One time for my small business I shared a login with one of my employees and they tried to get us to buy some sort of Enterprise subscription because they claimed that dozens of IP addresses were logging into the account and when we refused they simply closed our account. We were paying like over $300 per month and not even using the full subscription limits... We ended up finding a cheaper solution and now just use AI images so yeah it was pretty dumb on their part.
Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
61–70 of 100 posts
Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#62Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why are you defending obvious theft? Where’s the theft? It’s perfectly normal to have a fee for breaking a lease. And that’s what an annual subscription paid monthly is anyway. It’s a commitment for an extended period of time. If you could just stop paying and retain the discounted rate, what is an annual subscription vs a monthly one?
Is upping the fee and automatically confirming the contract without a re-up "perfectly normal"? Seems doubtful.
Yes? Commercial leases (and residential for that matter) commonly have increase clauses that operate automatically (CPI, 3/4/5%, market review, etc).
Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had been paying monthly for 13 years straight and they still demanded a cancellation fee because it turned out I was on an annual commitment (which by the way they hiked the price of by 50% with a month’s notice and by the time you notice the larger payment go out you are in a whole new 12 months). So yes, I complained about that.
Ok so you were on an annual plan to save money and when you cancelled you had to pay an exit fee to account for the annual discount. Seems reasonable to me. They gave you a months notice of the price increase and you didn't cancel until after it went into effect?
Take a step back and think of the company who designed this machiavellian scheme and generated this dramatic situation...
is this a business relationship with trust and maturity?
Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#65One time for my small business I shared a login with one of my employees and they tried to get us to buy some sort of Enterprise subscription because they claimed that dozens of IP addresses were logging into the account and when we refused they simply closed our account. We were paying like over $300 per month and not even using the full subscription limits... We ended up finding a cheaper solution and now just use…
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Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok so you were on an annual plan to save money and when you cancelled you had to pay an exit fee to account for the annual discount. Seems reasonable to me. They gave you a months notice of the price increase and you didn't cancel until after it went into effect?
Take a step back and think of the company who designed this machiavellian scheme and generated this dramatic situation... is this a business relationship with trust and maturity?
"We will give you access to annual pricing discounts but not require you to pay the full year up front"
It's not complex or dramatic.
Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn’t auto renew and auto commit though.
Why? It's a subscription auto-renew is the default. As for auto-commit why would they change your subscription choices on you without you choosing it?
> It's a subscription auto-renew is the default.
There are a number of subscriptions where I regularly want only a single month of service at a time.
Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#68Good. There needs to be a US-wide law that any method used to sign up for a subscription has to be a valid way to unsubscribe too. If you allow users to sign up online, you should also be required to let them unsubscribe online too. Basically, take the Californian setup, and apply it to the whole US. And pretty much every country in Europe.
Gyms
Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
An annual plan shouldn't require a termination fee. If I purchase an Annual Subscription, I should be able to cancel it whenever, with no fee whilst retaining the benefits for my subscription, as I paid for a whole year up front anyways.... Adobe software being a subscription service is nonsense too, but thats for another discussion.
Yes, and if you get an annual plan from adobe and pay up front there is no fee for cancelling. The fee is if you get an annual plan with a monthly payment and cancel early. I remember when it was like $600 for photoshop for a single version(like 25 years ago so what would that be today?). The subscription pricing is a steal.
If the subscription pricing was a "steal" and the perpetual licensing was genuinely more expensive and worse, they'd still offer the perpetual licensing.
Instead they killed it, they clearly do not want to cannibalize their subscription offing. It clearly makes them more money.
Your first point is valid, I was misunderstanding the yearly subscription pricing, they offer an upfront payment as well as a monthly (but with year commitment).
I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.
Re: Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions
#70> Shutterstock failed to get consent to charge consumers’ credit cards before charging them for subscriptions This sounds like it should carry criminal penalties?
Conde Nast is _horrible_ this way, tried for a second year in a row to charge me for Wired, which i do not subscribe to, could not explain where they got the idea i did, evidently had access through some dark pattern from years earlier to charge for something i must have bought as a magazine on iOS. It took hours of online chat argument with the unfortunate real employee fielding such pissed customers, and threats of…
> I wonder if the Reddit people are bothered by their owner
Quick note -- Reddit went public in 2024, so Condé Nast is no longer their owner.