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For anyone stuck in this dark pattern here is a trick I've used in the past: Adobe won't let you cancel without paying the remainder of your subscription fee h
by sibit 5y ago
For anyone stuck in this dark pattern here is a trick I've used in the past:
Adobe won't let you cancel without paying the remainder of your subscription fee however you can switch to a different plan. As soon as you switch you'll have the ability to cancel your "new" plan within 14 days. If you cancel after 14 days they'll charge you the early termination fee.
- tomrod 5y agoIn other words, they are hopelessly broken and you have to social engineer a loophole?
- toyg 5y agoNo, they are purposefully evil but not competent enough to close all loopholes (or leaving it open on purpose to have an escape hatch for the most litigious customers).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- achow 5y agoAgree. It is a constant wonderment why Adobe is not called out ‘evil’ more often like its other SV brethren. They are not even good at software engineering and UX.
- NetOpWibby 5y agoThey used to be but then competitors sprang up so Adobe got less attention.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoBack in the early days they were really good, I remember phoning about some PostScript problems I was having and whoever I spoke to clearly knew it inside out. Now I can't even get a response about obvious bugs in their software. It's not just Adobe though, this is an industry wide problem.
- bradleyjg 5y agoEvil is thrown around way to much. If you are going to use it for dishonest business practices what’s left for ISIS?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- toyg 5y agoA gradation of evil is still evil.
- bradleyjg 5y agoI love living in a time moral absolutism and self righteousness. Nothing better than having conversations with people that have zero doubts about the correctness of every single one of their many, many ethical positions and that anyone who disagrees is evil. Good times. If only I could have witnessed the Spanish Inquisition.
- rightbyte 5y agoIt is not a very ambiguous moral stand versus Adobe here.
- ironmagma 5y agoIronically, the point is that evil is relative and there are different scales of evil. That isn’t absolutism.
- imwillofficial 5y ago“moral absolutism” How dare people make judgement calls on actions they feel are morally wrong! Why, that’s like burning people at the stake!
- torstenvl 5y agoISIS' actions are far far worse, but most Daesh are motivated by the desperation of being a religious minority associated with a deposed dictator in a resource-constrained desert infected with religious fanaticism. Daesh's actions require a more drastic response, but I'm more confident that the average Adobe CSR, rather than the average drafted Sunni kid from Al Qaim, is going to hell.
- Spooky23 5y agoThey aren’t evil, it’s just when companies move to subscription they turn into mini insurance companies focused on the spreadsheets. They model out your lifetime value and know that every $1 they chisel out of you is worth $1.40 in 5 years. They are brutal in the enterprise space, looking for 10-15% price escalations. They also turn over sales leadership so if you are big enough you can pull stunts for concessions. Just do some recon and figure out what they get paid the most on. Last time, we hired a few interns specifically to do a public PoC of how we were getting rid a key product in the portfolio. Made sure they heard about it and got significant confessions. Basically 10x the intern and PoC investment. We ended up hiring the interns as well for an extra bonus. As a consumer, you need to be really aware of the motivations of your suppliers business model and model your business accordingly. Understand your costs and use OSS strategically, or understand where you just need to take what they offer (ie AWS). Things in the middle, like Adobe in my case, you need to be ready to walk away or play chicken and make a deal at the 11th hour.
- ummonk 5y ago"it’s just when companies move to subscription they turn into mini insurance companies focused on the spreadsheets. They model out your lifetime value and know that every $1 they chisel out of you is worth $1.40 in 5 years." The term for that is "evil".
- marcosdumay 5y ago"Evil" is normally used for people that do worse actions than overbill their customers. "Fraudster" applies better here.
- lostcolony 5y agoNah, evil is fine. It's a low grade evil, sure, but it's still evil. To cite a lovely paragraph from Carpe Jugulum that feels appropriate - “There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’ ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” ― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
- witweb 5y agoThank you so much, I was able to successfully cancel my plan for free!
- sibit 5y agoThat's awesome! I'm glad it still works. I stumbled upon this work around 5 years ago when I was in college and Adobe quietly switched my subscription from the student version to the full CC suite. I contacted support because I genuinely couldn't afford to pay $60 a month and support was no help whatsoever.
- cudgy 5y agoHow did you get the above mentioned 14 days to pass in 40 minutes?
- codazoda 5y agoYou need to cancel BEFORE the 14-day period, after that you’re locked in again. There’s money in confusion.
- bambax 5y agoOr you can just block the recurring payments and wait for them to come at you? Anyway a "free" trial that asks for your cc number is obviously not free. Better to stay away of those to be on the safe side.
- awslattery 5y agoThey didn't "come at me" when I've done this a few times in the past, but thankfully I haven't been in a position to put their akin-to-malware on my system in a few years.
- AlfeG 5y agoThere are stories when Adobe charged for several missing years as soon as credit card were linked.
- dymk 5y agoCC chargeback time
- chrisseaton 5y agoChargebacks aren't the magic spell people think they are. The credit card company may elect to side with the merchant, or the merchant may decline to do business with you again in the future (not ideal if your income relies on access to these tools in the future), or the merchant may take legal action against you, or the credit card company may decide to close your card account. You can't just do whatever you want and then claim 'chargeback!'
- beeboop 5y agoI use privacy.com for throw-away cards and you can set spending limits and close them at any time.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- remus 5y agoOr you can threaten to report them to the relevant consumer body in your country. I did this after arguing with one of their sales people about cancelling a subscription for half an hour and they immediately relented. Just speculating, but i suspect they know what they're doing is dodgy and want to avoid as much scrutiny as possible from any regulatory bodies so their support script says to cancel if the customer mentions reporting them.
- SomeBoolshit 5y agoOf course, you then report them, anyway.
- nigerian1981 5y agoand should
- Syzygies 5y agoThis also works for American Express. They won't pro-rate the annual fee after thirty days, but you can drop from Platinum or Gold to a Green card and get back the difference.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoAlso pirates, be reminded that Adobe indulges in very aggressive practices to target you. At least in India I've met people on unrelated events working for companies claiming to be contracted by Adobe to target small-business, raid their office and make them pay huge sums of money on the pretext of suing them for piracy of their products. One such person, told me that they got their previous employer into trouble with Adobe due to bad blood. It's definitely not legal for a private entity to raid a premise in India, But I guess these companies have 'what it takes' to make that happen. So it's not worth it to pirate adobe products, Especially when there are better tools available[1]. [1] https://startuptoolchain.com/#design https://startuptoolchain.com/#design (I maintain this).
- sshine 5y agoIt’s not worth it to pirate Adobe products... in India. I’m not sure how this story translates to countries that don’t have anti-piracy mobs that raid offices.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoTrue maybe more subtle elsewhere, But the risks of piracy is not zero anywhere.
- Phylter 5y agoI wonder how long it'll be until they tie up this loophole.
- berndi 5y agoI just used the chat to cancel my subscription and they waived the early-cancellation fee without any issues. Maybe its some sort of damage control.
- figassis 5y agoFor Adobe specifically, I threatened a chargeback for any amount I’d be charged after I let them know I wanted to cancel, including the cancellation fee. But for vendors like these, usually I use debit cards which I only load when I want to pay for the service. Send their payment failed emails right to spam.
- vishnugupta 5y agoI’ve mentioned it before here. They have something called “yearly contract monthly payment “. I saw the trap as soon as I saw it and bailed out.