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Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

Is that legal in the USA? Entering into a purchase agreement ("koopovereenkomst", not sure if I'm translating the jargon correctly) and then just not paying? Because that's certainly not legal where I live.

I understand that the odds of repercussions are small and that there are no damages on Adobe's side since you haven't physically taken their goods so it would probably have to be taken up by the public prosecutor rather than become a civil case... but still, I'd not be happy having my name on a "doesn't pay their bills" list, nor is it quite honest.

Or am I misunderstanding the situation and did they advertised with monthly cancelable? (False advertising) Nobody mentioned that in the thread though, and from this comment it sounds like it was very clear that you were agreeing into a year-long subscription: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24232282

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Here in the Netherlands Adobe breaks our laws by not allowing one to cancel a subscription every month after the first year. It took me 45 min on the phone and 4 forwards and saying expressly that they were breaking the law before they cancelled the subscription. No more Adobe for me.

All conversations could only be done in English, something my wife would already be pretty uncomfortable with.

I did the same. I just stopped paying and told my CC company to block transactions because I never agreed to them.

Adobe is very unclear about what you’re actually agreeing to up until the point you’re cancelling.

I just blocked transactions and never heard from them again (except for some emails).

If they want to fight it, good luck winning it in Dutch courts when the conditions are unclear.

Everybody on the net is always like "Just told my bank to block the transaction" - when I did that, in a EU country, my bank was very reluctant.

They wanted proof that I had been in contact with the company and tried to get a refund from them, and that I in fact didn't owe them money.

Yep same experience with a US company that had gone broke, publicly said so on their website, yet still had renewed a subscription I had with them after the public statement that they would no longer deliver anything.

Ended up with months of paperwork, claims from the other party that I ordered it myself (no idea where as the website to order was gone) including printouts of Stripe with my IP address which was supposed to prove their point.

Five or six mail forms to fill out (yes _mail_ not email) over the period of months with very strict deadlines.

They must have gathered the IP address from an earlier transaction a year before that. It also did not raise any flags that the transaction was exactly one year later on the minute.

An incredible waste of my time and if I had to go through all of that again I will just let it go.

In contrast, I asked my French bank to do this once and they did immediately.

The problem is between me and the vendor, not the bank.

Exactly. I tried to reverse some charges. The bank told me I had to file a police report. I did find that the company returned the money pretty promptly when I told them I was reporting them to the police...

> Everybody on the net is always like "Just told my bank to block the transaction" - when I did that, in a EU country, my bank was very reluctant.

Depends on what it is. Any recurring SEPA payment I can get back up to 60 days. Separately I can block those payments. All from the app or their website, I don't need to talk to anyone.

I thought being able to get that money back, plus being able to block companies were SEPA rules. Meaning, applies to loads of countries (at least the countries with the Euro).

I was just told it wasn't possible. So I cancelled my debit card (take that, paypal).

I went through is process a couple of times.

Usually they ask you to fill an online form and attach any evidence. After that it always felt like a call center employee decided whether to start the refund or not. If you write something smart, well researched, polite, and long, chances are that poor person will just skim through it and click “accept”.

Then on the other side the company has 30-45 days to object via their bank.

With big companies they probably think it’s not worth their time.

With small companies the bank notices about a new dispute probably go to an inbox nobody monitors.

You shouldn’t be contacting a bank - I think that might be the distinciton. When people say this, I interpret it as contacting their credit card and asking for a chargeback.

This depends on the credit card company but mine is very willing to charge back if I call. They find it pretty trivial.

I’ve never done anything like this with a debit card or bank though. I think the money that leaves through debit is actually gone and that’s a distinction. I know the EU is more debit focused.

It is not that much debit focused, but you normally get credit card from a bank here.

Which country? Because here in south eu all banks give out debit cards as standard card. NL is different in that they use maestro so if you want to travel (outside of eu) you have to request a regular debit/credit card and most NL banks do not issue debit cards outside maestro, so you get a Cc.

> if you want to travel (outside of eu) you have to request a regular debit/credit card

The era where maestro cards were impossible to use abroad was already over ten years ago. The only thing you might need a creditcard for abroad is hotels and car rental, which you wouldn't be able to do with any kind of debit card (outside of a relatively small selection of hotels).

That doesn't match, at all, with my experience. I had to travel for work all over the world the past 8 years, usually twice a month and my maestro cards didn't work in any US atms or shops, nor in chinese ones, nor in hk, indonesia, australia, cambodia, most atms in thailand and other places.

In the US & China, it had big maestro stickers everywhere, but it didn't work at all. Different cards, different banks; on calling the banks they said they did not even see a transaction coming in and they the cards are set for international travel (and work fine everywhere they are accepted in the EU).

And it's not for lack of trying; One time on a big slog from US -> China -> AUS, I (stupidly) brought 1 credit card and 3 maestros and my CC got cancelled (fraud); I tried literally every atm , shop in these countries and could not get $1. I had to borrow from my colleagues. This is a few years ago.

I get my credit card from my bank. I don't even know if you can get a card directly from a credit card company here in Finland.

I had immense issues with this in NL, even on a credit card; however in spain/portugal, I just send an email with the transaction id they cancel it without asking anything.

Have they changed their presentation? The details pages on https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html are clear enough that the lower prices are "Annual plan, paid monthly".

It's hidden behind a click of course, but it isn't obscure.

Holy crap, that is some dark pattern :/ Every website allows you to choose between annual and monthly payments, but but adobe just presents their annual plan in two different ways.

Yeah, I'm making a relatively dubious distinction between 'shitty' (which it is) and 'hard to find' (which it isn't particularly).

From "koopovereenkomst" I assume you are Dutch or Belgian. In the Netherlands, a "koopovereenkomst" most often means you have a "payment obligation" (betaalverplichting). The whole invoicing system where people pay afterwards, hinges on this principle.

Disclaimer: IANAL (But I helped as software developer at a factoring company: which buys unpaid invoices from freelancers for a fee or a percentage of the invoice-amount)

> a factoring company: which buys unpaid invoices from freelancers for a fee or a percentage of the invoice-amount

Getting way off-topic here, but I’ve never heard of this. Is it like a bill-collector for freelancers? Who do the non-payers tend to be - is it companies who think they can stiff a freelancer, but who will pay up when someone with teeth comes knocking? Also, can anyone sell an invoice on to someone else to collect it, or does that possibility have to be written into the initial contract between the freelancer and the employer?

Not sure about freelancers specifically but factoring is normally used by small companies to reduce short term capital requirements, as most companies will only pay invoices after 30 days and some have payment terms of much longer eg 90 days. Anyone can factor an invoice and if it was issued by a large and credit worthy company then this is a cheap way to access secured credit.

More recently, see the development of reverse factoring, where the customer initiates financing for its purchases from its suppliers. It's dangerous, as you can imagine; if the customer can't pay for its invoices, instead of being indebted to a supplier, they are in default to their creditor. See Greensill, a $1.5bn-from-Softbank startup that is involved in several recent crises among its creditors in the UK (see https://www.ft.com/content/d5a5951f-bab8-4ea8-b0d7-2b70455c9..., and for a more indepth explanation of what reverse factoring is (with jokes also), see https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-iyz8z-e06e88)

Thanks, this makes sense. Do you have any idea what the factor’s cut is? It can’t be too much, because otherwise the freelancer would wait for direct payment - unless they are really tight for money - so my gut feeling is somewhere between 5% - 10%

These are debt collectors, you've definitely heard of them, and they're all super shady. This is just how it works.

A normal business, say your bank or you energy supplier or your software supplier, will try and recover a debt with some basic attempts. But then they'll bundle together all their debts and sell them to debt collectors for pennies on the pound.

Don't know why they're called a factoring company in Holland.

> "Don't know why they're called a factoring company in Holland."

To me it sounds like a bad translation. "Invoice" in Dutch is "factuur". "Facturering" is the process of sending an invoice. I have often encountered the word "factoring" as a supposedly-English translation of it.

Because that’s what it’s called in English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_(finance):

“Factoring is a financial transaction and a type of debtor finance in which a business sells its accounts receivable (i.e., invoices) to a third party (called a factor) at a discount“

Factoring companies are actually pretty common. They don’t cover disputes (where a client disagrees).

It’s used by sportsclubs here as well, since hunting down people for small amounts of money is a pain.

ClubCollect is a large one working in parts of Europe

Being from the Netherlands and having had a company there for 30 years, I know how well the law works; I have had many companies simply not paying invoices. And because the amounts are small (few 1000 usually) they get away with it without issues. We have tried everything: even winning in court but they still did not pay. Possession indeed is 9/10 of the law. So I would not worry about it too much not paying some Adobe bill.

I recently wanted to get some practical knowledge with cloud storage buckets and my first choice was Azure (for no other reasons that name was shrouded with mystery).

Free trial, etc. I give my phone number (something like "for legal reasons"). Then it asks for my CC. I already hate it because it's highly dubious they need my CC number for a free trial since it's not needed to deliver the product. Fine, I give it. Then the process is declined because they don't like my rechargeable CC.

I am a happy AWS freeloader and potential customer now (well, for one year at least).

Well, to shed insight on Azure.

1. Phone number is required to minimize fake/bot/fraudulent use accounts.

2. Credit card is required in case you want to immediately scale up, and also, used as anti fraud as depending on the card used, and address is used to judge you as a customer and whether or not you should be disabled immediately upon account creation.

Credit cards first six numbers are the BIN, or bank identification number, these are used to sort whom the issuing bank is, what type of credit card line, and whether or not it is a virtual or such.

These are compounded to give you an antifraud score. Address and connecting IP address help too.

So that's why it was denied, but for a company like Micrsoft, their billing practices are very much streamlined and not so hidden vs other companies nor do they introduce "tricky" language such as Adobe's yearly contract, payable monthly SAAS.

> 2. Credit card is required in case you want to immediately scale up, and also, used as anti fraud as depending on the card used, and address is used to judge you as a customer and whether or not you should be disabled immediately upon account creation.

That's not what MS says the credit card is for (edit: which doesn't mean they aren't using it the way you explained they do):

> We ask for your credit card number to verify your identity and to keep out spam and bots. You won’t be charged unless you upgrade.

They don't want me because of my CC (I specifically want a pre-paid CC I can put money on as I need it and can never be overcharged) because my CC can't be easily charged in case I forget to cancel the service.

Amazon, PSN store, paypal, online clothing store, pro and non pro pc parts store, etc. are all fine with this card.

edit: I understand Azure is a recurring payment with potential upcost at some point or another and that the examples I gave are one time payment but then they really should find a way to let me try their stuff for free as they say they want or just stop giving me resources if the card is declined.

Fraud, and verify identity kinda go hand in hand.

The type of credit card has high fraud activity.

Remember, it is to stop bad actors from using azure services for phishing, tricky things, etc (since a default instance w/ IIS, or any web service will literally be on windows.net.)

Anti-fraud == verify identity.

> Anti-fraud == verify identity.

That card has my whole name on it and the bank has a trail of everything I do with it. MS also now have a verified phone number and can see they both come from the same country.

> Remember, it is to stop bad actors from using azure services for phishing, tricky things, etc (since a default instance w/ IIS, or any web service will literally be on windows.net.)

Nothing prevents me from doing that with a regular credit card.

Nothing prevents them from shutting down services/instances that break their ToS.

How convenient for them the only way to try out their free offer is to give them the ability to withdraw money from me.

I would never give Microsoft my credit card number after hearing all the horror stories of people trying to cancel Xbox Live.

No, it's almost certainly not legal. They're unlikely to pursue for damages though, and it doesn't feel unethical to me.

It's legal, you just still owe them the money. Nothing is stopping you from canceling a debit card that you have active reoccurring payments on, just if your mortgage was one of those the bank can still find you in default.

Similarly if Adobe owed you money they may make you run through a customer service maze in order to get it. That's legal too. They don't have to provide you with a method to automatically take as much money as you assume you are owed.

You left out the part where they sell the debt you have with them to a debt collector who will then ruin your credit score.

Maybe it's technically illegal. I don't care.

In the USA, it would be civil issue not a criminal one anyway. They can sue me if they like.

As far as the morality portion of things is concerned, I don't consider what they are doing moral anyway and I sleep fine at night.

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