31 ms·

Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

817 points by CSDude 5y ago

programer 5y ago
What if you don't pay?
pfundstein 5y ago
I was hit with this last year while struggling for funds. Upon seeing the cancellation fee, I simply reported my credit card lost, changed the contact details on my adobe account, and then just left the account to rot. Adobe will never see another dime from me.
- Something1234 5y ago
  I think a chargeback would have been more appropriate.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  FYI, this isn't always bulletproof. I got a new card number from my bank a couple years ago and was still charged for a subscription I had set up prior to that. I know the company involved wasn't doing anything shady because I run the company. I emailed Stripe (my payment processor) to find out how my subscription had migrated to the new card and they said that the feature had been added some time back. So even if you get a new card number, don't be surprised if your subscriptions follow you around.
  - prometheuses 5y ago
    Very interesting. Thanks for the tidbit.
  - tokipin 5y ago
    Yep, this happend to me with a LinkedIn trial. I had my credit card changed but somehow LinkedIn was able to charge the new number, which defeated the entire point. Trying to contact LinkedIn revealed they don't have any humans to contact. They even have a fake "3 minutes until you can chat with someone" that always errors out. Chargeback to the rescue, but in the future I will just switch banks entirely.
    - gnicholas 5y ago
      When I'm worried about a charge, I use a virtual number generator that my bank offers. It allows me to put a time limit and dollar limit on any charges. Switching banks frequently can mess with your credit score, so I'd try not to do that too much (especially if you're considering buying a home/car/etc.).
      - tadfisher 5y ago
        That's not quite accurate. You average account age for credit lines affects your credit score. Banks do not report depository accounts to the credit bureaus because they are not lines of credit, they are liabilities. They do report to a separate group of risk-scoring companies, but this is mostly to gate fraudsters. Frequently switching checking/savings accounts will have no bearing on your ability to make large purchases on credit. If you happen to close credit cards frequently enough, regardless of whether they are issued by banks, your score could be impacted by reducing your average account age.
        gnicholas 5y ago
        Sorry for not being clear — I was just referring to switching banks with whom you have credit cards. I don't know if GP was referring to "banks" in the context of credit or debit, but it seems most people in the US who are savvy about such things use credit cards because of the available rewards.
      - angry_octet 5y ago
        I think you may find that the swindler may be able to present the old CC number and still charge your account (which hasn't changed). Gym indenture companies are notorious for this. I had this occur with Capital One and a scam fax-to-email company who refused to accept a trial cancellation. Even after lodging a dispute the scammers could still bill more charges, and I'd have to dispute each one until the bank made a ruling.
  - pfundstein 5y ago
    If you report your card lost/stolen, then there is no way anyone should ever be able to charge it again. Did you report your old card lost or did they issue a new one because it expired/etc?
    - pkaye 5y ago
      I seem to recall some credit card companies will reroute recurring charges for the old number to the new card.
      - pfundstein 5y ago
        If they do that for cards reported lost/stolen then that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Thankfully it hasn't happened to me or anyone I know and this is the first I've heard of it.
        0xEFF 5y ago
        My chase sapphire card number was stolen while on vacation out of the country before covid. Reported the fraudulent charges and got a new card and number. Recurring subscriptions transferred for about 12 months then I had to update the card number. I’m not a payments expert but presumably the subscription is tied to some authorization and not necessarily the number itself.
        nulbyte 5y ago
        Not really. If you authorized a recurring charge, it isn't unauthorized, and you are liable. Most people want recurring charges to continue. Just because you lose your card doesn't mean you want to forget paying your phone bill or something. Merchant disputes are a thing, but they are not the same as an unauthorized charge.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        As long as the recurring charge wasn't created while the card was lost/stolen, what's the problem?
      - nullserver 5y ago
  - chomp 5y ago
    Yep. If you process payments online, you have a few options for subscribing to feeds of updated card numbers. At one of my previous jobs, we sent Vindicia cards that we have on file and they’d send us back cards that those banks have changed (I.e. not stolen or lost, merely changed)
  - defterGoose 5y ago
    Had this happen with an LA fitness membership a few years back. After spending hours trying to jump through their hoops to cancel, i got fed up and requested a new Visa card from WF. Well, Visa in all its wisdom decided to give my new number to the vendor without my permission or knowledge, and because i happened to not check my statement for several months, was charged a few hundred dollars for a gym membership i wasnt using. You could assemble the finest legal minds in the world and they'd never convince me that this shouldn't be 100% illegal.
    - ilaksh 5y ago
      Well, I would like to submit that we should not need a third party like Visa to do digital payments. Because now we have math and computers. I am looking forward to Ethereum scaling out with 2.0.
- brnt 5y ago
  How does this work legally? I see this sort of comment quite often, but in my jurisdiction the money I owe is bound by the terms of the contract, not by the ability of the company to debit my card. If I would do this, companies can and will send letters with the amount due and eventually may escalate to authorities or a bailiff.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    What authorities? In the US usually violating a contract is a civil matter. Unless you're a rich corporation that accuses people of fraud for violating your ToS like some companies do then sometimes the federal agencies get involved which basically protect big business and charge people with crimes that the little guy will never be able to do the reverse against a company.
    - cbmuser 5y ago
      > What authorities? In Germany, the creditor can just go to court and they will send a bailiff to get the money from you. If someone legally owes you money and they don‘t pay, you can always have the court send a bailiff for you. You don’t have to be a multi-billion Dollar company to have the right (not privilege) to have your debitors pay their debt.
  - TylerE 5y ago
    Legally? It's fraud.
vr46 5y ago
Ha, this happened to me and I circumvented this by switching my plan to a new plan which kicked off some trial grace period, at which point I cancelled my entire plan. No cancellation fee. Me 1: Adobe 0
- nodesocket 5y ago
  I just tried to cancel today after getting absolutely fed up with Photoshop being buggy and insanely slow. I have a top of the line 16" MacBook pro, and waiting multiple seconds every single action inside Photoshop infuriates me. Can you provide more details on this? I am on their annual plan and they want to charge me to cancel.
  - vr46 5y ago
    I was on a similar plan, and same machine funnily enough. I downgraded to the Lightroom only plan and then cancelled - hopefully that should still work for you.
    - nodesocket 5y ago
      I just went through the process and they only let me switch to Lightroom annual (which I suspect starts a new annual subscription starting today). Curious, what did you choose as a replacement for raster graphics? GIMP is a no-go, as its slow and buggy as well.
      - techrat 5y ago
        For the majority of the basic Photoshop stuff, Photopea actually does the job quite well.
      - mappu 5y ago
        I really recommend Krita over GIMP - it subjectively feels more "normal" - it has better cross-platform support, better tablet support, better brush engine, better vector layers, and it uses single-window layout without needing to be told.
johnsocs 5y ago
When you sign up you agree to the fee being broken up in installments. I think they have spelled it out pretty clearly, actually one could consider it ‘free’ financing in a sense. While I don’t like what they have done I don’t see what the big deal is with it.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  It’s not clear. I went to sign up once and was looking for text like this and could not find it. I didn’t sign up because everyone says it’s impossible to cancel later, and I was worried I missed something in the terms
- slaymaker1907 5y ago
  It seems like even the original post isn't suggesting that what they are doing is illegal, just scummy. I think it straddles the line of false advertising since it is pretty clear by looking at the market of subscriptions that there is a decent premium for a monthly vs. a yearly subscription. As a point of reference, World of Warcraft offers about a 10% discount for their 6 month subscription plan compared to the month to month plan. Additionally, they have pretty consistently offered one free item from the store (which they choose) for players on the 6 month plan. The last such item was a mount which must otherwise be purchased for $25 (obviously the true value to 6 month subscribers is lower than $25 due to bundling and since subscribers don't get to choose which item they receive).
  - paxys 5y ago
    I don't understand what's scummy about this. Every service out there offers discounted prices for longer-term contracts since they are guaranteed a sustained future income. If they didn't have a penalty for breaking the contract then everyone would just game the system. What should they do instead? Not have the annual payment option and screw over all the people who do want to pay for the entire year and are happy with the discount?
    - harimau777 5y ago
prometheuses 5y ago
Ontop of all this, when trying to uninstall Adobe products through Windows' Add or Remove Programs, you need to create/ login with an online account. Adobe is literally the scummiest company ever.
- timbit42 5y ago
  Difficult to imagine they're worse than Oracle.
- mc32 5y ago
  This reminds me of old school newspaper subscriptions and the games they used (and still may) use to retain (ransom) customers.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Not if it's using the license activator.
cocoa19 5y ago
What's next, Adobe? Are you sending people to collections if they don't pay up? This scummy behavior is not OK.
wccrawford 5y ago
Doesn't this happen for every yearly plan that lets you pay in installments?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  I've never come across such a thing. Also, something being common doesn't necessarily mean it's good.
- ryan-allen 5y ago
  I have a vague recollection that yes, this is true, and it happened to me. Cancelling the subscription over the phone was an absolute shit-show. I truly resent Adobe as a company, but they have a monopoly on certain applications.
- maldeh 5y ago
  What does a yearly installment plan even mean in the context of a cloud subscription-based service, as opposed to one for which one has already received goods? And first of all, as the OP noted in the twitter thread, they believed they were doing a monthly subscription as advertised; the "yearly plan" interpretation is Adobe getting creative in the terms of service.
  - Meph504 5y ago
    It means what it means in almost ever contract you sign for a subscription service. You agree to purchase a year of service, and pay for that monthly. It is a very common practice across multiple industries. If they believed that they were signing up for a monthly, they did not read, what they were signing up for, its clearly stated on the sign up screen. https://i.imgur.com/CZSCvw8.png https://i.imgur.com/CZSCvw8.png
  - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
    You subscribe to Creative Cloud on an annual basis. Please take a look here by clicking into the pricing for the plans or the "buy" option: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html ... from my perspective, it is clearly written "annual plan". You can choose to pay on a monthly basis, or in a lump sum. There is no "monthly subscription" or similar. Now it's possible that this page has changed since the OP subscribed, but I don't think it's changed that much - I remember this clearly from when I signed up which was many years ago. The OP might be unhappy that their expectations were violated but I really don't think Adobe is trying to hide the nature of the product and its annual commitment cycle.
blitz_skull 5y ago
This is why you ALWAYS use a Privacy.com (or similar) virtual credit card with limited access to your bank account. It's the same as creating a separation between your API layer and DB layer. They shouldn't have unmitigated access. Anytime I start a trial, or pay for a service provider with a high likelihood of screwing me over—Privacy.com virtual card.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Was just about to type this. Privacy.com is amazing.
- cheeze 5y ago
  I use privacy too but I generally don't bother for most use cases because I want the CC rewards. Chase has been fine whenever someone is scummy to me, which has rarely happened. Any sort of trial though, 100% of the time.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Would love to see a recent review of Privacy.com vs Abine Blur. Does Privacy.com really make it so you can't delete an account?
- silicon2401 5y ago
  what are the pros and cons of using privacy.com or similar vs a normal credit card? is it as safe as using your bank's own credit card?
jan_Inkepa 5y ago
I tried to cancel my subscription six months in advance of the termination date, and they refused to cancel it, saying I would have to call up the month before it was due to expire. In the interim I misplaced my credit card and had to cancel it - my adobe account subscription was automatically suspended when the payments didn't go through and I never heard another word from them (I deleted my adobe account just to be safe...). For an unexpectedly joyous role-model, Microsoft Office subscription plans are delightfully drop-in/drop-out - I've done several one-month office subscriptions to do stuff in excel.
echelon 5y ago
Adobe is losing out to more modern tools like Canva and Figma that better serve clients and don't charge an arm and a leg. This is the kind of behavior you see with ossified or dying companies that no longer innovate. - Informercial "Jelly of the month"-type memberships - Gyms - Comcast Adobe is toast. I'm going to look into more metrics and consider shorting it.
- chii 5y ago
  Not to mention the recently-on-front-page photopea (https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/)
  - behringer 5y ago
    I wouldn't really consider an online editor a photoshop competitor.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I have never loved the product yet hated a company more. I truly don’t understand how they can be so short-sighted. If they would just suck a teeny bit less they’d have so many more customers.
synack 5y ago
If you switch your billing to PayPal, you can then cancel the recurring authorization on PayPal's side. Adobe will send you threatening emails, but they can't do anything other than terminate your subscription.
- OkGoDoIt 5y ago
  I mean they could send it to collections. I’m not saying it’s likely they would, but I’ve had it happen to me before in a similar situation with a different company‘s subscription that tried to charge me a cancellation fee I didn’t originally agree to. As I found out the hard way, there’s not a lot you can do to fight that. They use your credit score as a threat.
  - synack 5y ago
    If that happens, you lawyer up, write a blog post, and make some money on adwords.
    - notyourday 5y ago
      That's like stabbing yourself in a face with a plastic spork multiple times to be cool and stick it to the man. The amount of $$ you would lose with a collection on your credit report until it drops will dwarf the amount of money you will make on adwords. If you can afford Adobe subscription, just cancel it and pay the cancellation fee. Or run it into the end of the period. The costs are minimal. Definitely smaller than the costs of a collection.
someelephant 5y ago
When I canceled it was necessary to do so through a chat with a support person. I asked them if they could waive the fee and they said ok.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reader_mode 5y ago
This just reinforces my decision to only use prepaid virtual cards for subscriptions.
- angry_octet 5y ago
  The more cunning companies reject prepaid (i.e. debit) cards for this exact reason. Your ability to dispute fraudulent transactions is much reduced for debit cards so use them with caution.
greggman3 5y ago
Is this really a cancellation fee or is it just honoring your contract? AFAIK it's very clear on Adobe's page that your options are (1) Annual plan paid monthly, (2) Annual plan prepaid, and depending on the product (3) Monthly plan at usually 150% higher price. https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html If you signed up for a yearly plan paid monthly, the cancellation fee is finishing your contract. If you didn't want to agree to pay by the year maybe you shouldn't have signed up for a year of service?
- marshmallow_12 5y ago
  Justified or not, I personally take a dim view of cancellation fees in general. Evidently i'm not alone either.
  - petee 5y ago
    I'd say especially when it's not costing Adobe anything to cancel your subscription, it's just a money grab. There are some exceptions where a fee is ok like when it's actually putting the business out financially, like Garmin & Iridium satellite service agreements, Garmin has little choice...but clearly not the case for Adobe
    - lolinder 5y ago
      The whole idea of offering annual pricing is that the income stream is more consistent, so the price can be lower. It does hurt Adobe (not much relative to their income, but still some) to have that income not materialize. If you're not happy with a cancellation fee, that's what the monthly pricing is for—you pay more month to month but can cancel any time. It's a very normal trade-off. The only real alternatives Adobe has to a cancellation fee are to only offer monthly pricing or forbid cancelling an annual contact at all.
      - angry_octet 5y ago
        The problem is not the pricing break for a longer contract, but that the yearly contract was promoted as a monthly price (with no minimum fee clearly shown). I'm sure the A/B testing showed higher takeup if they wrote it that way -- it seems cheaper! It isn't true that this is the only option. Instead of onerous lock-in like a gym membership they could have a sliding scale -- the longer you pay for it, the cheaper it gets. Their decision to go for annual lock-in is short term thinking.
dave333 5y ago
Time to sell the stock short? Appears to be near the top of it's recent range today April 12th 2021 at $506. Wonder where it will be in 3 months time.
paxys 5y ago
People are giving terrible advice in this thread. Changing your credit card number or reporting it as stolen doesn't mean you are off the hook for the payment you agreed to. While Adobe probably won't care enough to do it, another company in its place could very well send the debt to collections and ruin your credit score. Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it. Adobe has a no-contract monthly plan which is only marginally more expensive.
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  I agree with your overall advice and assessment, but the no-contract monthly plan is exactly 50% more expensive. That's not "marginal" at all.
- playpause 5y ago
  > Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it. But that's unworkable in modern life. We often have to agree to multiple terms documents per day, jumping through hoops for urgent things like receiving security updates. 99% of people clicking "I agree" do so without reading the terms.
  - krapp 5y ago
    I've never had to agree to multiple contracts per day - I'm sure that's true for some people but I doubt it's common. And there is rarely, if ever, a ticking clock regarding accepting software terms of service. People could easily make time to read the terms if they wanted to, it isn't unworkable, they click without reading the terms because they just don't want to put in even the minimum amount of effort. It's just like everyone suddenly being shocked and surprised that social media companies have the right to ban their accounts and moderate their content for any reason. That was in the contract you agreed to when you made an account. This is not to excuse Adobe, their tactics here are vile, but pretending contracts don't really exist just because you don't read them even when you sign them is a childish way of thinking. Companies get away with things like this because consumers have normalized never reading terms of service as acceptable behavior. If they did read the terms, they might see how bad they are, and not use the product. It would be easier for competitors to compete on their quality of service rather than the superficial things consumers do notice like name recognition and aesthetics. There would be some market pressure to prefer honest contracts over dishonest ones. As it is, there is no such pressure from consumers, only regulation. And even with regulation against dark patterns like the ones Adobe is engaging in, the consumer is still responsible for their own actions. Signing a contract without reading the terms is never going to get you off the hook, at least not in the US. The answer is to educate and empower people to be proactive, not to excuse and normalize their apathy.
NoblePublius 5y ago
No, Adobe charges an early termination fee for annual contracts.
fortran77 5y ago
No they don’t. In fact they give you a 50% discount on the remaining months of the contract you agreed to. You can also choose to subscribe by the month, and can cancel at any time.
Sophistifunk 5y ago
This is why I stopped using Adobe.
busterarm 5y ago
I switched from a full Creative Suite to the Affinity software trio + DaVinci Resolve. Haven't looked back.
oblib 5y ago
I quit purchasing Adobe software when they started selling it as a subscription. They had pissed on me way too many times by then and I couldn't stand the idea of buying into that bullshit. I've made a point to never buy any of their stuff again. I never did do a lot of graphic work and most of what I need to do now can be done in Pixelmator. I think I paid $30 for that over 5 years ago.
wsostt 5y ago
Canceled my photography plan last week. No fee.
nateinaction 5y ago
It took me over an hour with chat support to cancel without the fee. That was 3 years ago. I won’t go back.
8128js8121 5y ago
people complaining about breaking contracts. really?
- wpietri 5y ago
  When the contracts are arbitrary ways to take advantage of people? And are promoted in a misleading fashion? You bet.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    It may have been different a long time ago but I don't think Adobe is misleading if you want to subscribe. It's pretty clear it's an annual contract with a monthly payment.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Other people make the point of how it misleads. Moreover, the pricing structure itself is misleading. Unlike, say, an apartment lease, there's no intrinsic reason for having it be an annual price billed monthly. It's not like Adobe has to buy extra servers that just sit there empty if somebody cancels. It's pure exploitation of cognitive biases.
- upbeat_general 5y ago
  Sometimes it's just funny what HN commenters choose to defend—and a little sad.
voceboy521 5y ago
unless adobe hid the fact it's an Annual plan paid monthly, this guy should be embarassed for crying about paying the money he agreed to pay.
radicalriddler 5y ago
This has happened for years! It's not some new terrible thing. You sign up for an annual subscription, paying monthly installments. They give you the option to pay half of it out if you want to cancel, it's no different than a 12 month phone plan in places like Australia. God I hate Twitter. People on their are so used to only reading 150 characters, that it's started affecting them in their daily life, that they're not reading the paid agreements they're signing up to. Edit: This isn't defending Adobe. I was stuck in this agreement for a whole extra year than I wanted to be, because I didn't get a notification about it renewing (but that was again, my mistake). Fuck Adobe, they have shitty practices.
- radicalriddler 5y ago
  Adding onto this. The actual shitty thing that people should be complaining about, is that the subscription auto-renews (unless I missed the checkbox) and I couldn't find a way to cancel it pre-emptively, outside of blocking it at the bank level, otherwise it signed me up for another 12 months.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree that is the truly shitty thing here. You should be able to cancel, but still pay until your contract runs out.
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    Yes, this! I signed up for Creative Cloud for a year with monthly payments, but I was absolutely not prepared for the fact that if I didn’t cancel by the end of the 12 months then I would be signed up for another 12 months. This is not how subscriptions usually work, but with Adobe it is. With every other subscription I have ever had if I have it for say 14 months or 16 months and then want to cancel I have been free to do so. But with Adobe when I wanted to cancel after 13 months I learned that I had automatically been committed to another 12 months and would need to pay a hefty cancellation fee. I like the software that Adobe makes but I hate hate hate the subscription. When I leave Adobe after my subscription ends this time, I hope to never have to sign up for their subscription again.
uberswe 5y ago
It's a 1 year contract and you have to pay part of the remaining fee. If you go to the next step in the cancellation process they give you two months free if you don't cancel right away (might depend on how long you have had a membership).
CodeIsTheEnd 5y ago
I'm on the side that this isn't so outrageous; you get a discount for making a longer financial commitment. What IS frustrating is that some of their products don't offer a monthly plan. I want to use Lightroom about once a year, after going on a big vacation, but there's no cheap plan that just includes Lightroom. There's a $10/month annual Photography Plan that includes Photoshop and Lightroom (exactly what I want), but no monthly option. I would pay $15 for one month of this, but the only way to get Lightroom for a single month is with the All Apps package, which is $80 for a single month.
- spsful 5y ago
  Am I wrong to say that they could just cancel their credit card and.. move on?
  - lolinder 5y ago
    It's been said over and over again in this thread, and the reply is always the same: you signed a contract to pay monthly for a year. Canceling a card doesn't legally excuse you from that obligation. Yes, odds are they wouldn't send it to collections, but they'd be within their rights to do so.
    - bobthebuilders 5y ago
      Good luck getting money from a stone!
      - lolinder 5y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean, but if a debt goes to collections that ends up on your credit report. It's not like you can just ignore it forever.
        culturestate 5y ago
        > if a debt goes to collections that ends up on your credit report. It's not like you can just ignore it forever. I obviously don't endorse this, but in the US you absolutely can ignore it forever as long as it isn't student loan debt. Anything else large enough to sue for can be discharged through bankruptcy (which is comically simple in some states), and debts below that[1] will fall off your report after 7 years. Your credit will tank for a bit, of course, but otherwise there are no real consequences. 1. I think FICO even has a minimum amount for negative items and doesn't consider medical debt at all, but don't quote me on that.
unsignedint 5y ago
I was almost bitten by this before, though I think I've waited until the end of term and then canceled during that window of time as that was cheaper. I did find it outrageous, but I guess the contract is a contract, so I bit the bullet. (and I think it was something like 3 months left on the contract, with low tier Photographer bundle of sort.) I guess their model is bit different than the a lot of other software subscription offerings, as the most I encounter out there are prepaid for certain duration of time with no commitment. (You pay monthly, or yearly -- with some services offering something between, like 3 months or 6 months.) If you choose to not renew (or cancel the contract) your contract continue to the end of the term. (Though, time to time, particularly some Japanese services, I do encounter model where your service terminates at the moment you choose to not renew -- even if you had 364 days out of 365 days remaining on your contract.) It definitely is pretty much same as if you are paying for something up front. If you stop using the product in the middle of the term, you generally don't get refund for the remainder of the term, but it definitely feel bit different.
system2 5y ago
They did the same to me. I contacted the customer support and told them I am struggling with the payments due to covid19. They said we understand and cancelled without the fees. Only 4 months left though, but it is still a class act.
imwillofficial 5y ago
Annnnnd no more Adobe products.
bigyikes 5y ago
Adobe is simply advertising their most affordable price. The options are clearly labeled at selection. They do not try to trick you. The way I see it, there are 3 possible alternatives to the current arrangement: 1) Adobe stops offering the annual paid monthly plan. This sucks because the consumer gets fewer options. 2) Adobe advertises the price of the true monthly plan. This sucks because Adobe is unable to advertise what, for many, is their best deal. If I intend to use this software for more than a year, which is a very common use case, then I want to know the best price on a long term basis. 3) Adobe keeps the advertised price as-is, but must add some kind of disclaimer or note which indicates the terms. I think this is pretty reasonable, and maybe should be implemented. Still, this sucks a little bit, not just because it’s more legal red tape, but also because it is visual noise in the same vein as the © and ® symbols.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
j45 5y ago
My past 2 subscriptions with Adobe has resulted in them continuing to bill my CC after any cancellation. Account is cancelled, so there’s nothing to log into. No choice but to chargeback or attempt to engage via Twitter. Seems like a well established occurrence. I recently discovered the Affinity suite of tools to replace much of the use/need I have for creative suite.
DerWOK 5y ago
https://affinity.serif.com/ https://affinity.serif.com/ Serves the 80% use case. Is in some areas (Live Filter, real time zoom, startup time, one fileformat for Photo, Vector and DTP) even better. And best of all: no subscription!
fastball 5y ago
I'm in the camp of "this seems fair", though with the caveat that I would prefer it if they only charged you the total discount you received. e.g. if monthly is $10 and yearly/m is $8, and I decide to cancel after only 7 months, Adobe should just charge me $14 ($2*7).
robomartin 5y ago
We used to buy multiple licenses of their Creative Suite. We'd renew the licenses every year or, sometimes, if we could not justify it, wait a year or two. I believe the last version we got was CS6. That's when they went to their subscription model. I understand why companies like to do this. I get it. However, if we went along with every single one of these transitions to monthly subscription models we would bleed money every month unnecessarily. What happened since then? The CS6 suite works just fine. Tools such as GIMP have become better and better. There are a number of good video editors, file converters and other tools out there. We used to also update our Corel tools every year. Now they want subscription. We are done with Core. The next victim will be Altium Designer. We have probably put somewhere in the order of $30K per license into this tool over the years. Annual maintenance is in the order of $1,500 to $1,800 (can't remember). No more. I have decided we are going to switch to KiCAD by the end of the year and donate half of our Altium maintenance fee towards KiCAD development (as well as contribute with software development if we have the time). It isn't that I have a problem with subscriptions. We subscribe to Jetbrains tools and will continue to do so. It's more of a question of what you get incrementally for your money. And, in addition to this, getting cutoff if you stop paying. As everyone on the planet knows by now, shit can happen that can put a serious kink into your finances. The old model meant that we could keep using our software until things got better and update when it made sense. As an example, we've done this kind of thing with Solidworks. Went a couple of years without updates and then updated all seats to the latest version when it made sense. The Jetbrains subscription model is great. If you stop your subscription you revert back to the version from one year ago (I may not have put that exactly right, but it's close). That's fair. I can work with that. If I need to save money for any reason at all I can put it on ice, keep working and get updated back to the current version when it makes sense. Adobe and others seem to be very different, brutally so. If you stop paying you lose your ability to work. To repeat myself, that is brutally painful. Others have things like cutting your off from bug fixes to even your last licensed version and cutting you off from accessing their peer-to-peer support forum. I can't claim to know the internals of their business equation. All I know is that, as a customer, I dislike monthly subscriptions that cut you off like and make the very tools you need to do your job evaporate instantly. That, I think, is wrong. These are tools. I need to own my tools. That's why I buy equipment instead of leasing it. Did Adobe change? Do you get to keep and use any version of the software at all if you stop paying? I believe Microsoft Office 360 is the same. I know this kind of software can be a tough business due to piracy.
have_faith 5y ago
Good reminder, I just set up a calendar alert for when to cancel annual renewal. I'm on the fringe of "needing" a few disparate apps but I can make do without them with some effort. I knew the terms of what I was signing up for but I just don't want to spend £600 a year so I can use a smattering of programs a couple times a month. I 'occasionally' use Photoshop, Lightroom, XD, Illustrator and sometimes one or two others in a blue moon but not enough to justify the cost for me going forward. I also just went half way through the cancellation process and got the next two months for free to take away some of the sting.
obscura 5y ago
I hope that in the wake of this more people start supporting the alternatives. More comepetition means more choice. Adobe's software is excellent, but they're far too dominant. The alternatives may not be good enough for everyone right now, but they're good enough for many of us and they're improving all the time. The Affinity suite is great and affordable for me as a hobbyist. Many of the open source packages are also excellent.
Thorentis 5y ago
This has been happening forever. I have always gotten out of it by contacting customer support and begging for them to waive it. My wife accidentally signed up a while ago (not knowing it was a lock in year contract, she just needed it for a month). Half hour back and forth with customer support was enough to get it waived. I would say that "it's just part of the contract" but their mobile apps and lack of clear wording is predatory.
maxbaines 5y ago
Right or wrong, I found the initial subscription confusing and not clear the commitment was minimum 12months. I stopped using Adobe because of this.
alias_neo 5y ago
I got hit with this a few years back. I signed up for Ps CC for a month (I thought) to create an anniversary gift for my wife. I used it ONCE. Tried to cancel and they told me I had in fact signed up for a year, and that if I didn't cancel now, they'd give me two months free. I didn't want it at all! Anyway, I sucked it up, got on with the remainder of the year, because they wouldn't let me put the cancellation in early, had to do it X months before the end. Then life happened and I missed the deadline to cancel and got suckered for a second year! Fuck Adobe and this practice is all I have to say, I stick strictly to Open Source options now. It may have been my fault for not reading the first time, but robbing me a second time by counting on me missing the cancellation because they wouldn't let me do it there and then is just scummy.
- toxik 5y ago
  It really should be illegal.
  - thendrill 5y ago
    We make it legal when we click agree on the TOS
    - playpause 5y ago
      PSA: Clicking "I agree" does not automatically make terms legal or enforceable.
    - helloguillecl 5y ago
      That's a very common and harmful misconceptions in our society. But, besides the fact that laws can make abusive terms illegal (and do), it is also very bad for the economic system in general because it increases the transaction cost for the consumer (time, hassle or wrong product choice). The consumer now has to worry not only about choosing a decent product, but also about ways the company could extract value from them without being transparent about that, or by hiding a clause in their TOS. Could you imagine how much slower and inefficient the economic system would be if we were expected to read every TOS of every software we install and every single service we sign up for? No, this is not fine. Do not accept bullshit terms meant to extract value from your pocket at no marginal cost for the business or no benefit to you as a consumer.
teekert 5y ago
I had the same, they wanted me to pay the rest of the year (after 2 or 3 years?). Problem is, that is against Dutch law, after an initial year, one is only allowed to prolong a contract by 1 month at a time. I reminded the person on the phone (who only spoke English, so imagine what happens when you are not as fluent in it as I) that they broke Dutch law, I told that to 3 other persons and they finally told me: Ok, we'll cancel. Finally. Edit: I had to call them, because the website indeed only showed me these options where I had to pay the rest of the year. Email didn't help, they offered me some discount for the rest of the year. Very strange as a Dutch person, it has become so normal to not worry about this (I really like this law, a nice example of citizens before companies.)
- nolok 5y ago
  Did you report it to the Dutch agency in charge of enforcing it ? Eg in France it's the DGCCRF (we love our acronyms).
  - teekert 5y ago
    Ah, good tip, I see we have the ACM: [0]. I sent it in. [0] https://www.acm.nl/nl/contact/tips-en-meldingen/tip-ons https://www.acm.nl/nl/contact/tips-en-meldingen/tip-ons
underwater 5y ago
I cancelled my Photoshop plan after paying for it for four years and using it maybe a dozen times a year. Hitting this experience after paying them $500 over the years turned me from an infrequent user of their products into a scorned customer who swore to never to do business with them again. Fuck the MBAs who came up with this bullshit. I hope Adobe dies in a fire.
InsomniacL 5y ago
Does a web plugin exist that would show an overlay on deceptive stores? "Adobe has been reported to use deceptive sales methods such as: .. hidden early termination fee's bait and switch ..."
gambiting 5y ago
Sounds like some gym memberships that I've seen. Yeah it's a monthly payment of £10 or whatever, but if you want to cancel it before the end of the first 12 months you need to pay for the rest of the months. It's basically your standard mobile phone contract.
jamesgreenleaf 5y ago
Things like this are a great use-case for privacy.com, or any other service that offers burner cards. Set a monthly limit, or make it one-time, etc. and make sure the company can't charge you more than you've specified. I'm not affiliated with them, but I'm a fan of their product.
- bb123 5y ago
  What would stop Adobe selling the unpaid amount as a bad debt to a collections agency in this case? I have been hounded by debt collectors for far smaller amounts that slipped through the net.
tristanperry 5y ago
Not sure if I'm missing something, but the pricing of Creative Cloud has always been made very clear from the order form: "Monthly Plan - £75.85/mo" "Annual plan, paid monthly - £49.94/mo" "Annual plan, prepaid - £596.33" I can't see how there's any confusion here, or do they only show the options like this in the UK? Also I just upgraded from Premiere Pro to the Creative Cloud and was given the full upgrade T&Cs, including that there'd be a cancellation fee to pay if I signed up for the yearly option and cancelled mid-way through. Again, a genuine question: am I missing something?
- throwanem 5y ago
  You might be missing that you're getting double charged, as I was after I upgraded my subscription last year. They started the new subscription but didn't cancel the old one, so I got billed for both until I caught and fixed it last month.
celerrimus 5y ago
I think Adobe offers were even more confusing few years ago. This is not honest company, gently speaking. I have another good example. I bought an Adobe license few years ago, and as a business in EU, I had to bought in excluding VAT, and pay VAX tax here locally. I provided my valid EU-VAT, price dropped to net price in interface (let's say 100 EUR), in confirmation, and even in invoice I get. However, to my surprise, my credit card was charged with full gross price (123EUR), meaning I lost 23% of purchase - as I was obligated to pay VAT anyway second time, as there was 0 VAT tax on the invoice. Well, such things happen, you may think. This should be childishly easy to fix with support, as clearly amount from the invoice and amount charged simply didn't match. However, after dozen attempts with support, dealing with various support level people from Adobe support from India, not knowing even what the VAT tax is, and without any interest on helping me out, I had to give up. I decided to use PayPal protection for buyers, as transaction was made through the PayPal. Tu my surprise, despite clear evidence, they rejected claim after consultation with Adobe, without providing any reason. So I decided to not deal with those thieves any more and called my bank to fill chargeback request. It was so clear, that they recognised the request the next day and returned the money. Takeaways are: - Adobe is a shady corporation focused on robbing their customers, with other examples you can find online I cannot call that otherwise (among others, deceptive offers, blocking perpetual licenses, and as in my case simply stealing money from customers credit cards) - PayPal protections are completely useless, even with so clear cases - It's good to make transactions with shady companies with credit cards.
ekiara 5y ago
Is it still a viable option for designers to use the last non-recurrent-subscription version of Adobe Creative Suite? Or in 2021 is Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo just the best single-purchase option right now?
nicolas_t 5y ago
I remember being hit by that, I threatened a chargeback and raised a stink and eventually they waved the cancellation fee. It was super frustrating and turned me off from ever paying for Adobe.
isodev 5y ago
Horrible, I only have a Creative Cloud subscription because some of clients send Illustrator files instead of Sketch. Just checked and it seems I can only cancel my subscription during a fixed period around the renewal date - if I miss it, I get to pay the remaining term as a cancellation fee!
bilekas 5y ago
On the next step of the process: When offered a discount or to switch to another plan, choose the cheapest new plan (for me it was photography) Once your membership is updated, start the cancellation process again immediately The cancellation fee is now $0.
jrockway 5y ago
The downfall of Adobe is interesting to watch. New releases get more expensive every year, but they aren't really adding features. I had to switch to Affinity to get an iPad version, for example. 21,000 employees and they can't port Photoshop to ARM? I think at this point, they're just coasting on brand recognition alone. They certainly aren't adding much value; all they can do is rent you their software at higher and higher prices every year and hope nobody notices. The subscription cancellation shenanigans just show how bad their software is -- people will pay them money to not be able to use their software anymore. If that's not a hallmark of a dying company, I don't know what is. I'm surprised they haven't started suing people over range check functions yet.
- 8fingerlouie 5y ago
  Adobe isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Yes there are alternatives, Affinity, Pixelmator, etc, but all that's being taught in educational institutions is Adobe, and it's what the industry uses. Private/small business users are a very small part of their business, but one that requires as many (if not more) support resources as large customers, so if anything they're probably happy to see them go elsewhere. And no, i haven't used Adobe since they introduced subscriptions. I'll subscribe to media and cloud storage just fine, but not pay annual fees for micro software increments that 99% of the time doesn't add anything i need. If they had something like Jetbrains where your subscription also gives a perpetual usage license for that specific version, then i could subscribe and upgrade when they actually added something i needed, and i'd likely reconsider.
  - robin_reala 5y ago
    It might be what part of the industry uses, but they’re steadily losing the rest. E.g. UX design has overwhelmingly moved from Photoshop to Sketch and Figma.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    Adobe isn't going anywhere anytime soon. DEC, Commodore, Novell, SGI, Cray, Lotus, and Acorn would like you to explain how a computing companies last forever.
londons_explore 5y ago
Link is dead...
yokoprime 5y ago
Cancelled my plan after reading this! No way i will stay locked in like this. I had the subscription as a “thing i use sometimes” with the idea i could cancel any time. It had of course renewed for another 12 months automatically (im not sure this is legal where i am) and they tried to pull the bullshit cancellation fee. Talked to their rep and had to say no to all their “N months free” crap and they let me go without a fee. Nice that they do own up, but automatically renewing for 12 months at a time is just nasty.
woodylondon 5y ago
wow - just lost a customer in Novmeber 2021. Its the cancel and you get nothing, cancel and you can use until November would be fair. But they auto-renew you into a new contract without you noticing is a scam. So i had an account which looks like they renewed my account in November 2021 without asking me. Logging into my account there is NO refernce to the start and end date of the contract i agreed to, i never agreed to renew. I tried to cancel and says £178 to cancel. Adobe you are now the worse company for this crap.
Psype 5y ago
No they don't. The guy took an annual license which is cheaper than a monthly one, and paid with monthly payments. As such, he engaged himself by paying the whole year, not only few months. Cancelling out means he has to complete the annual payment, which is of course due, according the what he signed for.
cosmodisk 5y ago
Absolutely sleazy practice. Just checked the UK website to see how this works: monthly prices are shown. When clicked on 'order' the default is always annual, while some products don't even have monthly option. Pathetic
xacky 5y ago
You have had over 25 years to contribute to The Gimp and other open source software. You made your bed with proprietary software, now sleep in it.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Yes, im sure all the people out there using Photoshop without any programming experience at all are all able to make contributions to gimp.
- krapp 5y ago
  The entire open source community has had over 25 years to make The Gimp a viable competitor to Photoshop. Don't lay your own failures on the shoulders of (checks notes) Twitter user "mrdaddguy."
aalasso 5y ago
I can't see the tweet for some reason. But judging by the title, I was hit by this about a year ago. I signed up to YC to tell you this: After half an hour or so on their chat, I managed to make them waive the fee. I'm pretty sure their practice would be deemed illegally misleading by Danish consumer laws. What worked in the end was threatening to file a complaint with the "Consumer Ombudsman".
rogual 5y ago
Adobe really oversteps the line when it comes to auto-renewal. They will refuse to stop the auto-renewal on your subscription unless you make the request within a tight window lasting a few weeks before your renewal date. Obviously they want you to forget and get suckered in for another year. This was unacceptable to me, so I simply got on the live chat and (politely) bothered their sales reps until they stopped it for me. As a last "screw you", they cancelled my entire sub, rather than just the renewal. But, hey, good enough. Adobe: Never again.
Liambp 5y ago
There may be a way to get out of this by switching to another plan and availing of the 2 week grace cancellation period. https://responsivedesign.is/articles/cancel-adobe-without-paying-the-cancellation-fee/ https://responsivedesign.is/articles/cancel-adobe-without-pa... Happened to my daughter she needed InDesign in order to do a once off college project. She missed the small print and signed up to an annual sub (€300 total). She managed to get out of it using the method described above.
binky 5y ago
Some can't bear the sunk cost of upfront reserved instance
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
roody15 5y ago
We used to purchase a district site license for Adobe. Since they have moved to this nickel and dime subscription we haven’t purchased anything since CS6. Just not worth the money IMO.
yreg 5y ago
The user has since locked their Twitter account. Here's the photo of cancellation fee included in the original tweet[0]. The rest can be found in Archive. [0] - https://imgur.com/qyAWTXw https://imgur.com/qyAWTXw (mirror, source, dead link)
buro9 5y ago
Oh this is interesting. Perhaps there's an opportunity for arbitrage of the unused period of subscription by pooling the remaining time and then allowing others to be connected to the individuals who have time remaining and use their accounts. Basically buying up the unused time and reselling by treating it as a marketplace.
pibechorro 5y ago
I switched to Gimp, Inkskape, Krita years ago as a heavy user of Adobe products and I have zero regrets. Once you get past the new workflow learning curve life is drama free. They are 95% equivalent and always free.
Kye 5y ago
Just putting it out there: The Affinity suite for the desktop is currently 50% off. The Designer app for the iPad works great on my Mini with good Pencil support, and I've used the desktop apps for a long time. It saves to iCloud (you can choose another place since it's a plain old Files path chooser) and the files open up on the desktop app with no problem. Capture One Express is a free and highly functional alternative to Lightroom if you have a Nikon, Sony, or Fujifilm camera.
onikolas7 5y ago
Interesting how most comments react with "I'll just pirate it" not realizing that they are just solidifying Adobe's lock-in. Few years down the line they will turn legit (guessing most are poor students who will graduate and get jobs) and will have to pay or pass the cost to their employer. "Free for educational use" is the legitimized version of the same scummy tactic. I wish universities would not fall for it.
sirbotsy 5y ago
How many SaaS companies discount a longer commitment purchase? Pretty much every single one, especially in the enterprise. And this is better for customers that want a cheaper monthly rate in exchange for paying upfront. As a few folks noted below: This feels like a pretty intuitive presentation of pricing, with three clearly laid-out options: 1. No contract, pay monthly 2. Annual contract, pay monthly (cheaper than 1) 3. Annual contract, pay in one go (cheaper than 1 & 2) The soundbite of "oh they made me pay to cancel" is so easy to virally hate on, but the fact is that purchasers chose an annual contract. That being said, would be nice to see a confirmation message along the lines of "Early cancellation of a massively discounted annual plan results in an early termination fee." Always room for improvement.
YoloSec 5y ago
So I recently found this too, but I found a loophole to get me out- if you change the plan to a more expensive one it gives you a 14 day free trial of that plan first. You can cancel the trial and bingo, you've exited the plan with no costs :)
paulcarroty 5y ago
The shiny side of classic stuff called vendor lock-in. Best experience of gambling & cable TV now available for Adobe users :)
nikon 5y ago
If you use PayPal, you can just cancel the payment on their end.
acdha 5y ago
I got hit by this when Apple discontinued Aperture. They did a Lightroom promo with Flickr and I figured that it was worth a try. The performance was unusable slow compared to Aperture but I had to threaten to contact my credit card company before the sales gym pretending to be product support would stop telling me to buy a new Mac to run their software and processed the cancellation without a penalty.
cashsterling 5y ago
I recommend the Affinity products... very inexpensive for how good they are. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ Each program is currently 25 USD for a license, 50 USD regularly.
greyhair 5y ago
Adobe is run by useless assholes. They get worse every year. Their forced subscription model is gold plated shit. But here is the problem, much like Microsoft Office, the competitors for Adobe's CC suite really are meager by comparison. I know a lot of people are going to stomp and yell and say they are not, but everyone knows the reality. But that doesn't give Adobe the right to be assholes about it.
aravindet 5y ago
I encountered this with Adobe Acrobat DC, but managed to get out without paying the cancellation fee. I contacted customer support and asked to upgrade to a more expensive SMB plan for a different but related product (Adobe Sign). I also demanded the first 14 days free, as that product advertizes a 14 day trial. As I suspected, they could not make this complex change with their internal tools, so they offered to cancel Acrobat DC for me so I could sign up directly for the trial of the more expensive product. As it happens, I changed my mind after the cancellation was completed. ;-) If they had been able to do what I asked, I might have requested a change in billing country into or out of the EU or US - this is often complex for tax reasons. If their tools are capable of everything I could think of, I might still change my mind around the final confirmation stage. Here is the pricing page: - https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pricing.html?promoid=88X75PK9&mv=other# https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pricing.html?promoid... It does mention "Requires annual commitment.", but in a vastly less noticeable style than "Best value". (Legal theorizing, IANAL and all that) Contract law requires a "meeting of the minds". Ordinarily, a written contract is evidence of where exactly the minds met - but there are exceptions. For instance, website ToS are not really enforceable. ("By using this website, you agree to sell me your house for $1?".) I would argue that for most people buying Adobe products with an easily missed cancellation fee, there is no meeting of the minds and the contract should not be valid. A good test for this might be to ask 100 randomly selected customers about the terms of the contract. If a majority aren't aware, it is reasonable to conclude that this information isn't conveyed adequately and that part of the contract should not be enforceable. I've never heard of anything like this happening in practice, though.
asfarley 5y ago
And this is why I don’t use Adobe anymore.
avipars 5y ago
Can't see the tweet

817 points by CSDude 5y ago

What if you don't pay?

I was hit with this last year while struggling for funds. Upon seeing the cancellation fee, I simply reported my credit card lost, changed the contact details on my adobe account, and then just left the account to rot. Adobe will never see another dime from me.

Something1234 5y ago
I think a chargeback would have been more appropriate.
gnicholas 5y ago
FYI, this isn't always bulletproof. I got a new card number from my bank a couple years ago and was still charged for a subscription I had set up prior to that. I know the company involved wasn't doing anything shady because I run the company. I emailed Stripe (my payment processor) to find out how my subscription had migrated to the new card and they said that the feature had been added some time back. So even if you get a new card number, don't be surprised if your subscriptions follow you around.
- prometheuses 5y ago
  Very interesting. Thanks for the tidbit.
- tokipin 5y ago
  Yep, this happend to me with a LinkedIn trial. I had my credit card changed but somehow LinkedIn was able to charge the new number, which defeated the entire point. Trying to contact LinkedIn revealed they don't have any humans to contact. They even have a fake "3 minutes until you can chat with someone" that always errors out. Chargeback to the rescue, but in the future I will just switch banks entirely.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    When I'm worried about a charge, I use a virtual number generator that my bank offers. It allows me to put a time limit and dollar limit on any charges. Switching banks frequently can mess with your credit score, so I'd try not to do that too much (especially if you're considering buying a home/car/etc.).
    - tadfisher 5y ago
      That's not quite accurate. You average account age for credit lines affects your credit score. Banks do not report depository accounts to the credit bureaus because they are not lines of credit, they are liabilities. They do report to a separate group of risk-scoring companies, but this is mostly to gate fraudsters. Frequently switching checking/savings accounts will have no bearing on your ability to make large purchases on credit. If you happen to close credit cards frequently enough, regardless of whether they are issued by banks, your score could be impacted by reducing your average account age.
      - gnicholas 5y ago
        Sorry for not being clear — I was just referring to switching banks with whom you have credit cards. I don't know if GP was referring to "banks" in the context of credit or debit, but it seems most people in the US who are savvy about such things use credit cards because of the available rewards.
    - angry_octet 5y ago
      I think you may find that the swindler may be able to present the old CC number and still charge your account (which hasn't changed). Gym indenture companies are notorious for this. I had this occur with Capital One and a scam fax-to-email company who refused to accept a trial cancellation. Even after lodging a dispute the scammers could still bill more charges, and I'd have to dispute each one until the bank made a ruling.
- pfundstein 5y ago
  If you report your card lost/stolen, then there is no way anyone should ever be able to charge it again. Did you report your old card lost or did they issue a new one because it expired/etc?
  - pkaye 5y ago
    I seem to recall some credit card companies will reroute recurring charges for the old number to the new card.
    - pfundstein 5y ago
      If they do that for cards reported lost/stolen then that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Thankfully it hasn't happened to me or anyone I know and this is the first I've heard of it.
      - 0xEFF 5y ago
        My chase sapphire card number was stolen while on vacation out of the country before covid. Reported the fraudulent charges and got a new card and number. Recurring subscriptions transferred for about 12 months then I had to update the card number. I’m not a payments expert but presumably the subscription is tied to some authorization and not necessarily the number itself.
      - nulbyte 5y ago
        Not really. If you authorized a recurring charge, it isn't unauthorized, and you are liable. Most people want recurring charges to continue. Just because you lose your card doesn't mean you want to forget paying your phone bill or something. Merchant disputes are a thing, but they are not the same as an unauthorized charge.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        As long as the recurring charge wasn't created while the card was lost/stolen, what's the problem?
    - nullserver 5y ago
- chomp 5y ago
  Yep. If you process payments online, you have a few options for subscribing to feeds of updated card numbers. At one of my previous jobs, we sent Vindicia cards that we have on file and they’d send us back cards that those banks have changed (I.e. not stolen or lost, merely changed)
- defterGoose 5y ago
  Had this happen with an LA fitness membership a few years back. After spending hours trying to jump through their hoops to cancel, i got fed up and requested a new Visa card from WF. Well, Visa in all its wisdom decided to give my new number to the vendor without my permission or knowledge, and because i happened to not check my statement for several months, was charged a few hundred dollars for a gym membership i wasnt using. You could assemble the finest legal minds in the world and they'd never convince me that this shouldn't be 100% illegal.
  - ilaksh 5y ago
    Well, I would like to submit that we should not need a third party like Visa to do digital payments. Because now we have math and computers. I am looking forward to Ethereum scaling out with 2.0.
brnt 5y ago
How does this work legally? I see this sort of comment quite often, but in my jurisdiction the money I owe is bound by the terms of the contract, not by the ability of the company to debit my card. If I would do this, companies can and will send letters with the amount due and eventually may escalate to authorities or a bailiff.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  What authorities? In the US usually violating a contract is a civil matter. Unless you're a rich corporation that accuses people of fraud for violating your ToS like some companies do then sometimes the federal agencies get involved which basically protect big business and charge people with crimes that the little guy will never be able to do the reverse against a company.
  - cbmuser 5y ago
    > What authorities? In Germany, the creditor can just go to court and they will send a bailiff to get the money from you. If someone legally owes you money and they don‘t pay, you can always have the court send a bailiff for you. You don’t have to be a multi-billion Dollar company to have the right (not privilege) to have your debitors pay their debt.
- TylerE 5y ago
  Legally? It's fraud.

vr46 5y ago

Ha, this happened to me and I circumvented this by switching my plan to a new plan which kicked off some trial grace period, at which point I cancelled my entire plan. No cancellation fee. Me 1: Adobe 0

nodesocket 5y ago
I just tried to cancel today after getting absolutely fed up with Photoshop being buggy and insanely slow. I have a top of the line 16" MacBook pro, and waiting multiple seconds every single action inside Photoshop infuriates me. Can you provide more details on this? I am on their annual plan and they want to charge me to cancel.
- vr46 5y ago
  I was on a similar plan, and same machine funnily enough. I downgraded to the Lightroom only plan and then cancelled - hopefully that should still work for you.
  - nodesocket 5y ago
    I just went through the process and they only let me switch to Lightroom annual (which I suspect starts a new annual subscription starting today). Curious, what did you choose as a replacement for raster graphics? GIMP is a no-go, as its slow and buggy as well.
    - techrat 5y ago
      For the majority of the basic Photoshop stuff, Photopea actually does the job quite well.
    - mappu 5y ago
      I really recommend Krita over GIMP - it subjectively feels more "normal" - it has better cross-platform support, better tablet support, better brush engine, better vector layers, and it uses single-window layout without needing to be told.

johnsocs 5y ago

When you sign up you agree to the fee being broken up in installments. I think they have spelled it out pretty clearly, actually one could consider it ‘free’ financing in a sense. While I don’t like what they have done I don’t see what the big deal is with it.

gentleman11 5y ago
It’s not clear. I went to sign up once and was looking for text like this and could not find it. I didn’t sign up because everyone says it’s impossible to cancel later, and I was worried I missed something in the terms
slaymaker1907 5y ago
It seems like even the original post isn't suggesting that what they are doing is illegal, just scummy. I think it straddles the line of false advertising since it is pretty clear by looking at the market of subscriptions that there is a decent premium for a monthly vs. a yearly subscription. As a point of reference, World of Warcraft offers about a 10% discount for their 6 month subscription plan compared to the month to month plan. Additionally, they have pretty consistently offered one free item from the store (which they choose) for players on the 6 month plan. The last such item was a mount which must otherwise be purchased for $25 (obviously the true value to 6 month subscribers is lower than $25 due to bundling and since subscribers don't get to choose which item they receive).
- paxys 5y ago
  I don't understand what's scummy about this. Every service out there offers discounted prices for longer-term contracts since they are guaranteed a sustained future income. If they didn't have a penalty for breaking the contract then everyone would just game the system. What should they do instead? Not have the annual payment option and screw over all the people who do want to pay for the entire year and are happy with the discount?
  - harimau777 5y ago

prometheuses 5y ago

Ontop of all this, when trying to uninstall Adobe products through Windows' Add or Remove Programs, you need to create/ login with an online account. Adobe is literally the scummiest company ever.

timbit42 5y ago
Difficult to imagine they're worse than Oracle.
mc32 5y ago
This reminds me of old school newspaper subscriptions and the games they used (and still may) use to retain (ransom) customers.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Not if it's using the license activator.

cocoa19 5y ago

What's next, Adobe? Are you sending people to collections if they don't pay up? This scummy behavior is not OK.

wccrawford 5y ago

Doesn't this happen for every yearly plan that lets you pay in installments?

bobthepanda 5y ago
I've never come across such a thing. Also, something being common doesn't necessarily mean it's good.
ryan-allen 5y ago
I have a vague recollection that yes, this is true, and it happened to me. Cancelling the subscription over the phone was an absolute shit-show. I truly resent Adobe as a company, but they have a monopoly on certain applications.
maldeh 5y ago
What does a yearly installment plan even mean in the context of a cloud subscription-based service, as opposed to one for which one has already received goods? And first of all, as the OP noted in the twitter thread, they believed they were doing a monthly subscription as advertised; the "yearly plan" interpretation is Adobe getting creative in the terms of service.
- Meph504 5y ago
  It means what it means in almost ever contract you sign for a subscription service. You agree to purchase a year of service, and pay for that monthly. It is a very common practice across multiple industries. If they believed that they were signing up for a monthly, they did not read, what they were signing up for, its clearly stated on the sign up screen. https://i.imgur.com/CZSCvw8.png https://i.imgur.com/CZSCvw8.png
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
  You subscribe to Creative Cloud on an annual basis. Please take a look here by clicking into the pricing for the plans or the "buy" option: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html ... from my perspective, it is clearly written "annual plan". You can choose to pay on a monthly basis, or in a lump sum. There is no "monthly subscription" or similar. Now it's possible that this page has changed since the OP subscribed, but I don't think it's changed that much - I remember this clearly from when I signed up which was many years ago. The OP might be unhappy that their expectations were violated but I really don't think Adobe is trying to hide the nature of the product and its annual commitment cycle.

blitz_skull 5y ago

This is why you ALWAYS use a Privacy.com (or similar) virtual credit card with limited access to your bank account. It's the same as creating a separation between your API layer and DB layer. They shouldn't have unmitigated access. Anytime I start a trial, or pay for a service provider with a high likelihood of screwing me over—Privacy.com virtual card.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
Was just about to type this. Privacy.com is amazing.
cheeze 5y ago
I use privacy too but I generally don't bother for most use cases because I want the CC rewards. Chase has been fine whenever someone is scummy to me, which has rarely happened. Any sort of trial though, 100% of the time.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Would love to see a recent review of Privacy.com vs Abine Blur. Does Privacy.com really make it so you can't delete an account?
silicon2401 5y ago
what are the pros and cons of using privacy.com or similar vs a normal credit card? is it as safe as using your bank's own credit card?

jan_Inkepa 5y ago

I tried to cancel my subscription six months in advance of the termination date, and they refused to cancel it, saying I would have to call up the month before it was due to expire. In the interim I misplaced my credit card and had to cancel it - my adobe account subscription was automatically suspended when the payments didn't go through and I never heard another word from them (I deleted my adobe account just to be safe...). For an unexpectedly joyous role-model, Microsoft Office subscription plans are delightfully drop-in/drop-out - I've done several one-month office subscriptions to do stuff in excel.

echelon 5y ago

Adobe is losing out to more modern tools like Canva and Figma that better serve clients and don't charge an arm and a leg. This is the kind of behavior you see with ossified or dying companies that no longer innovate. - Informercial "Jelly of the month"-type memberships - Gyms - Comcast Adobe is toast. I'm going to look into more metrics and consider shorting it.

chii 5y ago
Not to mention the recently-on-front-page photopea (https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/)
- behringer 5y ago
  I wouldn't really consider an online editor a photoshop competitor.
elliekelly 5y ago
I have never loved the product yet hated a company more. I truly don’t understand how they can be so short-sighted. If they would just suck a teeny bit less they’d have so many more customers.

synack 5y ago

If you switch your billing to PayPal, you can then cancel the recurring authorization on PayPal's side. Adobe will send you threatening emails, but they can't do anything other than terminate your subscription.

OkGoDoIt 5y ago
I mean they could send it to collections. I’m not saying it’s likely they would, but I’ve had it happen to me before in a similar situation with a different company‘s subscription that tried to charge me a cancellation fee I didn’t originally agree to. As I found out the hard way, there’s not a lot you can do to fight that. They use your credit score as a threat.
- synack 5y ago
  If that happens, you lawyer up, write a blog post, and make some money on adwords.
  - notyourday 5y ago
    That's like stabbing yourself in a face with a plastic spork multiple times to be cool and stick it to the man. The amount of $$ you would lose with a collection on your credit report until it drops will dwarf the amount of money you will make on adwords. If you can afford Adobe subscription, just cancel it and pay the cancellation fee. Or run it into the end of the period. The costs are minimal. Definitely smaller than the costs of a collection.

someelephant 5y ago

When I canceled it was necessary to do so through a chat with a support person. I asked them if they could waive the fee and they said ok.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

reader_mode 5y ago

This just reinforces my decision to only use prepaid virtual cards for subscriptions.

angry_octet 5y ago
The more cunning companies reject prepaid (i.e. debit) cards for this exact reason. Your ability to dispute fraudulent transactions is much reduced for debit cards so use them with caution.

greggman3 5y ago

Is this really a cancellation fee or is it just honoring your contract? AFAIK it's very clear on Adobe's page that your options are (1) Annual plan paid monthly, (2) Annual plan prepaid, and depending on the product (3) Monthly plan at usually 150% higher price. https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html If you signed up for a yearly plan paid monthly, the cancellation fee is finishing your contract. If you didn't want to agree to pay by the year maybe you shouldn't have signed up for a year of service?

marshmallow_12 5y ago
Justified or not, I personally take a dim view of cancellation fees in general. Evidently i'm not alone either.
- petee 5y ago
  I'd say especially when it's not costing Adobe anything to cancel your subscription, it's just a money grab. There are some exceptions where a fee is ok like when it's actually putting the business out financially, like Garmin & Iridium satellite service agreements, Garmin has little choice...but clearly not the case for Adobe
  - lolinder 5y ago
    The whole idea of offering annual pricing is that the income stream is more consistent, so the price can be lower. It does hurt Adobe (not much relative to their income, but still some) to have that income not materialize. If you're not happy with a cancellation fee, that's what the monthly pricing is for—you pay more month to month but can cancel any time. It's a very normal trade-off. The only real alternatives Adobe has to a cancellation fee are to only offer monthly pricing or forbid cancelling an annual contact at all.
    - angry_octet 5y ago
      The problem is not the pricing break for a longer contract, but that the yearly contract was promoted as a monthly price (with no minimum fee clearly shown). I'm sure the A/B testing showed higher takeup if they wrote it that way -- it seems cheaper! It isn't true that this is the only option. Instead of onerous lock-in like a gym membership they could have a sliding scale -- the longer you pay for it, the cheaper it gets. Their decision to go for annual lock-in is short term thinking.

dave333 5y ago

Time to sell the stock short? Appears to be near the top of it's recent range today April 12th 2021 at $506. Wonder where it will be in 3 months time.

paxys 5y ago

People are giving terrible advice in this thread. Changing your credit card number or reporting it as stolen doesn't mean you are off the hook for the payment you agreed to. While Adobe probably won't care enough to do it, another company in its place could very well send the debt to collections and ruin your credit score. Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it. Adobe has a no-contract monthly plan which is only marginally more expensive.

MauranKilom 5y ago
I agree with your overall advice and assessment, but the no-contract monthly plan is exactly 50% more expensive. That's not "marginal" at all.
playpause 5y ago
> Next time read the terms of a contract before signing it. But that's unworkable in modern life. We often have to agree to multiple terms documents per day, jumping through hoops for urgent things like receiving security updates. 99% of people clicking "I agree" do so without reading the terms.
- krapp 5y ago
  I've never had to agree to multiple contracts per day - I'm sure that's true for some people but I doubt it's common. And there is rarely, if ever, a ticking clock regarding accepting software terms of service. People could easily make time to read the terms if they wanted to, it isn't unworkable, they click without reading the terms because they just don't want to put in even the minimum amount of effort. It's just like everyone suddenly being shocked and surprised that social media companies have the right to ban their accounts and moderate their content for any reason. That was in the contract you agreed to when you made an account. This is not to excuse Adobe, their tactics here are vile, but pretending contracts don't really exist just because you don't read them even when you sign them is a childish way of thinking. Companies get away with things like this because consumers have normalized never reading terms of service as acceptable behavior. If they did read the terms, they might see how bad they are, and not use the product. It would be easier for competitors to compete on their quality of service rather than the superficial things consumers do notice like name recognition and aesthetics. There would be some market pressure to prefer honest contracts over dishonest ones. As it is, there is no such pressure from consumers, only regulation. And even with regulation against dark patterns like the ones Adobe is engaging in, the consumer is still responsible for their own actions. Signing a contract without reading the terms is never going to get you off the hook, at least not in the US. The answer is to educate and empower people to be proactive, not to excuse and normalize their apathy.

NoblePublius 5y ago

No, Adobe charges an early termination fee for annual contracts.

fortran77 5y ago

No they don’t. In fact they give you a 50% discount on the remaining months of the contract you agreed to. You can also choose to subscribe by the month, and can cancel at any time.

Sophistifunk 5y ago

This is why I stopped using Adobe.

busterarm 5y ago

I switched from a full Creative Suite to the Affinity software trio + DaVinci Resolve. Haven't looked back.

oblib 5y ago

I quit purchasing Adobe software when they started selling it as a subscription. They had pissed on me way too many times by then and I couldn't stand the idea of buying into that bullshit. I've made a point to never buy any of their stuff again. I never did do a lot of graphic work and most of what I need to do now can be done in Pixelmator. I think I paid $30 for that over 5 years ago.

wsostt 5y ago

Canceled my photography plan last week. No fee.

nateinaction 5y ago

It took me over an hour with chat support to cancel without the fee. That was 3 years ago. I won’t go back.

8128js8121 5y ago

people complaining about breaking contracts. really?

wpietri 5y ago
When the contracts are arbitrary ways to take advantage of people? And are promoted in a misleading fashion? You bet.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  It may have been different a long time ago but I don't think Adobe is misleading if you want to subscribe. It's pretty clear it's an annual contract with a monthly payment.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Other people make the point of how it misleads. Moreover, the pricing structure itself is misleading. Unlike, say, an apartment lease, there's no intrinsic reason for having it be an annual price billed monthly. It's not like Adobe has to buy extra servers that just sit there empty if somebody cancels. It's pure exploitation of cognitive biases.
upbeat_general 5y ago
Sometimes it's just funny what HN commenters choose to defend—and a little sad.

voceboy521 5y ago

unless adobe hid the fact it's an Annual plan paid monthly, this guy should be embarassed for crying about paying the money he agreed to pay.

radicalriddler 5y ago

This has happened for years! It's not some new terrible thing. You sign up for an annual subscription, paying monthly installments. They give you the option to pay half of it out if you want to cancel, it's no different than a 12 month phone plan in places like Australia. God I hate Twitter. People on their are so used to only reading 150 characters, that it's started affecting them in their daily life, that they're not reading the paid agreements they're signing up to. Edit: This isn't defending Adobe. I was stuck in this agreement for a whole extra year than I wanted to be, because I didn't get a notification about it renewing (but that was again, my mistake). Fuck Adobe, they have shitty practices.

radicalriddler 5y ago
Adding onto this. The actual shitty thing that people should be complaining about, is that the subscription auto-renews (unless I missed the checkbox) and I couldn't find a way to cancel it pre-emptively, outside of blocking it at the bank level, otherwise it signed me up for another 12 months.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree that is the truly shitty thing here. You should be able to cancel, but still pay until your contract runs out.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  Yes, this! I signed up for Creative Cloud for a year with monthly payments, but I was absolutely not prepared for the fact that if I didn’t cancel by the end of the 12 months then I would be signed up for another 12 months. This is not how subscriptions usually work, but with Adobe it is. With every other subscription I have ever had if I have it for say 14 months or 16 months and then want to cancel I have been free to do so. But with Adobe when I wanted to cancel after 13 months I learned that I had automatically been committed to another 12 months and would need to pay a hefty cancellation fee. I like the software that Adobe makes but I hate hate hate the subscription. When I leave Adobe after my subscription ends this time, I hope to never have to sign up for their subscription again.

uberswe 5y ago

It's a 1 year contract and you have to pay part of the remaining fee. If you go to the next step in the cancellation process they give you two months free if you don't cancel right away (might depend on how long you have had a membership).

CodeIsTheEnd 5y ago

I'm on the side that this isn't so outrageous; you get a discount for making a longer financial commitment. What IS frustrating is that some of their products don't offer a monthly plan. I want to use Lightroom about once a year, after going on a big vacation, but there's no cheap plan that just includes Lightroom. There's a $10/month annual Photography Plan that includes Photoshop and Lightroom (exactly what I want), but no monthly option. I would pay $15 for one month of this, but the only way to get Lightroom for a single month is with the All Apps package, which is $80 for a single month.

spsful 5y ago
Am I wrong to say that they could just cancel their credit card and.. move on?
- lolinder 5y ago
  It's been said over and over again in this thread, and the reply is always the same: you signed a contract to pay monthly for a year. Canceling a card doesn't legally excuse you from that obligation. Yes, odds are they wouldn't send it to collections, but they'd be within their rights to do so.
  - bobthebuilders 5y ago
    Good luck getting money from a stone!
    - lolinder 5y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean, but if a debt goes to collections that ends up on your credit report. It's not like you can just ignore it forever.
      - culturestate 5y ago
        > if a debt goes to collections that ends up on your credit report. It's not like you can just ignore it forever. I obviously don't endorse this, but in the US you absolutely can ignore it forever as long as it isn't student loan debt. Anything else large enough to sue for can be discharged through bankruptcy (which is comically simple in some states), and debts below that[1] will fall off your report after 7 years. Your credit will tank for a bit, of course, but otherwise there are no real consequences. 1. I think FICO even has a minimum amount for negative items and doesn't consider medical debt at all, but don't quote me on that.

unsignedint 5y ago

I was almost bitten by this before, though I think I've waited until the end of term and then canceled during that window of time as that was cheaper. I did find it outrageous, but I guess the contract is a contract, so I bit the bullet. (and I think it was something like 3 months left on the contract, with low tier Photographer bundle of sort.) I guess their model is bit different than the a lot of other software subscription offerings, as the most I encounter out there are prepaid for certain duration of time with no commitment. (You pay monthly, or yearly -- with some services offering something between, like 3 months or 6 months.) If you choose to not renew (or cancel the contract) your contract continue to the end of the term. (Though, time to time, particularly some Japanese services, I do encounter model where your service terminates at the moment you choose to not renew -- even if you had 364 days out of 365 days remaining on your contract.) It definitely is pretty much same as if you are paying for something up front. If you stop using the product in the middle of the term, you generally don't get refund for the remainder of the term, but it definitely feel bit different.

system2 5y ago

They did the same to me. I contacted the customer support and told them I am struggling with the payments due to covid19. They said we understand and cancelled without the fees. Only 4 months left though, but it is still a class act.

imwillofficial 5y ago

Annnnnd no more Adobe products.

bigyikes 5y ago

Adobe is simply advertising their most affordable price. The options are clearly labeled at selection. They do not try to trick you. The way I see it, there are 3 possible alternatives to the current arrangement: 1) Adobe stops offering the annual paid monthly plan. This sucks because the consumer gets fewer options. 2) Adobe advertises the price of the true monthly plan. This sucks because Adobe is unable to advertise what, for many, is their best deal. If I intend to use this software for more than a year, which is a very common use case, then I want to know the best price on a long term basis. 3) Adobe keeps the advertised price as-is, but must add some kind of disclaimer or note which indicates the terms. I think this is pretty reasonable, and maybe should be implemented. Still, this sucks a little bit, not just because it’s more legal red tape, but also because it is visual noise in the same vein as the © and ® symbols.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

j45 5y ago

My past 2 subscriptions with Adobe has resulted in them continuing to bill my CC after any cancellation. Account is cancelled, so there’s nothing to log into. No choice but to chargeback or attempt to engage via Twitter. Seems like a well established occurrence. I recently discovered the Affinity suite of tools to replace much of the use/need I have for creative suite.

DerWOK 5y ago

https://affinity.serif.com/ https://affinity.serif.com/ Serves the 80% use case. Is in some areas (Live Filter, real time zoom, startup time, one fileformat for Photo, Vector and DTP) even better. And best of all: no subscription!

fastball 5y ago

I'm in the camp of "this seems fair", though with the caveat that I would prefer it if they only charged you the total discount you received. e.g. if monthly is $10 and yearly/m is $8, and I decide to cancel after only 7 months, Adobe should just charge me $14 ($2*7).

robomartin 5y ago

We used to buy multiple licenses of their Creative Suite. We'd renew the licenses every year or, sometimes, if we could not justify it, wait a year or two. I believe the last version we got was CS6. That's when they went to their subscription model. I understand why companies like to do this. I get it. However, if we went along with every single one of these transitions to monthly subscription models we would bleed money every month unnecessarily. What happened since then? The CS6 suite works just fine. Tools such as GIMP have become better and better. There are a number of good video editors, file converters and other tools out there. We used to also update our Corel tools every year. Now they want subscription. We are done with Core. The next victim will be Altium Designer. We have probably put somewhere in the order of $30K per license into this tool over the years. Annual maintenance is in the order of $1,500 to $1,800 (can't remember). No more. I have decided we are going to switch to KiCAD by the end of the year and donate half of our Altium maintenance fee towards KiCAD development (as well as contribute with software development if we have the time). It isn't that I have a problem with subscriptions. We subscribe to Jetbrains tools and will continue to do so. It's more of a question of what you get incrementally for your money. And, in addition to this, getting cutoff if you stop paying. As everyone on the planet knows by now, shit can happen that can put a serious kink into your finances. The old model meant that we could keep using our software until things got better and update when it made sense. As an example, we've done this kind of thing with Solidworks. Went a couple of years without updates and then updated all seats to the latest version when it made sense. The Jetbrains subscription model is great. If you stop your subscription you revert back to the version from one year ago (I may not have put that exactly right, but it's close). That's fair. I can work with that. If I need to save money for any reason at all I can put it on ice, keep working and get updated back to the current version when it makes sense. Adobe and others seem to be very different, brutally so. If you stop paying you lose your ability to work. To repeat myself, that is brutally painful. Others have things like cutting your off from bug fixes to even your last licensed version and cutting you off from accessing their peer-to-peer support forum. I can't claim to know the internals of their business equation. All I know is that, as a customer, I dislike monthly subscriptions that cut you off like and make the very tools you need to do your job evaporate instantly. That, I think, is wrong. These are tools. I need to own my tools. That's why I buy equipment instead of leasing it. Did Adobe change? Do you get to keep and use any version of the software at all if you stop paying? I believe Microsoft Office 360 is the same. I know this kind of software can be a tough business due to piracy.

have_faith 5y ago

Good reminder, I just set up a calendar alert for when to cancel annual renewal. I'm on the fringe of "needing" a few disparate apps but I can make do without them with some effort. I knew the terms of what I was signing up for but I just don't want to spend £600 a year so I can use a smattering of programs a couple times a month. I 'occasionally' use Photoshop, Lightroom, XD, Illustrator and sometimes one or two others in a blue moon but not enough to justify the cost for me going forward. I also just went half way through the cancellation process and got the next two months for free to take away some of the sting.

obscura 5y ago

I hope that in the wake of this more people start supporting the alternatives. More comepetition means more choice. Adobe's software is excellent, but they're far too dominant. The alternatives may not be good enough for everyone right now, but they're good enough for many of us and they're improving all the time. The Affinity suite is great and affordable for me as a hobbyist. Many of the open source packages are also excellent.

Thorentis 5y ago

This has been happening forever. I have always gotten out of it by contacting customer support and begging for them to waive it. My wife accidentally signed up a while ago (not knowing it was a lock in year contract, she just needed it for a month). Half hour back and forth with customer support was enough to get it waived. I would say that "it's just part of the contract" but their mobile apps and lack of clear wording is predatory.

maxbaines 5y ago

Right or wrong, I found the initial subscription confusing and not clear the commitment was minimum 12months. I stopped using Adobe because of this.

alias_neo 5y ago

I got hit with this a few years back. I signed up for Ps CC for a month (I thought) to create an anniversary gift for my wife. I used it ONCE. Tried to cancel and they told me I had in fact signed up for a year, and that if I didn't cancel now, they'd give me two months free. I didn't want it at all! Anyway, I sucked it up, got on with the remainder of the year, because they wouldn't let me put the cancellation in early, had to do it X months before the end. Then life happened and I missed the deadline to cancel and got suckered for a second year! Fuck Adobe and this practice is all I have to say, I stick strictly to Open Source options now. It may have been my fault for not reading the first time, but robbing me a second time by counting on me missing the cancellation because they wouldn't let me do it there and then is just scummy.

toxik 5y ago
It really should be illegal.
- thendrill 5y ago
  We make it legal when we click agree on the TOS
  - playpause 5y ago
    PSA: Clicking "I agree" does not automatically make terms legal or enforceable.
  - helloguillecl 5y ago
    That's a very common and harmful misconceptions in our society. But, besides the fact that laws can make abusive terms illegal (and do), it is also very bad for the economic system in general because it increases the transaction cost for the consumer (time, hassle or wrong product choice). The consumer now has to worry not only about choosing a decent product, but also about ways the company could extract value from them without being transparent about that, or by hiding a clause in their TOS. Could you imagine how much slower and inefficient the economic system would be if we were expected to read every TOS of every software we install and every single service we sign up for? No, this is not fine. Do not accept bullshit terms meant to extract value from your pocket at no marginal cost for the business or no benefit to you as a consumer.

teekert 5y ago

I had the same, they wanted me to pay the rest of the year (after 2 or 3 years?). Problem is, that is against Dutch law, after an initial year, one is only allowed to prolong a contract by 1 month at a time. I reminded the person on the phone (who only spoke English, so imagine what happens when you are not as fluent in it as I) that they broke Dutch law, I told that to 3 other persons and they finally told me: Ok, we'll cancel. Finally. Edit: I had to call them, because the website indeed only showed me these options where I had to pay the rest of the year. Email didn't help, they offered me some discount for the rest of the year. Very strange as a Dutch person, it has become so normal to not worry about this (I really like this law, a nice example of citizens before companies.)

nolok 5y ago
Did you report it to the Dutch agency in charge of enforcing it ? Eg in France it's the DGCCRF (we love our acronyms).
- teekert 5y ago
  Ah, good tip, I see we have the ACM: [0]. I sent it in. [0] https://www.acm.nl/nl/contact/tips-en-meldingen/tip-ons https://www.acm.nl/nl/contact/tips-en-meldingen/tip-ons

underwater 5y ago

I cancelled my Photoshop plan after paying for it for four years and using it maybe a dozen times a year. Hitting this experience after paying them $500 over the years turned me from an infrequent user of their products into a scorned customer who swore to never to do business with them again. Fuck the MBAs who came up with this bullshit. I hope Adobe dies in a fire.

InsomniacL 5y ago

Does a web plugin exist that would show an overlay on deceptive stores? "Adobe has been reported to use deceptive sales methods such as: .. hidden early termination fee's bait and switch ..."

gambiting 5y ago

Sounds like some gym memberships that I've seen. Yeah it's a monthly payment of £10 or whatever, but if you want to cancel it before the end of the first 12 months you need to pay for the rest of the months. It's basically your standard mobile phone contract.

jamesgreenleaf 5y ago

Things like this are a great use-case for privacy.com, or any other service that offers burner cards. Set a monthly limit, or make it one-time, etc. and make sure the company can't charge you more than you've specified. I'm not affiliated with them, but I'm a fan of their product.

bb123 5y ago
What would stop Adobe selling the unpaid amount as a bad debt to a collections agency in this case? I have been hounded by debt collectors for far smaller amounts that slipped through the net.

tristanperry 5y ago

Not sure if I'm missing something, but the pricing of Creative Cloud has always been made very clear from the order form: "Monthly Plan - £75.85/mo" "Annual plan, paid monthly - £49.94/mo" "Annual plan, prepaid - £596.33" I can't see how there's any confusion here, or do they only show the options like this in the UK? Also I just upgraded from Premiere Pro to the Creative Cloud and was given the full upgrade T&Cs, including that there'd be a cancellation fee to pay if I signed up for the yearly option and cancelled mid-way through. Again, a genuine question: am I missing something?

throwanem 5y ago
You might be missing that you're getting double charged, as I was after I upgraded my subscription last year. They started the new subscription but didn't cancel the old one, so I got billed for both until I caught and fixed it last month.

celerrimus 5y ago

I think Adobe offers were even more confusing few years ago. This is not honest company, gently speaking. I have another good example. I bought an Adobe license few years ago, and as a business in EU, I had to bought in excluding VAT, and pay VAX tax here locally. I provided my valid EU-VAT, price dropped to net price in interface (let's say 100 EUR), in confirmation, and even in invoice I get. However, to my surprise, my credit card was charged with full gross price (123EUR), meaning I lost 23% of purchase - as I was obligated to pay VAT anyway second time, as there was 0 VAT tax on the invoice. Well, such things happen, you may think. This should be childishly easy to fix with support, as clearly amount from the invoice and amount charged simply didn't match. However, after dozen attempts with support, dealing with various support level people from Adobe support from India, not knowing even what the VAT tax is, and without any interest on helping me out, I had to give up. I decided to use PayPal protection for buyers, as transaction was made through the PayPal. Tu my surprise, despite clear evidence, they rejected claim after consultation with Adobe, without providing any reason. So I decided to not deal with those thieves any more and called my bank to fill chargeback request. It was so clear, that they recognised the request the next day and returned the money. Takeaways are: - Adobe is a shady corporation focused on robbing their customers, with other examples you can find online I cannot call that otherwise (among others, deceptive offers, blocking perpetual licenses, and as in my case simply stealing money from customers credit cards) - PayPal protections are completely useless, even with so clear cases - It's good to make transactions with shady companies with credit cards.

ekiara 5y ago

Is it still a viable option for designers to use the last non-recurrent-subscription version of Adobe Creative Suite? Or in 2021 is Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo just the best single-purchase option right now?

nicolas_t 5y ago

I remember being hit by that, I threatened a chargeback and raised a stink and eventually they waved the cancellation fee. It was super frustrating and turned me off from ever paying for Adobe.

isodev 5y ago

Horrible, I only have a Creative Cloud subscription because some of clients send Illustrator files instead of Sketch. Just checked and it seems I can only cancel my subscription during a fixed period around the renewal date - if I miss it, I get to pay the remaining term as a cancellation fee!

bilekas 5y ago

On the next step of the process: When offered a discount or to switch to another plan, choose the cheapest new plan (for me it was photography) Once your membership is updated, start the cancellation process again immediately The cancellation fee is now $0.

jrockway 5y ago

The downfall of Adobe is interesting to watch. New releases get more expensive every year, but they aren't really adding features. I had to switch to Affinity to get an iPad version, for example. 21,000 employees and they can't port Photoshop to ARM? I think at this point, they're just coasting on brand recognition alone. They certainly aren't adding much value; all they can do is rent you their software at higher and higher prices every year and hope nobody notices. The subscription cancellation shenanigans just show how bad their software is -- people will pay them money to not be able to use their software anymore. If that's not a hallmark of a dying company, I don't know what is. I'm surprised they haven't started suing people over range check functions yet.

8fingerlouie 5y ago
Adobe isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Yes there are alternatives, Affinity, Pixelmator, etc, but all that's being taught in educational institutions is Adobe, and it's what the industry uses. Private/small business users are a very small part of their business, but one that requires as many (if not more) support resources as large customers, so if anything they're probably happy to see them go elsewhere. And no, i haven't used Adobe since they introduced subscriptions. I'll subscribe to media and cloud storage just fine, but not pay annual fees for micro software increments that 99% of the time doesn't add anything i need. If they had something like Jetbrains where your subscription also gives a perpetual usage license for that specific version, then i could subscribe and upgrade when they actually added something i needed, and i'd likely reconsider.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  It might be what part of the industry uses, but they’re steadily losing the rest. E.g. UX design has overwhelmingly moved from Photoshop to Sketch and Figma.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Adobe isn't going anywhere anytime soon. DEC, Commodore, Novell, SGI, Cray, Lotus, and Acorn would like you to explain how a computing companies last forever.

londons_explore 5y ago

Link is dead...

yokoprime 5y ago

Cancelled my plan after reading this! No way i will stay locked in like this. I had the subscription as a “thing i use sometimes” with the idea i could cancel any time. It had of course renewed for another 12 months automatically (im not sure this is legal where i am) and they tried to pull the bullshit cancellation fee. Talked to their rep and had to say no to all their “N months free” crap and they let me go without a fee. Nice that they do own up, but automatically renewing for 12 months at a time is just nasty.

woodylondon 5y ago

wow - just lost a customer in Novmeber 2021. Its the cancel and you get nothing, cancel and you can use until November would be fair. But they auto-renew you into a new contract without you noticing is a scam. So i had an account which looks like they renewed my account in November 2021 without asking me. Logging into my account there is NO refernce to the start and end date of the contract i agreed to, i never agreed to renew. I tried to cancel and says £178 to cancel. Adobe you are now the worse company for this crap.

Psype 5y ago

No they don't. The guy took an annual license which is cheaper than a monthly one, and paid with monthly payments. As such, he engaged himself by paying the whole year, not only few months. Cancelling out means he has to complete the annual payment, which is of course due, according the what he signed for.

cosmodisk 5y ago

Absolutely sleazy practice. Just checked the UK website to see how this works: monthly prices are shown. When clicked on 'order' the default is always annual, while some products don't even have monthly option. Pathetic

xacky 5y ago

You have had over 25 years to contribute to The Gimp and other open source software. You made your bed with proprietary software, now sleep in it.

madeofpalk 5y ago
Yes, im sure all the people out there using Photoshop without any programming experience at all are all able to make contributions to gimp.
krapp 5y ago
The entire open source community has had over 25 years to make The Gimp a viable competitor to Photoshop. Don't lay your own failures on the shoulders of (checks notes) Twitter user "mrdaddguy."

aalasso 5y ago

I can't see the tweet for some reason. But judging by the title, I was hit by this about a year ago. I signed up to YC to tell you this: After half an hour or so on their chat, I managed to make them waive the fee. I'm pretty sure their practice would be deemed illegally misleading by Danish consumer laws. What worked in the end was threatening to file a complaint with the "Consumer Ombudsman".

rogual 5y ago

Adobe really oversteps the line when it comes to auto-renewal. They will refuse to stop the auto-renewal on your subscription unless you make the request within a tight window lasting a few weeks before your renewal date. Obviously they want you to forget and get suckered in for another year. This was unacceptable to me, so I simply got on the live chat and (politely) bothered their sales reps until they stopped it for me. As a last "screw you", they cancelled my entire sub, rather than just the renewal. But, hey, good enough. Adobe: Never again.

Liambp 5y ago

There may be a way to get out of this by switching to another plan and availing of the 2 week grace cancellation period. https://responsivedesign.is/articles/cancel-adobe-without-paying-the-cancellation-fee/ https://responsivedesign.is/articles/cancel-adobe-without-pa... Happened to my daughter she needed InDesign in order to do a once off college project. She missed the small print and signed up to an annual sub (€300 total). She managed to get out of it using the method described above.

binky 5y ago

Some can't bear the sunk cost of upfront reserved instance

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

roody15 5y ago

We used to purchase a district site license for Adobe. Since they have moved to this nickel and dime subscription we haven’t purchased anything since CS6. Just not worth the money IMO.

yreg 5y ago

The user has since locked their Twitter account. Here's the photo of cancellation fee included in the original tweet[0]. The rest can be found in Archive. [0] - https://imgur.com/qyAWTXw https://imgur.com/qyAWTXw (mirror, source, dead link)

buro9 5y ago

Oh this is interesting. Perhaps there's an opportunity for arbitrage of the unused period of subscription by pooling the remaining time and then allowing others to be connected to the individuals who have time remaining and use their accounts. Basically buying up the unused time and reselling by treating it as a marketplace.

pibechorro 5y ago

I switched to Gimp, Inkskape, Krita years ago as a heavy user of Adobe products and I have zero regrets. Once you get past the new workflow learning curve life is drama free. They are 95% equivalent and always free.

Kye 5y ago

Just putting it out there: The Affinity suite for the desktop is currently 50% off. The Designer app for the iPad works great on my Mini with good Pencil support, and I've used the desktop apps for a long time. It saves to iCloud (you can choose another place since it's a plain old Files path chooser) and the files open up on the desktop app with no problem. Capture One Express is a free and highly functional alternative to Lightroom if you have a Nikon, Sony, or Fujifilm camera.

onikolas7 5y ago

Interesting how most comments react with "I'll just pirate it" not realizing that they are just solidifying Adobe's lock-in. Few years down the line they will turn legit (guessing most are poor students who will graduate and get jobs) and will have to pay or pass the cost to their employer. "Free for educational use" is the legitimized version of the same scummy tactic. I wish universities would not fall for it.

sirbotsy 5y ago

How many SaaS companies discount a longer commitment purchase? Pretty much every single one, especially in the enterprise. And this is better for customers that want a cheaper monthly rate in exchange for paying upfront. As a few folks noted below: This feels like a pretty intuitive presentation of pricing, with three clearly laid-out options: 1. No contract, pay monthly 2. Annual contract, pay monthly (cheaper than 1) 3. Annual contract, pay in one go (cheaper than 1 & 2) The soundbite of "oh they made me pay to cancel" is so easy to virally hate on, but the fact is that purchasers chose an annual contract. That being said, would be nice to see a confirmation message along the lines of "Early cancellation of a massively discounted annual plan results in an early termination fee." Always room for improvement.

YoloSec 5y ago

So I recently found this too, but I found a loophole to get me out- if you change the plan to a more expensive one it gives you a 14 day free trial of that plan first. You can cancel the trial and bingo, you've exited the plan with no costs :)

paulcarroty 5y ago

The shiny side of classic stuff called vendor lock-in. Best experience of gambling & cable TV now available for Adobe users :)

nikon 5y ago

If you use PayPal, you can just cancel the payment on their end.

acdha 5y ago

I got hit by this when Apple discontinued Aperture. They did a Lightroom promo with Flickr and I figured that it was worth a try. The performance was unusable slow compared to Aperture but I had to threaten to contact my credit card company before the sales gym pretending to be product support would stop telling me to buy a new Mac to run their software and processed the cancellation without a penalty.

cashsterling 5y ago

I recommend the Affinity products... very inexpensive for how good they are. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ Each program is currently 25 USD for a license, 50 USD regularly.

greyhair 5y ago

Adobe is run by useless assholes. They get worse every year. Their forced subscription model is gold plated shit. But here is the problem, much like Microsoft Office, the competitors for Adobe's CC suite really are meager by comparison. I know a lot of people are going to stomp and yell and say they are not, but everyone knows the reality. But that doesn't give Adobe the right to be assholes about it.

aravindet 5y ago

I encountered this with Adobe Acrobat DC, but managed to get out without paying the cancellation fee. I contacted customer support and asked to upgrade to a more expensive SMB plan for a different but related product (Adobe Sign). I also demanded the first 14 days free, as that product advertizes a 14 day trial. As I suspected, they could not make this complex change with their internal tools, so they offered to cancel Acrobat DC for me so I could sign up directly for the trial of the more expensive product. As it happens, I changed my mind after the cancellation was completed. ;-) If they had been able to do what I asked, I might have requested a change in billing country into or out of the EU or US - this is often complex for tax reasons. If their tools are capable of everything I could think of, I might still change my mind around the final confirmation stage. Here is the pricing page: - https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pricing.html?promoid=88X75PK9&mv=other# https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pricing.html?promoid... It does mention "Requires annual commitment.", but in a vastly less noticeable style than "Best value". (Legal theorizing, IANAL and all that) Contract law requires a "meeting of the minds". Ordinarily, a written contract is evidence of where exactly the minds met - but there are exceptions. For instance, website ToS are not really enforceable. ("By using this website, you agree to sell me your house for $1?".) I would argue that for most people buying Adobe products with an easily missed cancellation fee, there is no meeting of the minds and the contract should not be valid. A good test for this might be to ask 100 randomly selected customers about the terms of the contract. If a majority aren't aware, it is reasonable to conclude that this information isn't conveyed adequately and that part of the contract should not be enforceable. I've never heard of anything like this happening in practice, though.

asfarley 5y ago

And this is why I don’t use Adobe anymore.

avipars 5y ago

Can't see the tweet