I had an educational Adobe CC subscription that went from ~£25 per month to ~£67 recently. When I went to cancel after I realised I didn't really use it that much and could just use Affinity, I was shocked to find out that I was going to be charged ~£250 because although I pay monthly I was in a yearly contract. (I did know that, which is on me, but it's easy to forget that because of the payment structure). It's a serious barrier, so I looked at the other options, and you're able to transfer to an Adobe Photoshop Express plan for ~£98 per year and avoid that charge. I figured I'd do that and immediately cancel so I didn't forget to at the end of the year, whether I kept access to Photoshop Express or not - I just wanted out of the Adobe ecosystem. To my surprise I was refunded for both the balance of the month on the CC subscription because of the plan change and then refunded for the entire year's Photoshop Express because I still had 12 months to run on it. YMMV, but if you do it in that order, you can potentially escape Adobe without being penalised for it.
Tell HN: I managed to unsubscribe from Adobe CC without being charged
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Re: Tell HN: I managed to unsubscribe from Adobe CC without being charged
#2I managed to cancel a (non-edu) Adobe subscription a few years ago, despite being a few days past the cut-off date for cancellation.
What worked for me was to phone them and insist on cancelling. The person I spoke to insisted right back that it wasn't possible. When I persisted they offered me an extended term for the same price. Then a discount, and then a better discount. After that they agreed to cancel.
My impression was that they had a customer retention flowchart to work through, and it was just a matter of getting to the right terminal node.
Re: Tell HN: I managed to unsubscribe from Adobe CC without being charged
#3I managed to cancel a (non-edu) Adobe subscription a few years ago, despite being a few days past the cut-off date for cancellation. What worked for me was to phone them and insist on cancelling. The person I spoke to insisted right back that it wasn't possible. When I persisted they offered me an extended term for the same price. Then a discount, and then a better discount. After that they agreed to cancel. My impre…
A retention flowchart shouldn’t include the step of lying to the customer.
If a business makes it easy to cancel, I’m left with a positive image and may be back. If they make it difficult, they lost me for life, and I’ll tell my friends.
Re: Tell HN: I managed to unsubscribe from Adobe CC without being charged
#4I managed to cancel a (non-edu) Adobe subscription a few years ago, despite being a few days past the cut-off date for cancellation. What worked for me was to phone them and insist on cancelling. The person I spoke to insisted right back that it wasn't possible. When I persisted they offered me an extended term for the same price. Then a discount, and then a better discount. After that they agreed to cancel. My impre…
A retention flowchart shouldn’t include the step of lying to the customer. If a business makes it easy to cancel, I’m left with a positive image and may be back. If they make it difficult, they lost me for life, and I’ll tell my friends.
Adobe don’t have to care what their customers think because their business practices have eradicated most of their competitors, leaving them trapped.
Neoliberalism is not a viable way to run an economy without enforcement of monopoly legislation.
Re: Tell HN: I managed to unsubscribe from Adobe CC without being charged
#5Am I the only one who just uses Privacy.com and the pauses the card when I want to cancel a subscription? They have no way of charging me....