator, https://docmadeeasy.com is a good alternative.

Lately I've just been using Microsoft Edge for viewing and filling out PDFs. It has the handy ability to draw on and sign documents. That's about all I used Edge for.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#513

Post by wbharding »

This dark pattern smacks of an IBM esque legacy co that will be vanquished by better competitors in due time. But as a user that keeps his process monitor open, Adobe’s greatest sin is their multiple mandatory Creative Cloud processes that soak up memory and CPU whether an Adobe product is open or not. Rotten at the core.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#514

Post by adiM »

holiveros wrote: post #511
charrondev wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec has separate civil law from the rest of Canada and our consumer protection act prohibits this kind of behaviour (with very clear case law and precedence siding against companies). As a result though there are a fair amount of companies that will have these trial offers everywhere except Quebec. Spotify is one that comes to mind.

Indeed, yet it sometimes gets annoying; you see a nice promotion somewhere only to find out "not available in Québec" :(

Which often means that there was some dark pattern in the offer which violated Quebec's law (or possibly they did not want to bother dealing with Quebec's language law...all content must also be available in French...which can be a deterrent as well)

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#515

Post by ClumsyPilot »

2ion wrote: post #270
bambax wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can just block the recurring payments and wait for them to come at you? Anyway a "free" trial that asks for your cc number is obviously not free. Better to stay away of those to be on the safe side.

Not a good idea if you, in the future, may actually need Adobe's services again.

>Not a good idea if you, in the future, may actually need Adobe's services again.

#Monopoly

Any advice, alternative PDF editor for Windows?

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#517

Post by sli »

It's all well and good to pretend that Adobe transitioning to a subscription-based model was to give more people easier access to their products, something I never truly believed to begin with, but it gets really hard to take that claim even remotely seriously when Adobe turns around and completely dismantles it by trying to trap people in this way. You just cannot argue that they're making it accessible when they're trying to trap people into paying the amount they were trying to avoid (or couldn't afford) in the first place.

It's corporate rent-seeking and that's pretty much all it will ever be.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#518

Post by hyakosm »

charrondev wrote: post #406
peeters wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There need to be laws that you cannot advertise anything as "free" or "introductory price" if it's amortized into a longer contract. A common tactic in Canada is to say "$4/mo for the first three months" but when you sign a contract for $12/mo over a year commitment. This should be treated as straight-up fraud. The price is clearly $10/mo and they're just deferring some payments.

Quebec has separate civil law from the rest of Canada and our consumer protection act prohibits this kind of behaviour (with very clear case law and precedence siding against companies). As a result though there are a fair amount of companies that will have these trial offers everywhere except Quebec. Spotify is one that comes to mind.

Some big companies (Amazon or Apple) breaks the law by offering a free month of Prime or Apple Music in Quebec.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#519

Post by hyakosm »

holiveros wrote: post #511
charrondev wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec has separate civil law from the rest of Canada and our consumer protection act prohibits this kind of behaviour (with very clear case law and precedence siding against companies). As a result though there are a fair amount of companies that will have these trial offers everywhere except Quebec. Spotify is one that comes to mind.

Indeed, yet it sometimes gets annoying; you see a nice promotion somewhere only to find out "not available in Québec" :(

If other states/provinces in North America had the same law, those companies would be forced to propose really free trials.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#520

Post by ThatPlayer »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #438
josephcsible wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway a "free" trial that asks for your cc number is obviously not free. There is a legitimate reason to do that: to keep people from making a bunch of accounts and getting free trials with them forever.

Anyone with a legitimate use isn’t going to create large numbers of emails just to do this. It’s a complete waste of time for any professional.

You don't need to create a bunch of emails, just unique enough addresses. I've got a catch-all on my domain, that's unlimited address. Gmail will let you alias with anything using +, and ignores periods last I checked.
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