U.S. Government Sues Adobe for Hidden Termination Fees When Canceling Subscription

[GuyDouche]

Still rocking CS 6.5 from the high seas. Zero complaints yet.

 

[Plutonius]

But it's not Apple so the people on the forum can't complain .

 

[wikiverse]

Cancelling my Creative Cloud subscription a few months ago was complete insanity. I got the impression that it must be hell to work in that call centre. Ordinarily I'd be pretty irritated at an agent being overly persistent in trying to get me to stay subscribed, but quite quickly I just felt sorry for the guy. It was a weird sort of desperation, like failing to salvage a cancellation attempt reflects extremely poorly on them.

Switched to Affinity Photo and Designer, and haven't looked back. I find Photo a lot more user friendly, and imo, Inpainting knocks the socks off Content Aware.

Affinity is good, but is now owned by Canva. Get ready for the 'en$hi+ification' of Affinity.

 

[wikiverse]

No, don’t do this.

Their cancellation process is BS, but breaking a bona fide contract isn’t the way to go.

I know from second hand experience, if you try to cancel a credit card on a gym membership contract you will find yourself in collections quick.

Adobe has every right to collect on the debt they’re owed. The best solution is read what you’re signing up for and pay for the convenience of being able to cancel a month-to-month subscription.

The point is that the 'bona fide contract' is illegal. In Australia, misleading and deceptive conduct will nullify a contract. If adobe promises '14 days free then $XX per month' and hides annual plans and hidden fees in small print, that would be misleading and deceptive.

To be clear, Adobe has always been terrible. It used to be cheaper to buy a return economy flight from Australia to the US and buy a US boxed version of Adobe Creative Suite, than it was to buy a digital version of Adobe CS from within Australia. This is not an exaggeration, there was a parliamentary inquiry into it - so apparently Adobe have learned nothing.

 

[btrach144]

Adobe makes great products. They need to stop with this bad behavior

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

I'm not sure who is scummier -- Adobe or Intuit, but I bet whatever Adobe gets fined will just be a drop in the bucket for them. They've screwed people for years. Same with Intuit and their move to ultra-high priced subscription-only software.

 

[flexwithmarius]

The point is that the 'bona fide contract' is illegal. In Australia, misleading and deceptive conduct will nullify a contract. If adobe promises '14 days free then $XX per month' and hides annual plans and hidden fees in small print, that would be misleading and deceptive.

To be clear, Adobe has always been terrible. It used to be cheaper to buy a return economy flight from Australia to the US a buy a US boxed version of Adobe Creative Suite, than it was to buy a digital version of Adobe CS from within Australia. This is not an exaggeration, there was a parliamentary inquiry into it - so apparently Adobe have learned nothing.

The deception is quite pointless too.

Most people are used an annual pricing discount. Just say that it requires a 12 month commitment to receive the discount or simply bill them for 12 months at once.

 

[keifer123]

I am all for this lawsuit. I hope Canada will follow suit. When I was cancelling my users' subscription last week, it took me literally 10 minutes looking for the cancellation page. Yes, it is there but they hid it really well that you would just give up cancelling the subscription.

 

[Blue Nova]

Not only that but last year, Adobe removed the 3D tools from Photoshop, pushing users toward their new Substance 3D suite, which includes Modeler, Stager, Painter, Sampler, and Designer. This suite costs $49 per month in addition to the Creative Cloud subscription, as it is not included in the Creative Cloud apps.

Additionally, Adobe has discontinued support for Type 1 PostScript fonts across all their products, whereas Affinity Designer continues to support Type 1 fonts. So they can push their own what they call variable font collection.

 

[Rychiar]

adobe is less relevant today, thankfully.

Are they though? 🤨 don’t know anyone using anything else professionally

 

[DBZmusicboy01]

adobe is less relevant today, thankfully.

Adobe can go Rock Themselves lol.​

 

[Makosuke]

You must have never used SAP. Imagine something worse than Acrobat, then multiply by a million.

I haven’t, but don’t doubt that it’s worse—in absolute terms, I’ve used worse software, too.

The difference is, Acrobat is a major, flagship, consumer product from a graphic and design company, and it doesn’t even do that much.

The first version of Preview to support PDF was a better PDF viewer than Adobe Reader is now, and don’t even get me started on Acrobat’s comment tools.

 

[canadianreader]

Nowadays trying to cancel a software subscription is like trying to cancel cable

 

[canadianreader]

The settlement will be less than their profits from the hidden fee.

Could be the case but the US government is suing the company and two individuals

 

[ellpee]

This happened to me a couple of years ago, after much complaining from me they waived the fee. I am quite careful with these companies but still they put one over on me, it really is quite clever how they do it.

 

[jasonsmith_88]

If the 12 month plan gives you a discount, great. If a user wants to cancel after two months then only charge them what the regular non-discounted monthly prices is for those two months. But you can't charge the user the full year subscription price when the user wants to dip out early. On top of that full year charge the user isn't allowed to use the software anymore once they cancel.

Also users don't have a single button click to cancel; you have to call Adobe and talk with a sales assc who ask you no less than 20 times "why do you want to leave?".
There are actual stories of people having to say "I don't want to use the software anymore" 20 times in a row before the sales rep final says ok, we'll get that processed for you.

Not sure how Adobe legally got away with this for decades. I guess the whole ToS debacle last week had government eyes looking at other aspects of Adobe. So glad to see this finally happening.

I think this came from a Louis Rossmann video, but it should be law that cancelling a contract must be equally as easy as entering into it (or easier). You want someone to spend 30 minutes on the phone, asking 20 times whether they really want to cancel? That’s totally fine as long as the only way to sign up is a 30 minute phone call where the sales rep spends the entire phone call trying to convince you not to buy it.

 

[MuppetGate]

The win here is that the DOJ has put a massive, bright spotlight on what Adobe is doing. Hopefully, people will read the subscription contract carefully before signing up.

 

[mansplains]

Protip: use Privacy.com and generate a burner credit card number with Adobe with a fixed maximum charge amount. When Adobe comes for that auto-renew or surprise termination fee it'll never go through. Also use Apple's Hide My Email when generating new Adobe accounts in case they try to blacklist your main email. 👍

Yeah if privacy didn’t disable my account for no reason

 

[Rodney Williams]

That's what Adobe gets for being such a difficult company. I had upgraded from G4 to a Mac Pro in 2012 and Adobe came out with Creative Cloud. I was still using Master Suite CS5. They tried to charge me a termination fee after a free trial at one point. I never paid it, and then they blacklisted my email. From that day forward, I never went back to Adobe. That was like 12 years ago.

 

[WiseAJ]

See DoJ. Now THIS is anticompetitive. Apple doesn’t do this kinda ****

 

[Ethosik]

After their TOS update fiasco, I purchased Affinity products. Unfortunately, there is no alternative to Trapcode Suite + After Effects so I am stuck with Adobe for some things.

 

[Fuzzball84]

I stopped using Adobe products not long after they introduced the subscriber model.

Only software subscription I have is for office 365 which is worth every cent.

 

[NEPOBABY]

After their TOS update fiasco, I purchased Affinity products.

Affinity is owned by Canva. Look up the direction they are taking.I have no doubt Affinity Photo will end up doing generative AI in the future and there's only one way to do it. Even the Krita community developed a plugin.

Unfortunately, there is no alternative to Trapcode Suite + After Effects so I am stuck with Adobe for some things.

Personally I believe anyone dumping Photoshop for an Affinity product isn't serious about their career. They'll run into all sorts of file compatibility issues with layered files and exports. Clients and teams need compatible files especially in the age of remote working. It's not feasible for everyone on a team to be using different apps for the same tasks.

They'll also be frustrated with some of the shortcuts and UI ideas Affinity had.

 

[NEPOBABY]

That's what Adobe gets for being such a difficult company.

These cancellation fees apply in the first year only. After that you can come and go and switch plans on the fly.

Cellphone contracts and internet providers have been and still do charge cancellation fees and they will do it no matter how many years you have been a loyal customer.

 

[Ethosik]

Affinity is owned by Canva. Look up the direction they are taking.I have no doubt Affinity Photo will end up doing generative AI in the future and there's only one way to do it. Even the Krita community developed a plugin.

I had my lawyer review thanks. If they add it I don't need to update it. I have the product and its perpetual now.