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

[OrcaAreCute]

I love Adobe. I have been paying $19.99/month since I graduated from college. When the year is up and they try to raise it to $29.99, I hit the cancel button. They come right back with $19.99 again. That's a fair price for the entire suite of apps.

If you cannot remember to cancel before your "got a great deal" year renews, use your calendar or reminders.

 

[SIGSEGV1]

May as well go after Comcast next and keep this train rolling.

Don't forget Verizon and AT&T

 

[SIGSEGV1]

subscriptions should be straight illegal.

 

[BrentD]

I love Adobe. I have been paying $19.99/month since I graduated from college. When the year is up and they try to raise it to $29.99, I hit the cancel button. They come right back with $19.99 again. That's a fair price for the entire suite of apps.

If you cannot remember to cancel before your "got a great deal" year renews, use your calendar or reminders.

You can subscribe via Amazon as well. I've been on the $19.99 plan for all apps for a long time now, and it "renews" each month. So I assume there is no termination fee for canceling through Amazon, but I've got no plans to get rid of it for $20 a month.

 

[VulchR]

I used to like Adobe, but it seems they have gone over to the dark side. Talk about a consumer-vindictive company....

 

[harriska2]

I love Adobe. I have been paying $19.99/month since I graduated from college. When the year is up and they try to raise it to $29.99, I hit the cancel button. They come right back with $19.99 again. That's a fair price for the entire suite of apps.

If you cannot remember to cancel before your "got a great deal" year renews, use your calendar or reminders.

Oh man I hate that. Glad I just cancelled my subscription I signed up for a week ago. I found Nikon NX Studio (free) does everything I need saving me $10 a month for Lightroom.

 

[vladi]

Exactly. I have InDesign but much prefer to use QuarkXPress (everyone ditched it around 2008, but they overhauled the software in 2018 and to be honest Quark 2024 wipes the floor with clunky InDesign 24, but the boat has sailed).

The number of people who want "the Indesign files", even though in my day you owned the copyright and you never handed over your intellectual property. But seems to be the done thing now and they get huffy if you refuse.

With Id CS2 it was already over for Quark, even schools started phasing it out. But most of it was on Quark itself, it was super clunky and not up with times back then. Adobe saw an opening and they scored big time because they are, well Adobe. No one else could have snatched that opportunity other than Adobe.

Anyway, InDesign today is where Quark was back in 2005. Exactly nowhere. It hit plateau long time ago and they don't know what to do with it. They tried to make it something like XD superlight for html and app lowfi proto and that didn't go anywhere, they completely ditched the concept of interactive PDFs and so on. Even besides all that I think InDesign is the second strongest product Adobe offers, right after Photoshop. Hopefully After Effects people will not come after me when they read this

Quark got their thing together, but it will never be a powerhouse once it used to be. Come to think they wanted to buyout Adobe back in the day now seems like a sci-fi tale you tell kids. Quark YouTube channel has 6k subscribers which is super sad.

 

[stinksroundhere]

Here we go, the undereducated American has taken the bait.

Not American. Americans weren't even awake when I posted. You don't need to insult or pigeon hole an entire nation because you're on some anti-Adobe bandwagon.

 

[stinksroundhere]

Probably Adobe Flash (aka Macromedia Flash).

I remember there was a big stink about Flash. I still remember Macromedia Director!

Steve Jobs brought Adobe on to show the power of the G4 and G5. He also presented Adobe benchmarks when he introduced the the first Intel Macs. Adobe's postscript was a strong part of NeXT and we owe our macOS Aqua interface to the technologies Adobe brought.

 

[MacAddict1978]

I got hit with this on a student plan - and I always look for these details and it was not disclosed except buried in page 23 of a user agreement in small print type of a thing. Except - the student plan required FULL payment of the remaining months - not 50%. They also marketed it in a way to make it sound like month to month - which for students, would make sense because you might not need it after you graduate which was my case.

Adobe is evil - and they make the most convoluted to use products out there.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

Absolutely, I hope Adobe gets hit with a huge fine! What I hate most about Adobe is the issue with cloud files. They intentionally make it difficult to batch download cloud files. Imagine using cloud file sync for everything until one day you realize you might need to leave. Yes, you can only download files one by one. Imagine you have thousands of files up there! At that point, you might regret not knowing enough English words to properly curse Adobe!

 

[Blue Nova]

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.

There is Fusion, it’s part of BMD’s DaVinci Resolve editing software and it’s free version will almost do anything that after effects does.

 

[avro707]

What I hate most about Adobe is the issue with cloud files.

One thing I do is always save files locally, despite the repeated prompts to save on the cloud.

I'm one of those Apple traitors with an Intel Mac Pro, so I have terabytes of storage, why would I want to save stuff remotely...

 

[breenmask]

So they are kind of relevant.

sure, but less so.

 

[breenmask]

I don't know about that. There are some fine alternatives for individuals -- but in a lot of design fields, if you're a professional collaborating with others, you're probably using Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, etc.

I work in an industry that relied heavily on Illustrator/Photoshop, but Figma replaced a good portion of those use cases.

 

[breenmask]

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

Figma?

 

[breenmask]

How, exactly?

Alternatives.

Davinci Resolve + Figma replaced a large number of use cases for Adobe software. Photopea literally recreated Photoshop in the browser.

 

[v3rlon]

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. 👍

until they send it to collections and it hits your credit report. Then they sell it to some debt collection agency who proceeds to hound you to the heat death of the universe, even snail mailing your children after you die and other such 'reputable' business practices.

 

[breenmask]

Sadly it is not, certainly if you do work for other companies, as they expect files in Adobe file formats.

I do. I used to get a ton of Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop files for web/app designs that is now Figma links.

 

[breenmask]

They are still a massive player no matter what you think,

I don't deny this. But they are less relevant. Good thing Figma deal didn't go through.

 

[breenmask]

Less but not completely.

of course.

 

[Ad47uk]

Exactly. I have InDesign but much prefer to use QuarkXPress (everyone ditched it around 2008, but they overhauled the software in 2018 and to be honest Quark 2024 wipes the floor with clunky InDesign 24, but the boat has sailed).

The number of people who want "the Indesign files", even though in my day you owned the copyright and you never handed over your intellectual property. But seems to be the done thing now and they get huffy if you refuse.

QuarkXPress is something I remember years ago, I never used it, I have seen it, but it is something I never used .

Quark have been around for a long time, it should be almost perfect. I don;lt have much need for a DTP, but I got the Affinity one when I got Affinity photo and designer it was cheaper to buy the lot.

i may watch a video of Quark, just to be nosey.

 

[v3rlon]

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.



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.

Affinity is owned by Canva, who have issued a pinky swear that they are not doing subscriptions.

I have never had an issue with Affinity opening a Photoshop image with layered files, and never had an issue exporting as a PSD and opening in some other program that opens PSDs from some other company.
Photoshop Macros/actions are hit and miss, but I even use photoshop plugins in Affinity when it suits me. You can even follow along with Photoshop tutorials. So no.

AI can most certainly be done on device. Look at Fooocus, which runs quite nicely and locally on a Mac using a Stable Diffusion variant, or just watch the last Apple Keynote where they talked extensively about generative AI on device only, including pictures, unless you approved of sending the request out to the internet.

 

[Ad47uk]

I really love Audition to edit audio so feel stuck with them. I tried Pro Logic and could not get my head around it!

Audition is just Cool Edit with some more features. A mate used cool edit, I got him Audition to use on a trial, and he hated it, things took longer with it and some of the changes were not needed so he said. So he went back to Cool edit, sadly not alive now.

 

[Ad47uk]

Affinity is owned by Canva, who have issued a pinky swear that they are not doing subscriptions.

I have never had an issue with Affinity opening a Photoshop image with layered files, and never had an issue exporting as a PSD and opening in some other program that opens PSDs from some other company.
Photoshop Macros/actions are hit and miss, but I even use photoshop plugins in Affinity when it suits me. You can even follow along with Photoshop tutorials. So no.

AI can most certainly be done on device. Look at Fooocus, which runs quite nicely and locally on a Mac using a Stable Diffusion variant, or just watch the last Apple Keynote where they talked extensively about generative AI on device only, including pictures, unless you approved of sending the request out to the internet.

Just hope Canva sticks to their word. A friend uses Affinity photo and designer now and say that she have had no problem with it opening Adobe files.