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Adobe exec compared Creative Cloud cancellation fees to 'heroin'

86 points by indus 2y ago

t0mas88 2y ago
Adobe is trying hard to become the next Oracle. Shit products combined with predatory license practices.
- prox 2y ago
  I am super happy with the Affinity Suite. One time price for a full version. So glad not to pay a dime to Adobe.
  - throwadobe 2y ago
    I think Canva's dream is to become the next Adobe, so there's that.
    - prox 2y ago
      The moment they are going predatory with subscriptions or online only stuff I am gone. Affinity really had to put out a statement they aren’t going to do that. Let’s hope.
  - vr46 2y ago
    I find them annoying to use but am happy to not have Adobe.
- vjk800 2y ago
  Why wouldn't they. Oracle stock has increase by 244% in the past 10 years and is at all time highest.
  - echelon 2y ago
    Who actually buys Oracle? Apart from Java, don't tech companies avoid Oracle like the plague? Are they selling the MBAs at Fortune 500s? And is that how IBM stays afloat as well?
    - wiseowise 2y ago
      Isn't database their most selling product?
    - fbdab103 2y ago
      Every F500 company with historical Oracle installations built before the open source offerings were actually competitive. Even if every one of those decided today they were going to ditch Oracle, you are talking about multi-year initiatives.
    - stackskipton 2y ago
      Oracle has a ton of Line of Business software embedded into companies and migration is too massive to even consider so it remains. Peoplesoft, Siebel CRM and EBiz are huge. There is also plenty of 3rd party LoB software that requires Oracle databases as well. Also, yea, there is still plenty of companies onboarding Oracle Products, usually due to some new exec they hired who used it at last company and swears that it will revolutionize their business.
    - 7thaccount 2y ago
      Lots of people hate Oracle with a passion and will not use it for anything new. However, their existing production databases already use it and migration could take years and there is a lot of risk in doing that. As a result, they'll be profitable for years to come.
    - rvnx 2y ago
      One major factor are kickbacks. If you are working in a government or in a large company that can be the main factor for decision. https://investopedia.com/terms/k/kickback.asp https://investopedia.com/terms/k/kickback.asp The other one, is legacy systems. If you are a big bank, migrating away is a big risk, and anyway you make so much profit that it’s better to leave an extra 10M USD license fees in costs untouched, rather than risk destroying the 300M USD in profit. (Add that to the risk that your CTO may get mad because he won’t get his kickback)
- HKH2 2y ago
  Yet people still pay them for a fix every month.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    if you pay $X per month for their software that allows you to earn 100x that amount, then $X is nothing. $X per month when you make no money and just want to play around, have a fun hobby, or just try to learn so that maybe one day you too can have a job utilizing that software, then yeah, it can be expensive. I get it. Back in the days of installing Adobe software from floppies, I too was too broke to pay for it. Now, the use of Adobe software pays my bills. For people with hobbies, these other packages might be great alternatives. For working professionally, it's just easier to use the same tools as everyone else. It's just an expense of running a business. My biggest gripe now is all of the generative AI bullshit, but I don't use it, and it's just one of those things. I also don't use their cloud offerings, so I'm not worried about my work used for training data.
    - beej71 2y ago
      If $x is nothing then people will keep paying it and there'll be no need for early termination fees.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        You've maliciously manipulated what I said. I said if $X/month allows you to earn 100x $X, then it is worth it. Early terminations fees have absolutely nothing to do with that. At. All. Sometimes, people go on extended periods of not having work. Creative fields are very ebb&flow drought/flood type of work. If you're a solo person, sometimes you get bogged down in the current project to the point you don't have time to hunt for the next project. When the current project ends, you could hit a dry spell for an expended time. At that point, I could see wanting to stop paying for the software you are not currently using. However, back in the day, Photoshop was ~$1000 (using nice easy round number) for the full package. I think it was closer to $1500 for full, and $999 for upgrades, but that's too in the weeds. Updates were pretty much annually. So, you've got $1000/12 months = $83/month (but it was a lump sum payment only). Now, it's ~$60/month with much more frequent updates. If you paid the lump sum and then went on hiatus, you were still out that money. People complain about forced to not be able to use their 10 year old version because that's all the features you need. Okay, sounds legit. However, good luck installing any 10 year old software on modern OSes. There are times were software has to be kept up to date with the OS. The 32bit to 64bit was a big one even if it was more than 10 years ago. Again, I get trying to learn while not getting paid but needing to know it so you can have a chance to get paid. That's what I always told myself, that my using the pirated versions was for learning only. I never made any money from its use. Now, I get paid to use it, and I have a legit license. Pirating was much easier before the SaaS offerings, so I can appreciate that. For once, it pays to be old.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator are shit? How so? I quite like them.
  - ccvannorman 2y ago
    Photoshop hasnt added a feature I need in 10 years, yet I cant use the 10 year old single license I paid for, so now I pay yearly to subscribe. It's still the best on the market for me tho.
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      As if software from 10 years ago doesn't need to be modified at all and doesn't require any work or maintenance :/
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Creative Cloud is shit, yes. But the products themselves are still excellent and or best in class; PS, InDesign, Illustrator, Lightroom etc
  - vr46 2y ago
    Annoyingly, the products are extremely good and mature. Lightroom aside.
    - pants2 2y ago
      What a disaster Lightroom has been. They launched new Lightroom and renamed old Lightroom to Lightroom Classic. New Lightroom was missing a lot of features but was generally faster and more stable so I switched over. Then somehow Adobe decided they would refocus back on Lightroom Classic so I up and made the re-switch. It was a waste of time and money for everyone involved.
      - vr46 2y ago
        And barely scratches the surface of the catastrophe. What with mobile integration and my own shifting needs, what I didn’t need was the workflow confusion that Adobe introduced. Lightroom was the ultimate one-stop shop but I’ve now come to split my workflow up so much that the editing is now hot-swappable. C1 is looking vulnerable to RawTherapee, I gotta say. Lightroom is sadly a dot in the rear-view mirror.
Maken 2y ago
> calculating and displaying that price isn’t easy since the fee is 50 percent of a customer’s remaining term But I'm sure Adobe's servers have no issue calculating that fee afterwards. I can't see how they can remotely argue in court against implementing such a simple requirement like "show the exact cancellation fee before the client accept".
- LordKeren 2y ago
  I know it’s a fool’s errand to call out a company so obviously arguing in bad faith like Adobe is in this article. But seriously, what an insulting statement to make — like it’s hard to put “Early cancelation fees up to $180” (a random number I picked) on the damn website. If they’re concerned that the number is shockingly high , well, that’s in their control too
- pants2 2y ago
  SpaceX has a satellite launch calculator right on their website[1]. This is fun to point out to SaaS companies that claim their pricing is too complicated to put on their website. 1. https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/ https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/
  - geor9e 2y ago
    Wow. All it takes to throw something into orbit is $300k via credit card + clicking "I agree" to https://storage.googleapis.com/rideshare-static/SpaceX_Sanctions_and_ITAR_Representations.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/rideshare-static/SpaceX_Sanct...
- al_borland 2y ago
  Wouldn’t they just need to multiply the purchase price by whatever percentage of the term is left, then divide that in half? Am I bad at math or is it actually easy and they’re just acting like idiots? I don’t see how Adobe can have a product like CC with countless complex algorithms, and they’re arguing that no one at the company can figure out a rather trivial math problem that could be solved by a high school freshman.
- 2y ago
throwadobe 2y ago
> The early termination fees in the FTC case represent “less than half a percent of our annual revenue,” Rao told me. “It doesn’t drive our business, it doesn’t drive our business decisions. Great, so you should have no issue removing them altogether because it's not really a material source of revenue and it would result in meaningfully more satisfied users. > “I look at a lot of cancellation flows that are out there. There’s people you can’t even cancel online, you have to call. That doesn’t seem simple at all. When you start talking about the the range of what a cancellation flow can and should be, we’ve always been in the category of good, and we want to be great.” Who are you looking at that requires calling? Certainly not big names like Adobe. This is such a disingenuous argument that it almost counts as evidence that Adobe's culture is one of trying to mislead.
- indus 2y ago
  What is not mentioned is that this small $500M amount drives bonuses and targets for teams that continue to extort customers.
- kynetic 2y ago
  Planet Fitness
AlbertCory 2y ago
> disappointed in the way they’re continuing to take comments out of context from non-executive employees from years ago to make their case Whenever someone complains that you've taken something "out of context" your response is "OK, so what's the 'context'? " As for unexpected charges being placed on your credit card: you always use a temporary, amount-limited card, which a lot of institutions offer. I use privacy.com. Someone always says here, "Oh, but they can still come after you." But they don't. You should make a best effort to follow their rules, stop using the service, and then close the card. "Cards becoming invalid" are an event handled in their normal course of business.
- josephcsible 2y ago
  They'll send you to collections and tank your credit score if you do that.
  - rustcleaner 2y ago
    Oh what are they going to do, call me a bunch of times and make it harder for me to pay someone else interest for money I should have been saving? Big deal! An employer who cares isn't worth my effort to impress anyway. LOL to think credit reporting companies actually matter, it's a big con game and we're all the marks! I am lawsuit-proof and actually suing me for a half-grand for an early cancellation to a license, and winning, is a great way to encourage me to find ways to cost you tens of times the judgment both in indirect lost revenue and direct damages (if I can find any way to). I hold grudges for a very long time, and I know how to use search engines and darknet forums. Simply, I am not someone to try and leg over using the legal system unless you are ready to wage extralegal war for your financial survival. Again, I am lawsuit proof and my time counts at a million dollars a year in revenge if I am involuntarily committed (if you secure contempt of court).
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - popcalc 2y ago
    You give Adobe your SSN??
cloudking 2y ago
I needed to temporarily subscribe to an Acrobat plan to work with a specific PDF file from a client for 1 day. They deliberately implement a dark pattern that doesn't allow you to cancel a subscription immediately after creation. It claims that your subscription is "processing" and you have to come back later to cancel it.
crazygringo 2y ago
> The early termination fees in the FTC case represent “less than half a percent of our annual revenue,” Rao told me. “It doesn’t drive our business, it doesn’t drive our business decisions.” This feels extremely disingenuous. Because how many people see the early termination fee and then decide to continue with Adobe for the remainder of the year rather than switch to a competitor, because of the sunk cost? The point of the early termination fee isn't to get people to pay it. Measuring how many people pay it is to miss the point entirely. The point of the early termination fee is to prevent people from cancelling entirely. It would be much more interesting to see how many people try to cancel, get to the point where it reveals how much they'll be charged to cancel, and then don't.
- simonw 2y ago
  Right. If it's so unimportant to them why do they keep doing it, considering how much bad press (and FTC attention) they are getting out of it?
reaperman 2y ago
Not sure who Adobe is trying to convince with this press cycle. The FTC already has their sights set[0] on Adobe for precisely these fees and they aren’t going to be fooled by some half-assed bird-brained gish-galloping. These arguments from Adobe read like internal kool-aid shared in meetings between Directors and VP’s — not like any sincere attempt to actually address the FTC and their specific concerns. 0: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/ftc-takes-action-against-adobe-executives-hiding-fees-preventing-consumers-easily-cancelling https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Good, hopefully the FTC fine is high enough to collect all those cancellation fee dollars Adobe has collected since it started CC, with some compounded interest...
SoftTalker 2y ago
unlike a regular monthly subscription, these “annual billed monthly” plans have a significant fee if you cancel early, and the specific fee is not disclosed anywhere on the order screen Maybe the specific fee isn't disclosed, but looking at the screenshot it's quite clear that the monthly option says "cancel anytime" and the annual-billed-monthy option is a year commitment and "fee applies if you cancel after 14 days." Anyone who was later surprised didn't read what they were buying. This didn't look confusing or deceptive to me at all.
- lukevp 2y ago
  Reading that, I would assume the fee would be like $10. Not the majority of the contract cost. I ran into this fee when canceling and absolutely hated Adobe for it. If there were even decent alternatives to their products, I’d never give them a red cent again.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I'd assume it's the balance remaining of the annual amount, since it's an "annual-billed-monthly" you bought a year so you pay for a year. I see no hints that it would be anything else.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      I have to admit I don't understand why this is an upopular view. Do people think they should be able to buy a year subscription at a discount to the monthly rate, back out halfway through, and then be able to alter the terms of the deal they made?
      - upbeat_general 2y ago
        Adobe can either (A) charge the full year up front, or (B) specify the full year cost and give customers the option to pay that monthly (like the buy now, pay later plans). The issue is that their current wording is deceptive.
fweimer 2y ago
I don't quite get what the problem is here. Has Adobe already updated their subscription offerings? I see both yearly and monthly subscription options. If anything, it's unusual that you can subscribe to an annual plan and get out prematurely, without having to pay for the entire period. Over here, annual contracts for service subscriptions usually do not have a no-questions-asked early termination option at all, with or without fees.
- jamiedumont 2y ago
  Agreed. Annual is usually paid upfront in exchange for the discount you receive. I paid for a year of Ghost Pro and realised after only a few weeks that I’d really rather use something else. It’s my mistake and there’s no comeback. I have an annual Adobe subscription that I’m keeping around until the renewal - just for the last few jobs I might need it for - rather than cancelling. Maybe I’m just a sucker for sunk cost fallacy?
superultra 2y ago
I bought the Affinity suite for 50% off. It’s a bit like designing with one hand right now because things are different, but it’s on par with CS6 in terms of functionality, and without all the superfluous bs that gets crammed into CC.
et1337 2y ago
It’s so disingenuous for them to say “early cancellation fees are less than one percent of revenue, they don’t affect our business.” Of course it’s a tiny chunk of revenue, because no one is canceling! That’s the whole point of the fee!
jsyang00 2y ago
Startup idea: A teams/slack/email competitor that takes everything you write and translates it to an AI summary before sending it, so it is therefore exempt from discovery
rustcleaner 2y ago
LOL just don't pay the cancellation fees. Make sure you had signed up with a privacy.com temporary card number. When it comes time to quit, delete the card and forget Adobe!
- AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
  Do you really think a company as scummy as Adobe would hesitate to send your cancellation fee bill to collections? To put it on your credit report? To skiptrace your name, email address, social, etc? Unless you created a fake alias from the getgo when you original signed up expressly for this purpose, simply not paying won't be the end of it.
  - rustcleaner 2y ago
    Unless they are getting your SSN beforehand, how will they know they're not dinging the wrong credit report? How much does a law firm to handle someone suing them for false credit reporting cost? Names suffer from birthday paradox too.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- kynetic 2y ago
  You don't even need to do that, as a loophole has existed for a long time. By switching to a cheaper subscription plan, you won't incur any charges, and it will trigger a new "30-day grace period for cancellations." This allows you to cancel immediately without any fees.
summermusic 2y ago
> Rao [said] that Adobe had already started an overhaul of its subscription practices in October of 2021… > Adobe updated the design again in June 2023. Well, it’s been a few years Adobe, and whatever “overhauls” you did clearly didn’t solve the problem!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rustcleaner 2y ago
I think I will only torrent Adobe stuff until such time as I can pay once the present value to a 7% discount-rate perpetuity with equal cashflow schedule to their subscription, for a perpetual license.
mmis1000 2y ago
I think they can just remove the annual plan all together and add a discount that "you get monthly discount after you subscribe for 12 continuous month, and that discount is terminated after you stopped subscription". And then there will be no cancellation fee argument. Gyms use this type of discount all the time and don't really have any issues.

86 points by indus 2y ago

t0mas88 2y ago

Adobe is trying hard to become the next Oracle. Shit products combined with predatory license practices.

prox 2y ago
I am super happy with the Affinity Suite. One time price for a full version. So glad not to pay a dime to Adobe.
- throwadobe 2y ago
  I think Canva's dream is to become the next Adobe, so there's that.
  - prox 2y ago
    The moment they are going predatory with subscriptions or online only stuff I am gone. Affinity really had to put out a statement they aren’t going to do that. Let’s hope.
- vr46 2y ago
  I find them annoying to use but am happy to not have Adobe.
vjk800 2y ago
Why wouldn't they. Oracle stock has increase by 244% in the past 10 years and is at all time highest.
- echelon 2y ago
  Who actually buys Oracle? Apart from Java, don't tech companies avoid Oracle like the plague? Are they selling the MBAs at Fortune 500s? And is that how IBM stays afloat as well?
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    Isn't database their most selling product?
  - fbdab103 2y ago
    Every F500 company with historical Oracle installations built before the open source offerings were actually competitive. Even if every one of those decided today they were going to ditch Oracle, you are talking about multi-year initiatives.
  - stackskipton 2y ago
    Oracle has a ton of Line of Business software embedded into companies and migration is too massive to even consider so it remains. Peoplesoft, Siebel CRM and EBiz are huge. There is also plenty of 3rd party LoB software that requires Oracle databases as well. Also, yea, there is still plenty of companies onboarding Oracle Products, usually due to some new exec they hired who used it at last company and swears that it will revolutionize their business.
  - 7thaccount 2y ago
    Lots of people hate Oracle with a passion and will not use it for anything new. However, their existing production databases already use it and migration could take years and there is a lot of risk in doing that. As a result, they'll be profitable for years to come.
  - rvnx 2y ago
    One major factor are kickbacks. If you are working in a government or in a large company that can be the main factor for decision. https://investopedia.com/terms/k/kickback.asp https://investopedia.com/terms/k/kickback.asp The other one, is legacy systems. If you are a big bank, migrating away is a big risk, and anyway you make so much profit that it’s better to leave an extra 10M USD license fees in costs untouched, rather than risk destroying the 300M USD in profit. (Add that to the risk that your CTO may get mad because he won’t get his kickback)
HKH2 2y ago
Yet people still pay them for a fix every month.
- dylan604 2y ago
  if you pay $X per month for their software that allows you to earn 100x that amount, then $X is nothing. $X per month when you make no money and just want to play around, have a fun hobby, or just try to learn so that maybe one day you too can have a job utilizing that software, then yeah, it can be expensive. I get it. Back in the days of installing Adobe software from floppies, I too was too broke to pay for it. Now, the use of Adobe software pays my bills. For people with hobbies, these other packages might be great alternatives. For working professionally, it's just easier to use the same tools as everyone else. It's just an expense of running a business. My biggest gripe now is all of the generative AI bullshit, but I don't use it, and it's just one of those things. I also don't use their cloud offerings, so I'm not worried about my work used for training data.
  - beej71 2y ago
    If $x is nothing then people will keep paying it and there'll be no need for early termination fees.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      You've maliciously manipulated what I said. I said if $X/month allows you to earn 100x $X, then it is worth it. Early terminations fees have absolutely nothing to do with that. At. All. Sometimes, people go on extended periods of not having work. Creative fields are very ebb&flow drought/flood type of work. If you're a solo person, sometimes you get bogged down in the current project to the point you don't have time to hunt for the next project. When the current project ends, you could hit a dry spell for an expended time. At that point, I could see wanting to stop paying for the software you are not currently using. However, back in the day, Photoshop was ~$1000 (using nice easy round number) for the full package. I think it was closer to $1500 for full, and $999 for upgrades, but that's too in the weeds. Updates were pretty much annually. So, you've got $1000/12 months = $83/month (but it was a lump sum payment only). Now, it's ~$60/month with much more frequent updates. If you paid the lump sum and then went on hiatus, you were still out that money. People complain about forced to not be able to use their 10 year old version because that's all the features you need. Okay, sounds legit. However, good luck installing any 10 year old software on modern OSes. There are times were software has to be kept up to date with the OS. The 32bit to 64bit was a big one even if it was more than 10 years ago. Again, I get trying to learn while not getting paid but needing to know it so you can have a chance to get paid. That's what I always told myself, that my using the pirated versions was for learning only. I never made any money from its use. Now, I get paid to use it, and I have a legit license. Pirating was much easier before the SaaS offerings, so I can appreciate that. For once, it pays to be old.
bongodongobob 2y ago
Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator are shit? How so? I quite like them.
- ccvannorman 2y ago
  Photoshop hasnt added a feature I need in 10 years, yet I cant use the 10 year old single license I paid for, so now I pay yearly to subscribe. It's still the best on the market for me tho.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    As if software from 10 years ago doesn't need to be modified at all and doesn't require any work or maintenance :/
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Creative Cloud is shit, yes. But the products themselves are still excellent and or best in class; PS, InDesign, Illustrator, Lightroom etc
- vr46 2y ago
  Annoyingly, the products are extremely good and mature. Lightroom aside.
  - pants2 2y ago
    What a disaster Lightroom has been. They launched new Lightroom and renamed old Lightroom to Lightroom Classic. New Lightroom was missing a lot of features but was generally faster and more stable so I switched over. Then somehow Adobe decided they would refocus back on Lightroom Classic so I up and made the re-switch. It was a waste of time and money for everyone involved.
    - vr46 2y ago
      And barely scratches the surface of the catastrophe. What with mobile integration and my own shifting needs, what I didn’t need was the workflow confusion that Adobe introduced. Lightroom was the ultimate one-stop shop but I’ve now come to split my workflow up so much that the editing is now hot-swappable. C1 is looking vulnerable to RawTherapee, I gotta say. Lightroom is sadly a dot in the rear-view mirror.

Maken 2y ago

> calculating and displaying that price isn’t easy since the fee is 50 percent of a customer’s remaining term But I'm sure Adobe's servers have no issue calculating that fee afterwards. I can't see how they can remotely argue in court against implementing such a simple requirement like "show the exact cancellation fee before the client accept".

LordKeren 2y ago
I know it’s a fool’s errand to call out a company so obviously arguing in bad faith like Adobe is in this article. But seriously, what an insulting statement to make — like it’s hard to put “Early cancelation fees up to $180” (a random number I picked) on the damn website. If they’re concerned that the number is shockingly high , well, that’s in their control too
pants2 2y ago
SpaceX has a satellite launch calculator right on their website[1]. This is fun to point out to SaaS companies that claim their pricing is too complicated to put on their website. 1. https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/ https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/
- geor9e 2y ago
  Wow. All it takes to throw something into orbit is $300k via credit card + clicking "I agree" to https://storage.googleapis.com/rideshare-static/SpaceX_Sanctions_and_ITAR_Representations.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/rideshare-static/SpaceX_Sanct...
al_borland 2y ago
Wouldn’t they just need to multiply the purchase price by whatever percentage of the term is left, then divide that in half? Am I bad at math or is it actually easy and they’re just acting like idiots? I don’t see how Adobe can have a product like CC with countless complex algorithms, and they’re arguing that no one at the company can figure out a rather trivial math problem that could be solved by a high school freshman.
2y ago

throwadobe 2y ago

> The early termination fees in the FTC case represent “less than half a percent of our annual revenue,” Rao told me. “It doesn’t drive our business, it doesn’t drive our business decisions. Great, so you should have no issue removing them altogether because it's not really a material source of revenue and it would result in meaningfully more satisfied users. > “I look at a lot of cancellation flows that are out there. There’s people you can’t even cancel online, you have to call. That doesn’t seem simple at all. When you start talking about the the range of what a cancellation flow can and should be, we’ve always been in the category of good, and we want to be great.” Who are you looking at that requires calling? Certainly not big names like Adobe. This is such a disingenuous argument that it almost counts as evidence that Adobe's culture is one of trying to mislead.

indus 2y ago
What is not mentioned is that this small $500M amount drives bonuses and targets for teams that continue to extort customers.
kynetic 2y ago
Planet Fitness

AlbertCory 2y ago

> disappointed in the way they’re continuing to take comments out of context from non-executive employees from years ago to make their case Whenever someone complains that you've taken something "out of context" your response is "OK, so what's the 'context'? " As for unexpected charges being placed on your credit card: you always use a temporary, amount-limited card, which a lot of institutions offer. I use privacy.com. Someone always says here, "Oh, but they can still come after you." But they don't. You should make a best effort to follow their rules, stop using the service, and then close the card. "Cards becoming invalid" are an event handled in their normal course of business.

josephcsible 2y ago
They'll send you to collections and tank your credit score if you do that.
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Oh what are they going to do, call me a bunch of times and make it harder for me to pay someone else interest for money I should have been saving? Big deal! An employer who cares isn't worth my effort to impress anyway. LOL to think credit reporting companies actually matter, it's a big con game and we're all the marks! I am lawsuit-proof and actually suing me for a half-grand for an early cancellation to a license, and winning, is a great way to encourage me to find ways to cost you tens of times the judgment both in indirect lost revenue and direct damages (if I can find any way to). I hold grudges for a very long time, and I know how to use search engines and darknet forums. Simply, I am not someone to try and leg over using the legal system unless you are ready to wage extralegal war for your financial survival. Again, I am lawsuit proof and my time counts at a million dollars a year in revenge if I am involuntarily committed (if you secure contempt of court).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- popcalc 2y ago
  You give Adobe your SSN??

cloudking 2y ago

I needed to temporarily subscribe to an Acrobat plan to work with a specific PDF file from a client for 1 day. They deliberately implement a dark pattern that doesn't allow you to cancel a subscription immediately after creation. It claims that your subscription is "processing" and you have to come back later to cancel it.

crazygringo 2y ago

> The early termination fees in the FTC case represent “less than half a percent of our annual revenue,” Rao told me. “It doesn’t drive our business, it doesn’t drive our business decisions.” This feels extremely disingenuous. Because how many people see the early termination fee and then decide to continue with Adobe for the remainder of the year rather than switch to a competitor, because of the sunk cost? The point of the early termination fee isn't to get people to pay it. Measuring how many people pay it is to miss the point entirely. The point of the early termination fee is to prevent people from cancelling entirely. It would be much more interesting to see how many people try to cancel, get to the point where it reveals how much they'll be charged to cancel, and then don't.

simonw 2y ago
Right. If it's so unimportant to them why do they keep doing it, considering how much bad press (and FTC attention) they are getting out of it?

reaperman 2y ago

Not sure who Adobe is trying to convince with this press cycle. The FTC already has their sights set[0] on Adobe for precisely these fees and they aren’t going to be fooled by some half-assed bird-brained gish-galloping. These arguments from Adobe read like internal kool-aid shared in meetings between Directors and VP’s — not like any sincere attempt to actually address the FTC and their specific concerns. 0: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/ftc-takes-action-against-adobe-executives-hiding-fees-preventing-consumers-easily-cancelling https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...

rustcleaner 2y ago
Good, hopefully the FTC fine is high enough to collect all those cancellation fee dollars Adobe has collected since it started CC, with some compounded interest...

SoftTalker 2y ago

unlike a regular monthly subscription, these “annual billed monthly” plans have a significant fee if you cancel early, and the specific fee is not disclosed anywhere on the order screen Maybe the specific fee isn't disclosed, but looking at the screenshot it's quite clear that the monthly option says "cancel anytime" and the annual-billed-monthy option is a year commitment and "fee applies if you cancel after 14 days." Anyone who was later surprised didn't read what they were buying. This didn't look confusing or deceptive to me at all.

lukevp 2y ago
Reading that, I would assume the fee would be like $10. Not the majority of the contract cost. I ran into this fee when canceling and absolutely hated Adobe for it. If there were even decent alternatives to their products, I’d never give them a red cent again.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  I'd assume it's the balance remaining of the annual amount, since it's an "annual-billed-monthly" you bought a year so you pay for a year. I see no hints that it would be anything else.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I have to admit I don't understand why this is an upopular view. Do people think they should be able to buy a year subscription at a discount to the monthly rate, back out halfway through, and then be able to alter the terms of the deal they made?
    - upbeat_general 2y ago
      Adobe can either (A) charge the full year up front, or (B) specify the full year cost and give customers the option to pay that monthly (like the buy now, pay later plans). The issue is that their current wording is deceptive.

fweimer 2y ago

I don't quite get what the problem is here. Has Adobe already updated their subscription offerings? I see both yearly and monthly subscription options. If anything, it's unusual that you can subscribe to an annual plan and get out prematurely, without having to pay for the entire period. Over here, annual contracts for service subscriptions usually do not have a no-questions-asked early termination option at all, with or without fees.

jamiedumont 2y ago
Agreed. Annual is usually paid upfront in exchange for the discount you receive. I paid for a year of Ghost Pro and realised after only a few weeks that I’d really rather use something else. It’s my mistake and there’s no comeback. I have an annual Adobe subscription that I’m keeping around until the renewal - just for the last few jobs I might need it for - rather than cancelling. Maybe I’m just a sucker for sunk cost fallacy?

superultra 2y ago

I bought the Affinity suite for 50% off. It’s a bit like designing with one hand right now because things are different, but it’s on par with CS6 in terms of functionality, and without all the superfluous bs that gets crammed into CC.

et1337 2y ago

It’s so disingenuous for them to say “early cancellation fees are less than one percent of revenue, they don’t affect our business.” Of course it’s a tiny chunk of revenue, because no one is canceling! That’s the whole point of the fee!

jsyang00 2y ago

Startup idea: A teams/slack/email competitor that takes everything you write and translates it to an AI summary before sending it, so it is therefore exempt from discovery

rustcleaner 2y ago

LOL just don't pay the cancellation fees. Make sure you had signed up with a privacy.com temporary card number. When it comes time to quit, delete the card and forget Adobe!

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
Do you really think a company as scummy as Adobe would hesitate to send your cancellation fee bill to collections? To put it on your credit report? To skiptrace your name, email address, social, etc? Unless you created a fake alias from the getgo when you original signed up expressly for this purpose, simply not paying won't be the end of it.
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Unless they are getting your SSN beforehand, how will they know they're not dinging the wrong credit report? How much does a law firm to handle someone suing them for false credit reporting cost? Names suffer from birthday paradox too.
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kynetic 2y ago
You don't even need to do that, as a loophole has existed for a long time. By switching to a cheaper subscription plan, you won't incur any charges, and it will trigger a new "30-day grace period for cancellations." This allows you to cancel immediately without any fees.

summermusic 2y ago

> Rao [said] that Adobe had already started an overhaul of its subscription practices in October of 2021… > Adobe updated the design again in June 2023. Well, it’s been a few years Adobe, and whatever “overhauls” you did clearly didn’t solve the problem!

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rustcleaner 2y ago

I think I will only torrent Adobe stuff until such time as I can pay once the present value to a 7% discount-rate perpetuity with equal cashflow schedule to their subscription, for a perpetual license.

mmis1000 2y ago

I think they can just remove the annual plan all together and add a discount that "you get monthly discount after you subscribe for 12 continuous month, and that discount is terminated after you stopped subscription". And then there will be no cancellation fee argument. Gyms use this type of discount all the time and don't really have any issues.