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It would be great to see the FTC go against predatory subscription services like Adobe. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but I think they promoted a yearly subsc

It would be great to see the FTC go against predatory subscription services like Adobe. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them. One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it. For example: if I go a full monthly billing cycle without watching Netflix then my subscription should automatically pause and allow me to resume it next time I log-in. There's a ton of money that gets siphoned off to parasitic companies just because people forget to cancel their subscriptions or because they're too busy dealing with life. It might not be viable for all companies, but there's definitely a lot of services where such a thing would be possible, given the huge number of customer analytics they collect. Maybe give people the option to disable such a pause feature if they're really determined to keep paying for a service. But a default where subscriptions automatically pause if you're not using them makes a lot of sense from a user perspective. Of course businesses would probably hate such a ruling because it means they can't scam as much easy money.

_jab 2y ago
> One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it. Cool idea, but probably tough to enforce what “using it” means. I could see companies start sending newsletters to customers and calling that engagement
- Spivak 2y ago
  This wouldn't survive the courts so approximately one company would get away with it for a time.
arrosenberg 2y ago
> I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them. I don't think it's the same situation. What Adobe was doing was offering a yearly subscription, charged monthly. If you tried to cancel, it would ask for payment to either cover the rest of the sub or to cover the "savings" that the user had obtained by selecting an annual sub rather than a true monthly (can't remember what exactly it tried to charge). It was deceptive as hell, but it's probably not covered by this rule.
- megiddo 2y ago
  I mean, maybe technically. But the "its yearly with a cancellation fee" was not qualified in the sales information on the sign-up page. Maybe it was in the fine print. Given that customers are quite used to a monthly fee is a monthly subscription model, it was disingenuous at best. Putting significant terms in the fine print doesn't exactly engender trust.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf There is no fine print. It is extremely clear and obvious. If you see a term called "Annual paid monthly", 33% less expensive than a monthly option right above, what possible other interpretation can someone have?
    - askafriend 2y ago
      I'm glad you're bringing screenshots to the conversation because so often people just talk about what they feel without grounding it in anything. What the screenshot makes clear is that you'd have to be a single-celled organism to not understand what you're signing up for... The screen is extremely clear, upfront and even the supposed "fine print" is in huge font with any easy link to learn more.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - megiddo 2y ago
        This is not how it was presented when I signed up, 8 years ago. I am aware of the differences between monthly and yearly subscriptions with discounts.
        askafriend 2y ago
        8 years is a long time in life and in business.
cortesoft 2y ago
Man, I remember when Amazon Prime first started, I signed up for the free trial to get free shipping on something. Of course, I forgot about it and didn’t cancel, but then I got an email from Amazon saying, “hey, you didn’t cancel your prime subscription but you also haven’t used it at all, so we are going to not charge you and cancel it for now. Here is how you easily restart your subscription if you end up needing it” It was such a wonderful feeling that clearly impacted me so much I remember it some 20 years later. I gained SO MUCH loyalty to Amazon after that, and sure enough, I restarted my prime subscription a bit later when I got a better job and started ordering more stuff. They made so much more money off me because they sacrificed those few dollars for one month of my subscription fee to show me they weren’t just trying to make me forget to cancel. Amazon today would never do that, of course, but man I think more companies should if they want long term, loyal, customers.
- metabagel 2y ago
  How are long term, loyal customers going to provide the short term profits which are needed to goose executive bonuses?
- ssaannmmaann 2y ago
  Today's Amazon is doing it's very best to get rid of customers like you and me! Not at all a fan of what it has evolved into!
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Early Amazon was pro-customer in a way that I think most people have forgotten. Maybe that was always the strategy? They were losing money for years, and maybe that was investing in the company, or maybe it was allowing really large losses to keep customers happy, planning all along to eventually clamp down when people were addicted. And here we are. Their return rate is still pretty terrible, IIRC. I bet they are trying to cut that down. I still see a lot (and I mean a LOT) of obvious Amazon returns in the line at the UPS store, and some of them are quite egregious (I stood behind a lady for 5 solid minutes a couple weeks ago and she was pulling return after return out of a big bag). Maybe Amazon will start firing those customers.
megiddo 2y ago
Let me regale you with the story of my Adobe Subscription cancellation. I had been considering learning Illustrator and to align myself, I decided to get a little skin the game. I signed up for the "monthly" subscription. I downloaded Illustrator, and this screenshot was my entire experience: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fk3cJoL01-abIYFmvReq4CuKHGHnCqSaz68EI3Tr9XLU.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D5d4bb75d2b7b5cdce639725ebd8df8403563e29e https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev... Suffice it to say, this didn't meet my expectations. I thus decided to cancel and was presented with a $108 cancellation fee. Boo. I hit up customer service and explained my frustration. I was told that I was going to pay that $108 since I agreed to it. I countered that contracts required consideration and since Adobe had provided no consideration for my valuable cash, no contract had been perfected betwixt us. He was unwilling to see my point. I asked for his contact information for follow-up, which he provided. I then explained to him that after I hung up, I was not only NOT going to pay, but that within 60 days Adobe would cancel the subscription voluntarily on their side and not collect a single further dime from me. His response basically amounted to "good luck with that." So, I got a temporary prepaid credit card number with $5 on it and swapped out the CC on file with Adobe. I then went over to Amazon and spent that $5. Who knows on what. A month goes by, turns out $0 is insufficient for a monthly subscription payment. I get a notice that the balance isn't good. I get several more notices. Then I get a notice that if I don't pay, I'll lose access. At about 60 days, they cancelled the subscription. I took a screen shot and emailed it to the CSR's contact with my "I told you so" scrawled on it. I never heard back, but in my mind it was a great victory. Tickertape and swooning ladies.
- metabagel 2y ago
  Great Story! I think you could also dispute the charges via your credit card company. The credit card company should reverse the charges.
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    I thought he was just going to say he did a chargeback, with how the first seven paragraphs went. What he described was not ideal for several reasons: - Some websites won't accept prepaid cards (largely because they can be used to get around things like this). - Who knows if a platform's going to save your previous card info to use as a fallback? - As another reply stated, the company can send you to collections if they think you owe them money. They can also do that if you do a chargeback, theoretically. However, with a chargeback, your card company did some basic checking of the situation and agreed with you that something was wrong about the payment, so assuming you win the chargeback, you've at least had a second pair of eyes on the case, and you have that tiny bit of metaphorical "precedent" to use if you take the collections order to court-- both of which also mean they're less likely to take you to collections. If you just swap out your card number for one that doesn't work, that shifts some of the shadiness to your end, and it legally appears less like you have any grounds to stand on.
johneth 2y ago
> One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it. That seems a bit fuzzy to implement, depending on what the service actually does. It's not always clear-cut, like watching a show on a streaming service; for example, what if the service does things in the background for the user too even if they're not actively 'using' it. My compromise would be something like: if the user hasn't actively engaged with your service for X month(s), email/text them a reminder asking if they still want to be subscribed.
llm_nerd 2y ago
While the Adobe thing is the common punching bag, I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that people probably need to either be more honest, or need to pay more attention. When you subscribe there are three prices given- Monthly, Annual paid monthly, and Annual prepaid. The Annual paid monthly very clearly indicates that there is a fee if you cancel after 14 days. The annual paid monthly is some 33% less expensive than monthly, with the downside that you're committing for a year, or to pay a termination fee if you cancel early. https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf This has been extremely clear for years. Like you have to be blind to not see a "Monthly" that costs much more at the top, then one called "Annual billed monthly" and not have paused to do some diligence. Adobe does a lot of shady stuff, but on this topic we seem to hear the most from careless, thoughtless, or selfish people who think they figured out how to game the system. Kind of like the "my laptop got stolen out of my car and it had the only copy of all of my important documents and the doctoral thesis I've been working on for seven years" stories, at some point we have to not be so naive with people's foolishness.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  In addition, when I got bit by this last year trying to cancel, they waived the fee and gave me a year's worth of premium for free.
- Ensorceled 2y ago
  > I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that people probably need to either be more honest, or need to pay more attention. Neither the Devil nor Adobe need an advocate, but maybe you could help Adobe out with the Justice Department law suit around subscription dark patterns[1]? That signup page you took a screen shot of is the current version, older ones had more dark patterns and definitely were not as clear, hence the Justice Department law suit. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91142929/us-justice-department-sues-adobe-deceptive-patterns https://www.fastcompany.com/91142929/us-justice-department-s...
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    >Neither the Devil nor Adobe need an advocate Civilization needs advocates against users being intentionally, misleadingly dense. >That signup page you took a screen shot of is the current version It is the version of the page that the FTC sued Adobe about. Adobe hasn't changed it. Feel free to cite the complaint - https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/032-RedactedComplaint-REPLACEMENT.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/032-RedactedCom... I'll help by posting a screenshot of the FTC's screenshot- https://imgur.com/a/DQXYAN8 https://imgur.com/a/DQXYAN8 Page 8 from the complaint. Precisely the same disclaimers and selections. Adobe has used this same format for three+ years. And no, the FTC filing a complaint -- responding to people doing the "woe am I...I am the victim for my carelessness" doesn't mean it has merit. Something got some congresspeople's to complaint to the FTC so they did something. And Adobe will probably just abolish discounting to make them go away.
tomxor 2y ago
> One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it Amazon got me on this multiple times for prime, now I always pay for delivery directly, because in the long run it's cheaper. The most recent incarnation of their cancel subscription page had such intentionally shitty UX that I thought I had cancelled, but there were more pages to click through. So I ended up paying 2 months for zero usage. I'm fed up with the never ending changing landscape of tricks. Fuck subscriptions.
gspencley 2y ago
> where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm currently in the process of de-Adboe'ing my life because of the subscription model. It's not htat you get charged an exorbitant cancellation fee, per se. It's that, from Adobe's point of view, you entered into a year-long contract. And so if you want to cancel after 3 months, the only option they give you is to pay for the rest of the entire year upfront. This has a lot of artists really pissed off and many are saying they're finally done with Adobe. Fortunately, I think we're finally in an era where Adobe doesn't actually offer the best products anyway. For Photoshop I'm playing with Affinity Photo. It has a six month free trial and after playing with it for a couple of months I think I'm going to pay for it when the trial is up. And it's a flat fee / perpetual license. I've been playing around with Inkscape as a FOSS alternative to Illustrator and it's OK. I might give the Affinity Designer trial a go since I'm enjoying Affinity Photo. For video editing Davinci Resolve is so far ahead of Premiere that it makes me wonder why Premiere is still used by anyone regardless of other considerations. What's bonkers is that BlackMagic gives the standard version of Resolve away for free... and I have yet to find myself needing features that are in the paid Studio version. It has its own FX tool called Fusion built-in, so After Effects also gets replaced by Resolve. I never used Adobe Animate but am starting to get into 2D animation and really like Moho Pro. It's not free but it has a perpetual license and apparently the first version of this software was created for BeOS 30 years ago, and then got ported to Windows and Mac as AnimeStudio... so it's been around forever, has a cool history and is starting to get used by a lot of pro studios since it gives you 3D style rigging for 2D / "cutout" animation which was its killer feature for me. Anyway Adobe is one of the largest companies in the world but I suspect big changes are coming in a few years because I can't think of any reason to buy into Creative Cloud in current year ... like not a single reason. Maybe if you've got some PSD files laying around that can't be opened in alternatives like Affinity Photo because they take advantage of very specialized features or something then you might be screwed but I haven't ran into any issues opening my old PSD files in Affinity.
- wildzzz 2y ago
  Companies are less shy about paying for recurring licenses because it's easier for them. No need to worry about keeping track of a perpetual license that a former employee purchased or having too many unused seats for a network license. Once a year, the license admin pays the bill (and potentially updates the network licenses) and it's all good until next year. License payments can be billed to individual departments. Perpetual licenses could be considered capital assets that depreciate where as a recurring license is an expense. This could make a huge difference on the company books. Additionally you can't sell a perpetual license when you don't need it anymore but you can just stop paying for a recurring license.
Friedduck 2y ago
If you ever deal with elderly parents you’ll learn the full extent of this. It’s shocking how many worthless subscriptions my in-laws had. Services I’m not sure even exist any longer. An AOL account!

_jab 2y ago

> One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it. Cool idea, but probably tough to enforce what “using it” means. I could see companies start sending newsletters to customers and calling that engagement

Spivak 2y ago
This wouldn't survive the courts so approximately one company would get away with it for a time.

arrosenberg 2y ago

> I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them. I don't think it's the same situation. What Adobe was doing was offering a yearly subscription, charged monthly. If you tried to cancel, it would ask for payment to either cover the rest of the sub or to cover the "savings" that the user had obtained by selecting an annual sub rather than a true monthly (can't remember what exactly it tried to charge). It was deceptive as hell, but it's probably not covered by this rule.

megiddo 2y ago
I mean, maybe technically. But the "its yearly with a cancellation fee" was not qualified in the sales information on the sign-up page. Maybe it was in the fine print. Given that customers are quite used to a monthly fee is a monthly subscription model, it was disingenuous at best. Putting significant terms in the fine print doesn't exactly engender trust.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf There is no fine print. It is extremely clear and obvious. If you see a term called "Annual paid monthly", 33% less expensive than a monthly option right above, what possible other interpretation can someone have?
  - askafriend 2y ago
    I'm glad you're bringing screenshots to the conversation because so often people just talk about what they feel without grounding it in anything. What the screenshot makes clear is that you'd have to be a single-celled organism to not understand what you're signing up for... The screen is extremely clear, upfront and even the supposed "fine print" is in huge font with any easy link to learn more.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - megiddo 2y ago
      This is not how it was presented when I signed up, 8 years ago. I am aware of the differences between monthly and yearly subscriptions with discounts.
      - askafriend 2y ago
        8 years is a long time in life and in business.

cortesoft 2y ago

Man, I remember when Amazon Prime first started, I signed up for the free trial to get free shipping on something. Of course, I forgot about it and didn’t cancel, but then I got an email from Amazon saying, “hey, you didn’t cancel your prime subscription but you also haven’t used it at all, so we are going to not charge you and cancel it for now. Here is how you easily restart your subscription if you end up needing it” It was such a wonderful feeling that clearly impacted me so much I remember it some 20 years later. I gained SO MUCH loyalty to Amazon after that, and sure enough, I restarted my prime subscription a bit later when I got a better job and started ordering more stuff. They made so much more money off me because they sacrificed those few dollars for one month of my subscription fee to show me they weren’t just trying to make me forget to cancel. Amazon today would never do that, of course, but man I think more companies should if they want long term, loyal, customers.

metabagel 2y ago
How are long term, loyal customers going to provide the short term profits which are needed to goose executive bonuses?
ssaannmmaann 2y ago
Today's Amazon is doing it's very best to get rid of customers like you and me! Not at all a fan of what it has evolved into!
rootusrootus 2y ago
Early Amazon was pro-customer in a way that I think most people have forgotten. Maybe that was always the strategy? They were losing money for years, and maybe that was investing in the company, or maybe it was allowing really large losses to keep customers happy, planning all along to eventually clamp down when people were addicted. And here we are. Their return rate is still pretty terrible, IIRC. I bet they are trying to cut that down. I still see a lot (and I mean a LOT) of obvious Amazon returns in the line at the UPS store, and some of them are quite egregious (I stood behind a lady for 5 solid minutes a couple weeks ago and she was pulling return after return out of a big bag). Maybe Amazon will start firing those customers.

megiddo 2y ago

Let me regale you with the story of my Adobe Subscription cancellation. I had been considering learning Illustrator and to align myself, I decided to get a little skin the game. I signed up for the "monthly" subscription. I downloaded Illustrator, and this screenshot was my entire experience: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fk3cJoL01-abIYFmvReq4CuKHGHnCqSaz68EI3Tr9XLU.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D5d4bb75d2b7b5cdce639725ebd8df8403563e29e https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev... Suffice it to say, this didn't meet my expectations. I thus decided to cancel and was presented with a $108 cancellation fee. Boo. I hit up customer service and explained my frustration. I was told that I was going to pay that $108 since I agreed to it. I countered that contracts required consideration and since Adobe had provided no consideration for my valuable cash, no contract had been perfected betwixt us. He was unwilling to see my point. I asked for his contact information for follow-up, which he provided. I then explained to him that after I hung up, I was not only NOT going to pay, but that within 60 days Adobe would cancel the subscription voluntarily on their side and not collect a single further dime from me. His response basically amounted to "good luck with that." So, I got a temporary prepaid credit card number with $5 on it and swapped out the CC on file with Adobe. I then went over to Amazon and spent that $5. Who knows on what. A month goes by, turns out $0 is insufficient for a monthly subscription payment. I get a notice that the balance isn't good. I get several more notices. Then I get a notice that if I don't pay, I'll lose access. At about 60 days, they cancelled the subscription. I took a screen shot and emailed it to the CSR's contact with my "I told you so" scrawled on it. I never heard back, but in my mind it was a great victory. Tickertape and swooning ladies.

metabagel 2y ago
Great Story! I think you could also dispute the charges via your credit card company. The credit card company should reverse the charges.
- jacobgkau 2y ago
  I thought he was just going to say he did a chargeback, with how the first seven paragraphs went. What he described was not ideal for several reasons: - Some websites won't accept prepaid cards (largely because they can be used to get around things like this). - Who knows if a platform's going to save your previous card info to use as a fallback? - As another reply stated, the company can send you to collections if they think you owe them money. They can also do that if you do a chargeback, theoretically. However, with a chargeback, your card company did some basic checking of the situation and agreed with you that something was wrong about the payment, so assuming you win the chargeback, you've at least had a second pair of eyes on the case, and you have that tiny bit of metaphorical "precedent" to use if you take the collections order to court-- both of which also mean they're less likely to take you to collections. If you just swap out your card number for one that doesn't work, that shifts some of the shadiness to your end, and it legally appears less like you have any grounds to stand on.

johneth 2y ago

> One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it. That seems a bit fuzzy to implement, depending on what the service actually does. It's not always clear-cut, like watching a show on a streaming service; for example, what if the service does things in the background for the user too even if they're not actively 'using' it. My compromise would be something like: if the user hasn't actively engaged with your service for X month(s), email/text them a reminder asking if they still want to be subscribed.

llm_nerd 2y ago

While the Adobe thing is the common punching bag, I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that people probably need to either be more honest, or need to pay more attention. When you subscribe there are three prices given- Monthly, Annual paid monthly, and Annual prepaid. The Annual paid monthly very clearly indicates that there is a fee if you cancel after 14 days. The annual paid monthly is some 33% less expensive than monthly, with the downside that you're committing for a year, or to pay a termination fee if you cancel early. https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf This has been extremely clear for years. Like you have to be blind to not see a "Monthly" that costs much more at the top, then one called "Annual billed monthly" and not have paused to do some diligence. Adobe does a lot of shady stuff, but on this topic we seem to hear the most from careless, thoughtless, or selfish people who think they figured out how to game the system. Kind of like the "my laptop got stolen out of my car and it had the only copy of all of my important documents and the doctoral thesis I've been working on for seven years" stories, at some point we have to not be so naive with people's foolishness.

bongodongobob 2y ago
In addition, when I got bit by this last year trying to cancel, they waived the fee and gave me a year's worth of premium for free.
Ensorceled 2y ago
> I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that people probably need to either be more honest, or need to pay more attention. Neither the Devil nor Adobe need an advocate, but maybe you could help Adobe out with the Justice Department law suit around subscription dark patterns[1]? That signup page you took a screen shot of is the current version, older ones had more dark patterns and definitely were not as clear, hence the Justice Department law suit. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91142929/us-justice-department-sues-adobe-deceptive-patterns https://www.fastcompany.com/91142929/us-justice-department-s...
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  >Neither the Devil nor Adobe need an advocate Civilization needs advocates against users being intentionally, misleadingly dense. >That signup page you took a screen shot of is the current version It is the version of the page that the FTC sued Adobe about. Adobe hasn't changed it. Feel free to cite the complaint - https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/032-RedactedComplaint-REPLACEMENT.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/032-RedactedCom... I'll help by posting a screenshot of the FTC's screenshot- https://imgur.com/a/DQXYAN8 https://imgur.com/a/DQXYAN8 Page 8 from the complaint. Precisely the same disclaimers and selections. Adobe has used this same format for three+ years. And no, the FTC filing a complaint -- responding to people doing the "woe am I...I am the victim for my carelessness" doesn't mean it has merit. Something got some congresspeople's to complaint to the FTC so they did something. And Adobe will probably just abolish discounting to make them go away.

tomxor 2y ago

> One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it Amazon got me on this multiple times for prime, now I always pay for delivery directly, because in the long run it's cheaper. The most recent incarnation of their cancel subscription page had such intentionally shitty UX that I thought I had cancelled, but there were more pages to click through. So I ended up paying 2 months for zero usage. I'm fed up with the never ending changing landscape of tricks. Fuck subscriptions.

gspencley 2y ago

> where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm currently in the process of de-Adboe'ing my life because of the subscription model. It's not htat you get charged an exorbitant cancellation fee, per se. It's that, from Adobe's point of view, you entered into a year-long contract. And so if you want to cancel after 3 months, the only option they give you is to pay for the rest of the entire year upfront. This has a lot of artists really pissed off and many are saying they're finally done with Adobe. Fortunately, I think we're finally in an era where Adobe doesn't actually offer the best products anyway. For Photoshop I'm playing with Affinity Photo. It has a six month free trial and after playing with it for a couple of months I think I'm going to pay for it when the trial is up. And it's a flat fee / perpetual license. I've been playing around with Inkscape as a FOSS alternative to Illustrator and it's OK. I might give the Affinity Designer trial a go since I'm enjoying Affinity Photo. For video editing Davinci Resolve is so far ahead of Premiere that it makes me wonder why Premiere is still used by anyone regardless of other considerations. What's bonkers is that BlackMagic gives the standard version of Resolve away for free... and I have yet to find myself needing features that are in the paid Studio version. It has its own FX tool called Fusion built-in, so After Effects also gets replaced by Resolve. I never used Adobe Animate but am starting to get into 2D animation and really like Moho Pro. It's not free but it has a perpetual license and apparently the first version of this software was created for BeOS 30 years ago, and then got ported to Windows and Mac as AnimeStudio... so it's been around forever, has a cool history and is starting to get used by a lot of pro studios since it gives you 3D style rigging for 2D / "cutout" animation which was its killer feature for me. Anyway Adobe is one of the largest companies in the world but I suspect big changes are coming in a few years because I can't think of any reason to buy into Creative Cloud in current year ... like not a single reason. Maybe if you've got some PSD files laying around that can't be opened in alternatives like Affinity Photo because they take advantage of very specialized features or something then you might be screwed but I haven't ran into any issues opening my old PSD files in Affinity.

wildzzz 2y ago
Companies are less shy about paying for recurring licenses because it's easier for them. No need to worry about keeping track of a perpetual license that a former employee purchased or having too many unused seats for a network license. Once a year, the license admin pays the bill (and potentially updates the network licenses) and it's all good until next year. License payments can be billed to individual departments. Perpetual licenses could be considered capital assets that depreciate where as a recurring license is an expense. This could make a huge difference on the company books. Additionally you can't sell a perpetual license when you don't need it anymore but you can just stop paying for a recurring license.

Friedduck 2y ago

If you ever deal with elderly parents you’ll learn the full extent of this. It’s shocking how many worthless subscriptions my in-laws had. Services I’m not sure even exist any longer. An AOL account!