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Think twice before signing subscription to Adobe products

134 points by EugeneOZ 10y ago

EugeneOZ 10y ago
As an addition: today Adobe sent me email that they are going to increase price (2x) and there is no way to cancel subscription.
- grzm 10y ago
  No way to cancel? Can you stop payment?
  - EugeneOZ 10y ago
    No, user can't remove/change card data or cancel subscription. And when I contact their support, they don't do nothing. They promise "we will cancel soon" but nothing happens.
    - grzm 10y ago
      I meant contact the credit card company to prevent paying further charges from Adobe.
      - EugeneOZ 10y ago
        Will try.. Sounds unusual to me. But maybe it's usual practice.
        grzm 10y ago
        I don't know how common it is. But if Adobe is raising prices outside of your agreement and not allowing you to cancel, I think it's worth a try.
    - sirn 10y ago
      I'm also in the same position. I got an email few days ago that they're going to increase the price (25% in my case) but since my 1 year subscription end this month, I proceed to contact support to cancel. (Because apparently in some country, it's not possible to cancel via the web interface for some unknown reason.) Support promise the subscription will be cancelled and I will receive confirmation email within 2-3 hours. Now, a day has passed and still not even a single email from Adobe. I choose to have support transcript sent to my email though, just in case it wasn't cancelled.
    - Oletros 10y ago
      I have very visible options to cancel the plans and to change the payment options. In fact I changed them when my old card was cancelled
- Oletros 10y ago
  I have a subscription in Spain, I have not received that email and our laws say that if there is a unilateral change of conditions, they should be told with a month in advnace and the consumer can cancel if he doesn't agree
  - EugeneOZ 10y ago
    Price rise is declared for limited set of countries. Also, "Cancel" button is not hidden not for all users.
basicplus2 10y ago
Sometimes you just have to cancel your credit card and get a new one. I had to do this with d××× the rip off merchants in Australia who refused to acknowledge or fix issues with their non functioning wifi broadband service years ago. Only THEN did they contact me saying give us money, so I sent a complaint to the ombudsman and they suddenly said you don't owe us anything and cancelled the $300 they said I owed.
- EugeneOZ 10y ago
  I feel I'll do the same, I'm not going to let them just take as much money as they want from my wallet.
- falcolas 10y ago
  Canceling your credit card may not always work; there are methods in play which let companies who provide subscriptions to get your updated card information and continue to charge you. In its most innocent form, this is useful when your card naturally expires (or is reissued), since you don't have to go back and re-setup your CC with dozens of companies. In its most nefarious, there is no way to stop charges short of completely shutting down a CC account.
Glyptodon 10y ago
One of several reasons I left my first job out of college is that the boss made me remove the ability to cancel a subscription from our web application. I thought it was pure jackassery to make people call and then try to wheel and deal to keep them on, but it did make a surprisingly real difference to the bottom line. No doubt something similar is at play with Adobe. Personally, I'm not sure I'd be opposed to a law or regulation of some kind that any subscription you can sign up for from a website you can also cancel from the website. The whole "let's make it hard to cancel" play is so slimy.
- leesalminen 10y ago
  I can see both sides to the issue. As a consumer, I loathe any company that makes it difficult to cancel. As the owner of a business management platform, we've found that more than half of our cancellations are due to lack of knowledge. The product is fairly complex and has hundreds (possibly 1,000) settings that cover just about any customization a business in our niche could want. People don't want to learn or read documentation, so we offer one on one video calls with our team to support configuration. The cancellations come when they forget about the (free) one on one time and get frustrated with all the configuration. The way we handle cancellations is to follow the "don't be a dick" policy. When a customer requests cancellation (a single email to their acct manager) we remind them about all the resources they still have available and offer to chat with them to see if there's a workable solution for them. If we don't hear back within 1 day, we process the cancellation and refund.
  - lamontcg 10y ago
    You're still kind of being a dick to anyone that really does want to cancel. The flip side to the "half" of the customers that you can retain with this policy is the other half of the customers that just want to end their subscription and would be better served by a webpage and not having to get past a customer support script to do it.
EugeneOZ 10y ago
Update: Adobe made this thread of forum hidden (only visible for registered users). Bad move, Adobe. Here is public copy: https://cdn.rawgit.com/e-oz/79954d0d7fff37b5f3c8d322202721be/raw/a73a97d821a89fc334ea5f09b09f26f9660b66e1/adobe.html https://cdn.rawgit.com/e-oz/79954d0d7fff37b5f3c8d322202721be...
- fenomas 10y ago
  Thread shows up normally for me, no login or anything. It's also three years old...
  - EugeneOZ 10y ago
    And still actual.
apercu 10y ago
I really hate Adobes subscription model. I completely understand why they are doing (increase revenue, decrease piracy) but rather than support it I simply stopped using their products. I had a bit of a work around to get a monthly AI subscription cancelled, but it wasn't as bad as some of these examples. That's not an option for many people though.
- jclardy 10y ago
  I don't mind the subscription that much personally, but what I do mind is their scam of making it seem like a monthly subscription when it is actually yearly. To cancel they make you pay half of whatever your "leftover" subscription rate is, so if you are on the $50/mo plan you have to pay $25/month * however many months are left till your actual yearly renewal date. This is hidden in their terms and not actually stated anywhere that I saw on the main sub pages. This model is fine for companies and large businesses, but for small time contractors that might only need software for a month or two it is a complete scam. I missed my renewal date this past year but in the mean time I've started gathering alternatives for all the software I use from Adobe.
  - apercu 10y ago
    See my comment below, they do have a pay by month option. It's just harder to find and costs more per month than an annual paid monthly. I used it for a few months in 2016 - cost something like $50 CAD/mo
  - MarkMc 10y ago
    Their pricing page clearly says "annual plan, paid monthly" [1] which isn't deceptive. So it's not a scam, it's just expensive. [1] https://creative.adobe.com/plans?sdid=PGRQQLYP&mv=search&s_kwcid=AL!3085!3!102933539584!b!!g!!adobe%20creative&ef_id=VlaeZgAAATOnigiD:20170108152604:s https://creative.adobe.com/plans?sdid=PGRQQLYP&mv=search&s_k...
    - apercu 10y ago
      The have a pay by month option, it just costs more.
TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
I recently tried to subscribe with Adobe. I really only wanted access to two apps: Illustrator and Photoshop. I have absolutely no use for any of their other apps, and I hate all their cloud stuff. Unfortunately, that forces you to buy a $50/mo plan. Regardless, I thought it'd still be worth it, so I was willing to pay the price. After subscribing I download their Creative Cloud installer, only to find out it doesn't on case-sensitive file systems on macOS! Unsubscribing wasn't that bad, though. They have a bullshit popup where they force you to give a reason. But afterwards, it seems to have gone fine. We'll see if any charges show up next month. Honestly, this is a huge problem with all subscription services. I should be able to easily unsubscribe from anything without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. I don't want to have to speak with anyone on the phone, nor should I be forced to tell you why I'm unsubscribing. This is an area where I believe we might need a bit more legislation. I've read stories of people trying to unsubscribe from Comcast and getting immediately passed along to their retention department.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- oktaysafak 10y ago
  All you have to do is make sure that your credit card has no limit. They try to charge it a couple of times in a week (I think it is called the grace period) and when they can't charge it, they automatically drop your subscription, and without any penalties. This happened to me once, I was on a discount plan and tried to reinstate my subscription but their system is so complicated that although the rep tried to help, he could do nothing. I don't know if they would have a legal leverage on me to charge the penalties by other means if I lived in the US, but you'd better try, as you have nothing to lose.
  - 6DM 10y ago
    But then wouldn't you just have to deal with debt collectors calling?
- KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
  Your comment about a case-sensitive filesystem on macOS made me curious. Are you using APFS or anything else? What's your motivation to using a custom filesystem?
edko 10y ago
Some years ago, I bought a perpetual license for FlashBuilder 4.7. Recently, it failed to build an Air package because the product, which hasn't been updated for years, connects to an obsolete time server. To fix the problem, I followed the directions in Adobe's support site. Right after doing this, it asked me to re-enter my license key. It rejected it, saying it was no longer valid. A license that was sold as perpetual, no longer valid! Their support was completely worthless: after being redirected to five different support teams that had no clue how to solve my issue, I realized I was never going to get a solution, and gave up. My personal lesson learned: never buy or use anything from Adobe ever again.
- tiatia 10y ago
  Email them, ask your money back.
  - phaed 10y ago
    Doubt that is going to be any easier to get them to do.
    - Nexxxeh 10y ago
      No, but potentially significantly more valuable, depending on how much the product cost.
- vic-traill 10y ago
  >connects to an obsolete time server Obsolete in what sense? A hosts file entry might be your friend in this scenario, if you're referring to a no-longer-reachable time server. Anyway, sorry to hear that code rot screwed you out of a perpetual license.
DonHopkins 10y ago
Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem. Why, after the many years the problem has been repeatedly reported, doesn't Adobe fix their apparently terribly designed and maintained web site, which sends many of their customers who are trying to unsubscribe into a frustrating infinite loop, instead of manually unsubscribing the few persistent squeaky wheels who one by one eventually find their way to the forum to complain and demand a refund? Could the reason be that Adobe's staff is unable to fix the looping bug in their own web server that their users keep reporting? Do they not employ anyone who has the appropriate skill set to fix that problem? Do they not have a bug reporting and tracking system in place? Does Adobe, of all companies, not consider the web to be important enough to devote sufficient resources to competently maintaining their own web presence? Or perhaps there is another reason? The reason is because it's a dark pattern they've purposefully implemented and maintained in its broken yet lucrative state, because it makes them a hell of a lot more money that way by systematically fucking their customers on a large scale, while also saving them money paying their staff to fix their "broken" web site that's actually working as designed, by making them more and more money each time it "malfunctions".
- muninn_ 10y ago
  I think what it boils down to is that it's just a low priority for them to fix, versus working on their products. They probably have a fix in the works as part of some new redesign and have judged the current annoyance to not cost enough money to fix immediately. I'd chalk it up to incompetence versus malfeasance.
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    This has gone on for too many years, and makes them too much money, to be a mistake. They completely ignored and refused to acknowledge the original subject of the thread, which states explicitly: "how to cancel monthly subscription to photoshop? Website leads you in a loop". I don't think Adobe's incompetent when it comes to maintaining their own web site. It's the business they're in, and what the tools they make do. So to be charitable, I'd chalk it up to competent malfeasance. But on the other hand, maybe they're suffering from eating their own dog food! Perhaps ColdFusion web sites are so buggy and hard to maintain that they can't even fix their own infinite looping problem after all these years. Perhaps it's so hard to hire competent ColdFusion programmers and interaction designers, that even Adobe doesn't have any on staff.
greenspot 10y ago
It gets even worse if you need to do subscriptions for your team. The management console is an utter joke. Adobe owns some of the killer apps of the creative industry but there are alternatives: Photo editing (Photoshop): - Windows: Gimp, Xara Photo, Affinity Photo, Corel Photo. Paint.net - macOS: Pixelmator, Affinity Photo, Gimp Vector editing for digital (Adobe had Fireworks but abandoned it, Illustrator is rather print and clumsy): - Windows: Affinity Designer, Inkscape - macOS: Sketch, Inskape, Affinity Designer Vector editing for print (Adobe Illustrator): - Windows: Inkscape - macOS: Inkscape Desktop Publishing (Adobe InDesign): - Windows/macOS: QuarkXPress which is even more expensive
- jclardy 10y ago
  This is a good list. The alternatives have seriously improved in the last few years (Seemingly after Creative Cloud became a thing.) I've been using Pixelmator over photoshop and Sketch over illustrator for the past few months and it has been great for the most part. I'm not a pro user of either (I'm more on the dev side) but they have served my uses well.
- ganeshkrishnan 10y ago
  Linux gets no love?
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    Because Adobe CC products don't run on Linux? Think before commenting!
    - jmiserez 10y ago
      You don't need Adobe Cc on Linux if you're going with one of the alternatives. And both Gimp and Inkscape are Linux applications, GIMP is even part of the GNU suite!
      - guitarbill 10y ago
        > You don't need Adobe Cc on Linux What? Even if you wanted to, you can't use Adobe CC on Linux. Doesn't run. So these aren't alternatives, they are your only options. It's not that "Linux gets no love", it's that Linux simply doesn't apply in this case, because nobody who's currently using Adobe CC is on Linux.
username223 10y ago
This is why you should never sign up for automatic billing. I had an issue with Verizon some years ago, and was glad I had taken the time to explicitly pay my bill every month. I told a customer service person to cancel my account at the end of my contract. When this didn't happen, and I kept receiving bills, I spent some time trying to navigate customer retention (i.e. "customer disservice") without much luck. Fortunately, I had made sure to never enable auto-billing, so I simply stopped paying, and they eventually took a hint and cancelled my service. I'm glad I have a pre-"Cloud" version of Lightroom, so I don't have to deal with this nonsense.
- infosample 10y ago
  Make sure they don't put it on your credit report.
anabis 10y ago
Contact your credit card company, and stop payment. If you tried unsubscribing multiple times in good faith, then that should be enough. Softbank of Japan tried pulling this fiasco years back, and the above tactic was used by subscribers.
iamvfl 10y ago
Unfortunately, Adobe is a terrible company these days. I had been using their products for over a decade, so unsubscribing and vowing never to work with their software again was not an easy decision for me. It sucks, because I think their software is great, but the company has completely lost my business.
jpalomaki 10y ago
It is convenient to have a service where you can generate "virtual credit cards" and set monthly or all-time spending limits to each of them separately and close the cards when you need. In Finland we have Aktia Wallet[1], but probably similar services exist in other markets as well. [1] https://aktiawallet.fi/web/ https://aktiawallet.fi/web/
akjainaj 10y ago
Can't you just... call your bank and tell them to reject any payment requests from Adobe? It puzzles me to see so many people in that thread saying they've been charged for months and can't stop it... if that happens to you, your problem might be something else...
- tomassre 10y ago
  I tried to do this for my gym. After many back and forth calls with the bank and them telling me they just have to dispute the charge and do something else. Went in person to the bank (WF) and she said there was nothing they could (probably means will) do and I have to get a new credit card).
edblarney 10y ago
There needs to be some sane solution in between Sketch and Photoshop/Illustrator. The former is a little too simple, the later becoming byzantine and crazy expensive.
- xvaier 10y ago
  Affinity Designer and Photo are excellent products, I would argue that affinity designer is much easier to work with than Illustrator.
automatwon 10y ago
Can confirm. Happened to me. Recently made it to the cancellation page. They offered two options: pay a penalty for canceling early, or get two months free. Took the two months free and signed some agreements. Wish me luck!
- unsignedint 10y ago
  When I had 4 month remaining, I have called in and basically gave me same deal. Basically they didn't charge me four two months. After two more charges, when I hit my anniversary month, I have canceled my subscription. I don't think they made me sign agreements though.
CyberDildonics 10y ago
Taking a more bird's eye view, this is what happens when to buy something you have to give over the information that lets anyone take money from you. Things like this would probably be better served in many ways, such as putting money on a temporary credit card.
bsenftner 10y ago
I am so sick if this perpetual dark pattern being used by online services. The following has saved me tons of time: I have setup separate debit cards for my online subscriptions. When I want to cancel one, I go through their cancel process once, and then I cancel the debit card used for that subscription, get a new one from my credit union (same day service with a credit union) and update my other online subscriptions if that debit card was used with them. My credit union (First Entertainment, southern California) will issue me as many debit cards as I want, so I have bad-acting online services all on the same card, for easy canceling.
- op00to 10y ago
  You do realize that charges to dead cards attached to live accounts can and do go through, right?
cwyers 10y ago
Mods, can someone please change the thread title? I am pretty sure this violates site guidelines on titles.
Girlang 10y ago
The Adobe stuff is great, and a great value. I use Photoshop, Premiere, and Illustrator every day. And their "Creative Cloud" cloud features are wonderful.
keknaut 10y ago
Pro Tip: use PayPal account for any Adobe subscriptions. If you suddenly want to cancel Adobe subscription cancel it in PayPal. Very easy
cdevs 10y ago
Maybe the answer is being able to control is via the payment processor like this subscription supports Apple payment subscribe /opt out or whoever and that middle man can kill off the account.
redleggedfrog 10y ago
I'm a custom software developer, mostly e-commerce, and over the years I have been asked numerous times to implement similar schemes. The most popular is a recurring payments, such as for health supplements, that you cannot cancel on the web site. Not a broken system, but just no way to do it. You have to contact them via email. And many of them have a unspoken policy of not cancelling on the 1st, or maybe even the 2nd, request. My suggestion is contact your credit card and declare the charge fraud and stopped.
- tajen 10y ago
  It's important to contact the CC and declare fraud, because there often is a $15 chargeback in addition to reimbursement. If enough people could do that...
- slv77 10y ago
  Please don't do this... The fraud chargeback code is supposed to be reserved for transactions where the card holder did not participate and are used for training a variety of systems. Everything from product like FICO Falcon that is used by card issuers to detect fraudulent transactions to databases that are used to detect compromised systems. Adding a lot of bad data decreases the performance of these systems and makes it easier for fraudster to operate. Correctly disputing the transaction will get the same result and also makes it easier for supervising banks to identify the problem and either get the merchant to resolve the issue or take the merchant down. When they are incorrectly coded as fraud the supervising bank will often go after the merchant to tighten their fraud systems rather than addressing their behavior (bad business practices).
alphabettsy 10y ago
I refuse to ever pay for their products again because of this. I shouldn't have to call the phone number to unsubscribe from a web product.
wineisfine 10y ago
Nice way of punishing paying users ;) This is the reason to support Pixelmator and Sketch.
9935c101ab17a66 10y ago
I tried to cancel a CC Photography plan (that was month to month) in 2014, and had to do so by chatting with an adobe agent. The agent offered me two months, and then when I declined, offered me three months free if I didn't cancel. I confirmed that I was not renewing a contract, and that I could cancel after the three months were up. I thought, what the hell, three months free with no commitment is fine. Flash forward to ~9 months later and I try and cancel the plan on chat again. The agent says I'm on a yearly plan and would be penalized for cancelling. I insist I'm not, and ask him to check the previous chat log. He says there is no previous chat log, just a summary left by the previous support person that says I agreed to it. I start disputing this, and then the support agent literally starts copying and pasting quotes from the previous chat I had, despite insisting such a log didn't exist. I call him out, tell him to refer to the part in the log where I verified I asked if I could cancel at any time. Agent went quite for a few minutes and then promptly agreed to terminate my monthly payments with no penalty. I was flabbergasted. How toxic must Adobe's corporate culture be to foster this kind of pressure on sales people?
hendry 10y ago
I had a poor experience was cancelling Adobe Premiere Pro. Let this be a wake up call to Adobe. Make it easy for your customers to come and go. Treat your customers with contempt and well, the bitter taste in my mouth will take years to clear.
stevewillows 10y ago
In 2008 I was doing some contract work for a print shop that was still using CS2. For most work, it was fine. As a graphic designer, I'm shackled to Adobe's line. However, I've avoided moving to CC. I did a trial and found that most of the new 'features' didn't benefit my workflow. Illustrator was significantly slower, Photoshop was alright, and InDesign is always the same. The deeper issue is that the suite itself is sloppy. It's never been great -- but we've grown to love it (Stockholm syndrome...) Inconsistent hotkeys across applications, odd behaviors (e.g. OSX users cmd+tabbing from photoshop to Chrome.) It feels like Adobe never really improves their products, but merely adds a few tweaks, a handful of moderately useful features, then slaps a new version number on it. For me, its not worth moving from a paid-for product to a subscription model. I'm not alone in this either. The $50/m isn't a bad price, but I personally feel that Adobe needs to take a step back and focus on how their applications interact with each other and also how the user interacts between each application. This doesn't even account for the somewhat sketchy 'difficult / impossible to unsubscribe' issues, user info leaks, etc.
beezischillin 10y ago
What happens if you buy a years' worth of pre-paid subscription to CC? Will they also slap a charge on you if you decide not to renew it after a year?
rabboRubble 10y ago
A bit late to the game, but the consumer side risks of the subscription model got me a-thinking. My main credit card offers a one time temporary credit card number for use when I want to buy something from a dodgy website. I log into the credit card company website, hit a couple of buttons, and generate a random CC number with an expiration date one month out. This works great for a one time purchase, but rather badly for a subscription purchase. I guess what I would do is, when wanting to cancel the subscription is to change my billing credit card from my "real" credit card to one time credit card number with a short expiry date. The one time card number will be dead within 1 month after such a change.

134 points by EugeneOZ 10y ago

As an addition: today Adobe sent me email that they are going to increase price (2x) and there is no way to cancel subscription.

grzm 10y ago
No way to cancel? Can you stop payment?
- EugeneOZ 10y ago
  No, user can't remove/change card data or cancel subscription. And when I contact their support, they don't do nothing. They promise "we will cancel soon" but nothing happens.
  - grzm 10y ago
    I meant contact the credit card company to prevent paying further charges from Adobe.
    - EugeneOZ 10y ago
      Will try.. Sounds unusual to me. But maybe it's usual practice.
      - grzm 10y ago
        I don't know how common it is. But if Adobe is raising prices outside of your agreement and not allowing you to cancel, I think it's worth a try.
  - sirn 10y ago
    I'm also in the same position. I got an email few days ago that they're going to increase the price (25% in my case) but since my 1 year subscription end this month, I proceed to contact support to cancel. (Because apparently in some country, it's not possible to cancel via the web interface for some unknown reason.) Support promise the subscription will be cancelled and I will receive confirmation email within 2-3 hours. Now, a day has passed and still not even a single email from Adobe. I choose to have support transcript sent to my email though, just in case it wasn't cancelled.
  - Oletros 10y ago
    I have very visible options to cancel the plans and to change the payment options. In fact I changed them when my old card was cancelled
Oletros 10y ago
I have a subscription in Spain, I have not received that email and our laws say that if there is a unilateral change of conditions, they should be told with a month in advnace and the consumer can cancel if he doesn't agree
- EugeneOZ 10y ago
  Price rise is declared for limited set of countries. Also, "Cancel" button is not hidden not for all users.

basicplus2 10y ago

Sometimes you just have to cancel your credit card and get a new one. I had to do this with d××× the rip off merchants in Australia who refused to acknowledge or fix issues with their non functioning wifi broadband service years ago. Only THEN did they contact me saying give us money, so I sent a complaint to the ombudsman and they suddenly said you don't owe us anything and cancelled the $300 they said I owed.

EugeneOZ 10y ago
I feel I'll do the same, I'm not going to let them just take as much money as they want from my wallet.
falcolas 10y ago
Canceling your credit card may not always work; there are methods in play which let companies who provide subscriptions to get your updated card information and continue to charge you. In its most innocent form, this is useful when your card naturally expires (or is reissued), since you don't have to go back and re-setup your CC with dozens of companies. In its most nefarious, there is no way to stop charges short of completely shutting down a CC account.

Glyptodon 10y ago

One of several reasons I left my first job out of college is that the boss made me remove the ability to cancel a subscription from our web application. I thought it was pure jackassery to make people call and then try to wheel and deal to keep them on, but it did make a surprisingly real difference to the bottom line. No doubt something similar is at play with Adobe. Personally, I'm not sure I'd be opposed to a law or regulation of some kind that any subscription you can sign up for from a website you can also cancel from the website. The whole "let's make it hard to cancel" play is so slimy.

leesalminen 10y ago
I can see both sides to the issue. As a consumer, I loathe any company that makes it difficult to cancel. As the owner of a business management platform, we've found that more than half of our cancellations are due to lack of knowledge. The product is fairly complex and has hundreds (possibly 1,000) settings that cover just about any customization a business in our niche could want. People don't want to learn or read documentation, so we offer one on one video calls with our team to support configuration. The cancellations come when they forget about the (free) one on one time and get frustrated with all the configuration. The way we handle cancellations is to follow the "don't be a dick" policy. When a customer requests cancellation (a single email to their acct manager) we remind them about all the resources they still have available and offer to chat with them to see if there's a workable solution for them. If we don't hear back within 1 day, we process the cancellation and refund.
- lamontcg 10y ago
  You're still kind of being a dick to anyone that really does want to cancel. The flip side to the "half" of the customers that you can retain with this policy is the other half of the customers that just want to end their subscription and would be better served by a webpage and not having to get past a customer support script to do it.

EugeneOZ 10y ago

Update: Adobe made this thread of forum hidden (only visible for registered users). Bad move, Adobe. Here is public copy: https://cdn.rawgit.com/e-oz/79954d0d7fff37b5f3c8d322202721be/raw/a73a97d821a89fc334ea5f09b09f26f9660b66e1/adobe.html https://cdn.rawgit.com/e-oz/79954d0d7fff37b5f3c8d322202721be...

fenomas 10y ago
Thread shows up normally for me, no login or anything. It's also three years old...
- EugeneOZ 10y ago
  And still actual.

apercu 10y ago

I really hate Adobes subscription model. I completely understand why they are doing (increase revenue, decrease piracy) but rather than support it I simply stopped using their products. I had a bit of a work around to get a monthly AI subscription cancelled, but it wasn't as bad as some of these examples. That's not an option for many people though.

jclardy 10y ago
I don't mind the subscription that much personally, but what I do mind is their scam of making it seem like a monthly subscription when it is actually yearly. To cancel they make you pay half of whatever your "leftover" subscription rate is, so if you are on the $50/mo plan you have to pay $25/month * however many months are left till your actual yearly renewal date. This is hidden in their terms and not actually stated anywhere that I saw on the main sub pages. This model is fine for companies and large businesses, but for small time contractors that might only need software for a month or two it is a complete scam. I missed my renewal date this past year but in the mean time I've started gathering alternatives for all the software I use from Adobe.
- apercu 10y ago
  See my comment below, they do have a pay by month option. It's just harder to find and costs more per month than an annual paid monthly. I used it for a few months in 2016 - cost something like $50 CAD/mo
- MarkMc 10y ago
  Their pricing page clearly says "annual plan, paid monthly" [1] which isn't deceptive. So it's not a scam, it's just expensive. [1] https://creative.adobe.com/plans?sdid=PGRQQLYP&mv=search&s_kwcid=AL!3085!3!102933539584!b!!g!!adobe%20creative&ef_id=VlaeZgAAATOnigiD:20170108152604:s https://creative.adobe.com/plans?sdid=PGRQQLYP&mv=search&s_k...
  - apercu 10y ago
    The have a pay by month option, it just costs more.

TheAceOfHearts 10y ago

I recently tried to subscribe with Adobe. I really only wanted access to two apps: Illustrator and Photoshop. I have absolutely no use for any of their other apps, and I hate all their cloud stuff. Unfortunately, that forces you to buy a $50/mo plan. Regardless, I thought it'd still be worth it, so I was willing to pay the price. After subscribing I download their Creative Cloud installer, only to find out it doesn't on case-sensitive file systems on macOS! Unsubscribing wasn't that bad, though. They have a bullshit popup where they force you to give a reason. But afterwards, it seems to have gone fine. We'll see if any charges show up next month. Honestly, this is a huge problem with all subscription services. I should be able to easily unsubscribe from anything without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. I don't want to have to speak with anyone on the phone, nor should I be forced to tell you why I'm unsubscribing. This is an area where I believe we might need a bit more legislation. I've read stories of people trying to unsubscribe from Comcast and getting immediately passed along to their retention department.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
oktaysafak 10y ago
All you have to do is make sure that your credit card has no limit. They try to charge it a couple of times in a week (I think it is called the grace period) and when they can't charge it, they automatically drop your subscription, and without any penalties. This happened to me once, I was on a discount plan and tried to reinstate my subscription but their system is so complicated that although the rep tried to help, he could do nothing. I don't know if they would have a legal leverage on me to charge the penalties by other means if I lived in the US, but you'd better try, as you have nothing to lose.
- 6DM 10y ago
  But then wouldn't you just have to deal with debt collectors calling?
KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
Your comment about a case-sensitive filesystem on macOS made me curious. Are you using APFS or anything else? What's your motivation to using a custom filesystem?

edko 10y ago

Some years ago, I bought a perpetual license for FlashBuilder 4.7. Recently, it failed to build an Air package because the product, which hasn't been updated for years, connects to an obsolete time server. To fix the problem, I followed the directions in Adobe's support site. Right after doing this, it asked me to re-enter my license key. It rejected it, saying it was no longer valid. A license that was sold as perpetual, no longer valid! Their support was completely worthless: after being redirected to five different support teams that had no clue how to solve my issue, I realized I was never going to get a solution, and gave up. My personal lesson learned: never buy or use anything from Adobe ever again.

tiatia 10y ago
Email them, ask your money back.
- phaed 10y ago
  Doubt that is going to be any easier to get them to do.
  - Nexxxeh 10y ago
    No, but potentially significantly more valuable, depending on how much the product cost.
vic-traill 10y ago
>connects to an obsolete time server Obsolete in what sense? A hosts file entry might be your friend in this scenario, if you're referring to a no-longer-reachable time server. Anyway, sorry to hear that code rot screwed you out of a perpetual license.

DonHopkins 10y ago

Notice how Adobe support staff are quick to address each individual complaining customer's short term one-off problem of unsubscribing, yet they never acknowledge that there is a general overarching problem with unsubscribing being impossible because of their broken looping web site, or promise to fix the actual cause of such a frequent and long standing problem. Why, after the many years the problem has been repeatedly reported, doesn't Adobe fix their apparently terribly designed and maintained web site, which sends many of their customers who are trying to unsubscribe into a frustrating infinite loop, instead of manually unsubscribing the few persistent squeaky wheels who one by one eventually find their way to the forum to complain and demand a refund? Could the reason be that Adobe's staff is unable to fix the looping bug in their own web server that their users keep reporting? Do they not employ anyone who has the appropriate skill set to fix that problem? Do they not have a bug reporting and tracking system in place? Does Adobe, of all companies, not consider the web to be important enough to devote sufficient resources to competently maintaining their own web presence? Or perhaps there is another reason? The reason is because it's a dark pattern they've purposefully implemented and maintained in its broken yet lucrative state, because it makes them a hell of a lot more money that way by systematically fucking their customers on a large scale, while also saving them money paying their staff to fix their "broken" web site that's actually working as designed, by making them more and more money each time it "malfunctions".

muninn_ 10y ago
I think what it boils down to is that it's just a low priority for them to fix, versus working on their products. They probably have a fix in the works as part of some new redesign and have judged the current annoyance to not cost enough money to fix immediately. I'd chalk it up to incompetence versus malfeasance.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  This has gone on for too many years, and makes them too much money, to be a mistake. They completely ignored and refused to acknowledge the original subject of the thread, which states explicitly: "how to cancel monthly subscription to photoshop? Website leads you in a loop". I don't think Adobe's incompetent when it comes to maintaining their own web site. It's the business they're in, and what the tools they make do. So to be charitable, I'd chalk it up to competent malfeasance. But on the other hand, maybe they're suffering from eating their own dog food! Perhaps ColdFusion web sites are so buggy and hard to maintain that they can't even fix their own infinite looping problem after all these years. Perhaps it's so hard to hire competent ColdFusion programmers and interaction designers, that even Adobe doesn't have any on staff.

greenspot 10y ago

It gets even worse if you need to do subscriptions for your team. The management console is an utter joke. Adobe owns some of the killer apps of the creative industry but there are alternatives: Photo editing (Photoshop): - Windows: Gimp, Xara Photo, Affinity Photo, Corel Photo. Paint.net - macOS: Pixelmator, Affinity Photo, Gimp Vector editing for digital (Adobe had Fireworks but abandoned it, Illustrator is rather print and clumsy): - Windows: Affinity Designer, Inkscape - macOS: Sketch, Inskape, Affinity Designer Vector editing for print (Adobe Illustrator): - Windows: Inkscape - macOS: Inkscape Desktop Publishing (Adobe InDesign): - Windows/macOS: QuarkXPress which is even more expensive

jclardy 10y ago
This is a good list. The alternatives have seriously improved in the last few years (Seemingly after Creative Cloud became a thing.) I've been using Pixelmator over photoshop and Sketch over illustrator for the past few months and it has been great for the most part. I'm not a pro user of either (I'm more on the dev side) but they have served my uses well.
ganeshkrishnan 10y ago
Linux gets no love?
- guitarbill 10y ago
  Because Adobe CC products don't run on Linux? Think before commenting!
  - jmiserez 10y ago
    You don't need Adobe Cc on Linux if you're going with one of the alternatives. And both Gimp and Inkscape are Linux applications, GIMP is even part of the GNU suite!
    - guitarbill 10y ago
      > You don't need Adobe Cc on Linux What? Even if you wanted to, you can't use Adobe CC on Linux. Doesn't run. So these aren't alternatives, they are your only options. It's not that "Linux gets no love", it's that Linux simply doesn't apply in this case, because nobody who's currently using Adobe CC is on Linux.

username223 10y ago

This is why you should never sign up for automatic billing. I had an issue with Verizon some years ago, and was glad I had taken the time to explicitly pay my bill every month. I told a customer service person to cancel my account at the end of my contract. When this didn't happen, and I kept receiving bills, I spent some time trying to navigate customer retention (i.e. "customer disservice") without much luck. Fortunately, I had made sure to never enable auto-billing, so I simply stopped paying, and they eventually took a hint and cancelled my service. I'm glad I have a pre-"Cloud" version of Lightroom, so I don't have to deal with this nonsense.

infosample 10y ago
Make sure they don't put it on your credit report.

anabis 10y ago

Contact your credit card company, and stop payment. If you tried unsubscribing multiple times in good faith, then that should be enough. Softbank of Japan tried pulling this fiasco years back, and the above tactic was used by subscribers.

iamvfl 10y ago

Unfortunately, Adobe is a terrible company these days. I had been using their products for over a decade, so unsubscribing and vowing never to work with their software again was not an easy decision for me. It sucks, because I think their software is great, but the company has completely lost my business.

jpalomaki 10y ago

It is convenient to have a service where you can generate "virtual credit cards" and set monthly or all-time spending limits to each of them separately and close the cards when you need. In Finland we have Aktia Wallet[1], but probably similar services exist in other markets as well. [1] https://aktiawallet.fi/web/ https://aktiawallet.fi/web/

akjainaj 10y ago

Can't you just... call your bank and tell them to reject any payment requests from Adobe? It puzzles me to see so many people in that thread saying they've been charged for months and can't stop it... if that happens to you, your problem might be something else...

tomassre 10y ago
I tried to do this for my gym. After many back and forth calls with the bank and them telling me they just have to dispute the charge and do something else. Went in person to the bank (WF) and she said there was nothing they could (probably means will) do and I have to get a new credit card).

edblarney 10y ago

There needs to be some sane solution in between Sketch and Photoshop/Illustrator. The former is a little too simple, the later becoming byzantine and crazy expensive.

xvaier 10y ago
Affinity Designer and Photo are excellent products, I would argue that affinity designer is much easier to work with than Illustrator.

automatwon 10y ago

Can confirm. Happened to me. Recently made it to the cancellation page. They offered two options: pay a penalty for canceling early, or get two months free. Took the two months free and signed some agreements. Wish me luck!

unsignedint 10y ago
When I had 4 month remaining, I have called in and basically gave me same deal. Basically they didn't charge me four two months. After two more charges, when I hit my anniversary month, I have canceled my subscription. I don't think they made me sign agreements though.

CyberDildonics 10y ago

Taking a more bird's eye view, this is what happens when to buy something you have to give over the information that lets anyone take money from you. Things like this would probably be better served in many ways, such as putting money on a temporary credit card.

bsenftner 10y ago

I am so sick if this perpetual dark pattern being used by online services. The following has saved me tons of time: I have setup separate debit cards for my online subscriptions. When I want to cancel one, I go through their cancel process once, and then I cancel the debit card used for that subscription, get a new one from my credit union (same day service with a credit union) and update my other online subscriptions if that debit card was used with them. My credit union (First Entertainment, southern California) will issue me as many debit cards as I want, so I have bad-acting online services all on the same card, for easy canceling.

op00to 10y ago
You do realize that charges to dead cards attached to live accounts can and do go through, right?

cwyers 10y ago

Mods, can someone please change the thread title? I am pretty sure this violates site guidelines on titles.

Girlang 10y ago

The Adobe stuff is great, and a great value. I use Photoshop, Premiere, and Illustrator every day. And their "Creative Cloud" cloud features are wonderful.

keknaut 10y ago

Pro Tip: use PayPal account for any Adobe subscriptions. If you suddenly want to cancel Adobe subscription cancel it in PayPal. Very easy

cdevs 10y ago

Maybe the answer is being able to control is via the payment processor like this subscription supports Apple payment subscribe /opt out or whoever and that middle man can kill off the account.

redleggedfrog 10y ago

I'm a custom software developer, mostly e-commerce, and over the years I have been asked numerous times to implement similar schemes. The most popular is a recurring payments, such as for health supplements, that you cannot cancel on the web site. Not a broken system, but just no way to do it. You have to contact them via email. And many of them have a unspoken policy of not cancelling on the 1st, or maybe even the 2nd, request. My suggestion is contact your credit card and declare the charge fraud and stopped.

tajen 10y ago
It's important to contact the CC and declare fraud, because there often is a $15 chargeback in addition to reimbursement. If enough people could do that...
slv77 10y ago
Please don't do this... The fraud chargeback code is supposed to be reserved for transactions where the card holder did not participate and are used for training a variety of systems. Everything from product like FICO Falcon that is used by card issuers to detect fraudulent transactions to databases that are used to detect compromised systems. Adding a lot of bad data decreases the performance of these systems and makes it easier for fraudster to operate. Correctly disputing the transaction will get the same result and also makes it easier for supervising banks to identify the problem and either get the merchant to resolve the issue or take the merchant down. When they are incorrectly coded as fraud the supervising bank will often go after the merchant to tighten their fraud systems rather than addressing their behavior (bad business practices).

alphabettsy 10y ago

I refuse to ever pay for their products again because of this. I shouldn't have to call the phone number to unsubscribe from a web product.

wineisfine 10y ago

Nice way of punishing paying users ;) This is the reason to support Pixelmator and Sketch.

9935c101ab17a66 10y ago

I tried to cancel a CC Photography plan (that was month to month) in 2014, and had to do so by chatting with an adobe agent. The agent offered me two months, and then when I declined, offered me three months free if I didn't cancel. I confirmed that I was not renewing a contract, and that I could cancel after the three months were up. I thought, what the hell, three months free with no commitment is fine. Flash forward to ~9 months later and I try and cancel the plan on chat again. The agent says I'm on a yearly plan and would be penalized for cancelling. I insist I'm not, and ask him to check the previous chat log. He says there is no previous chat log, just a summary left by the previous support person that says I agreed to it. I start disputing this, and then the support agent literally starts copying and pasting quotes from the previous chat I had, despite insisting such a log didn't exist. I call him out, tell him to refer to the part in the log where I verified I asked if I could cancel at any time. Agent went quite for a few minutes and then promptly agreed to terminate my monthly payments with no penalty. I was flabbergasted. How toxic must Adobe's corporate culture be to foster this kind of pressure on sales people?

hendry 10y ago

I had a poor experience was cancelling Adobe Premiere Pro. Let this be a wake up call to Adobe. Make it easy for your customers to come and go. Treat your customers with contempt and well, the bitter taste in my mouth will take years to clear.

stevewillows 10y ago

In 2008 I was doing some contract work for a print shop that was still using CS2. For most work, it was fine. As a graphic designer, I'm shackled to Adobe's line. However, I've avoided moving to CC. I did a trial and found that most of the new 'features' didn't benefit my workflow. Illustrator was significantly slower, Photoshop was alright, and InDesign is always the same. The deeper issue is that the suite itself is sloppy. It's never been great -- but we've grown to love it (Stockholm syndrome...) Inconsistent hotkeys across applications, odd behaviors (e.g. OSX users cmd+tabbing from photoshop to Chrome.) It feels like Adobe never really improves their products, but merely adds a few tweaks, a handful of moderately useful features, then slaps a new version number on it. For me, its not worth moving from a paid-for product to a subscription model. I'm not alone in this either. The $50/m isn't a bad price, but I personally feel that Adobe needs to take a step back and focus on how their applications interact with each other and also how the user interacts between each application. This doesn't even account for the somewhat sketchy 'difficult / impossible to unsubscribe' issues, user info leaks, etc.

beezischillin 10y ago

What happens if you buy a years' worth of pre-paid subscription to CC? Will they also slap a charge on you if you decide not to renew it after a year?

rabboRubble 10y ago

A bit late to the game, but the consumer side risks of the subscription model got me a-thinking. My main credit card offers a one time temporary credit card number for use when I want to buy something from a dodgy website. I log into the credit card company website, hit a couple of buttons, and generate a random CC number with an expiration date one month out. This works great for a one time purchase, but rather badly for a subscription purchase. I guess what I would do is, when wanting to cancel the subscription is to change my billing credit card from my "real" credit card to one time credit card number with a short expiry date. The one time card number will be dead within 1 month after such a change.