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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

#551

Post by figassis »

sibit wrote: post #58

For anyone stuck in this dark pattern here is a trick I've used in the past: Adobe won't let you cancel without paying the remainder of your subscription fee however you can switch to a different plan. As soon as you switch you'll have the ability to cancel your "new" plan within 14 days. If you cancel after 14 days they'll charge you the early termination fee.

For Adobe specifically, I threatened a chargeback for any amount I’d be charged after I let them know I wanted to cancel, including the cancellation fee.

But for vendors like these, usually I use debit cards which I only load when I want to pay for the service. Send their payment failed emails right to spam.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#552

Post by Anunayj »

victor106 wrote: post #421
JJMcJ wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have a card that allows that, you can also buy a prepaid card, though I believe such cards may have distinctive numbers and it's possible a vendor may disallow.

I use https://privacy.com/ for this. One of the best discoveries I found on hn a few years ago

Sadly it is only available to US residents :(

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#553

Post by Anunayj »

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…

<3 Krita

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#554

Post by stjohnswarts »

behnamoh wrote: post #507
stjohnswarts wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would definitely switch, it isn't hard and I've done it in the past just to get better terms or rewards several times.

But wouldn’t it affect your credit score?

Momentary dip. It recovers after a few months as long as you aren't doing anything else to mess up your score like not paying bills. I guess some people love those perfect credit scores but honestly anything over 750 is fine for most things even getting a mortgage.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#555

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

sshine wrote: post #550
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also pirates, be reminded that Adobe indulges in very aggressive practices to target you. At least in India I've met people on unrelated events working for companies claiming to be contracted by Adobe to target small-business, raid their office and make them pay huge sums of money on the pretext of suing them for piracy of their products. One such person, told me that they got their previous employer into trouble wit…

It’s not worth it to pirate Adobe products... in India. I’m not sure how this story translates to countries that don’t have anti-piracy mobs that raid offices.

True maybe more subtle elsewhere, But the risks of piracy is not zero anywhere.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#556

Post by unfocussed_mike »

brailsafe wrote: post #462
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #56

I am not quite sure why people don't grasp that it's an annual plan for really expensive software. "Annual plan, billed monthly" is about as easy as it's going to be in four words on a button or by a button. If you could rent it for just a month now and then, wouldn't you only rent it in the months you need it? They make it so you can't. There's a solution: DON'T USE IT. Ask yourself seriously: what is it you want to…

I disagree with your implication that people are basically dim for falling for intentionally malicious design. You could put a push sign on the door of the physics department in a Uni, but if the handle was designed to be pulled, most people would be doing so. I agree with the rest of your sentiment for the most part. Vote with your feet. Affinity is great, and there are other good alternatives. Most people who are s…

I am not saying people are dim for "falling for intentionally malicious design", because I do not see what is intentionally malicious -- that word has a meaning. It is not malicious. It might be unclear; I'm not convinced it is even misleading.

I am saying I do not understand why people don't grasp that "annual plan, billed monthly" means something priced yearly but paid for in monthly pieces.

Not that I think they are dim, but I do want to understand what the comprehension gap is here.

After reading many replies I think that if people are saying that "annual plan" is too ambiguous for anyone with a credit card, then "yearly, billed in monthly instalments after free trial" should do the job. But then I expect we will still see people expecting this means they can cancel after a month. Because the thing is if they say "one year commitment, billed in monthly instalments" that is actually untrue; you can in fact get out before a year is out, it just costs you an early closing penalty.

(I _am_ saying they are dim if they are expecting to game it by cancelling after a month.)

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#557

Post by unfocussed_mike »

dataflow wrote: post #482
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #56

I am not quite sure why people don't grasp that it's an annual plan for really expensive software. "Annual plan, billed monthly" is about as easy as it's going to be in four words on a button or by a button. If you could rent it for just a month now and then, wouldn't you only rent it in the months you need it? They make it so you can't. There's a solution: DON'T USE IT. Ask yourself seriously: what is it you want to…

> Ask yourself seriously: what is it you want to do that the Affinity Suite (which costs about, what, £150 and then £20 each for the two iPad apps) cannot do for you. I tried to open a raw image and it didn't seem to process the XMP sidecar file I had alongside it properly. The photo looks quite different from what it looks like in Photoshop. This is despite the fact that I can confirm via Process Monitor that it act…

I think there are some elements of the XMP it is trying to make sense of, and perhaps failing. Or possibly the XMP-reading code is in production but none of the decoding is yet. Or maybe it will get keywords from XMP but nothing else? Not sure.

The thing is, XMP is not any kind of independent standard; it's largely a set of instructions specific to Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. I do think we should expect them ultimately to be able to interpret most of it, and I half expect them to support XMP in their eventual DAM product as one sidecar type, (which is why I think there is probably code in Photo that is ready to read it) but they don't commit to it yet.

I must say that if I process a raw file in one package then open it up in a competitor's raw processing package, I expect the second to ignore the work of the first

The main thing that the suite really can't do is a Bridge-type function, though.

Re: Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract

#558

Post by vishnugupta »

sibit wrote: post #58

For anyone stuck in this dark pattern here is a trick I've used in the past: Adobe won't let you cancel without paying the remainder of your subscription fee however you can switch to a different plan. As soon as you switch you'll have the ability to cancel your "new" plan within 14 days. If you cancel after 14 days they'll charge you the early termination fee.

I’ve mentioned it before here. They have something called “yearly contract monthly payment “. I saw the trap as soon as I saw it and bailed out.
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