You may get sent to collections and thats a whole pile of misfortune.
1. There is an extremely low chance they would collect anything anyway, so it's not worth it to them.
2. If someone actually challenged their collection, there is a good chance, of it went that far, that the judicial system would find this type of agreement invalid given the dark patterns involved.
Basically, what Adobe and other companies are trying to do with these onerous auto-renewal and ridiculous early termination fees is just to make more money from people (a) forgetting to term their subscriptions and (b) not wanting to go through the hassle of fighting the early termination fee.
In any case just set it as your policy that you don't talk to collectors, you only engage with businesses directly.
Send Adobe a written notice of termination of the agreement, stop payments, and I believe that's all you need to do, but IANAL.
Also IANAL, but he whole point is that the user is still in the 14 days "free trial, just cancel", and Adobe is refusing to honor the "cancel" part, right? This approach can be handy, specially in countries where there is a way to send legally valid electronic notification letters.
Is it? You can't actually just write whatever you want in the fine print and then claim that that is what was agreed to.
I'm also not a lawyer, but I don't think its ever a reasonable defense to say that you didn't know the terms of the contract if you've signed it (or agreed to the terms online - which I'm sure is provable by Adobe)?
While this case may be hard I'm pretty sure it isn't "never". For example if you are buying a subscription to a software suite and they sneak into the contract "You also give us your house" that isn't going to fly, even if you signed it.
E.g. if ToS said I needed to give up my first born to Adobe, the judge isn't going to side with me because I didn't read the ToS. They will side with me because the clause isn't valid.
I'm not sure if this would fall into the same boat, but if the dark patterns get misleading enough, there is a real-world risk that the contract would fall into the same situation: misleading enough that the hidden portions of the contract can't be applied.
According to them I won't be able to resubscribe with that email. Oh no! Anyways...
Are collectors so toothless over there? Here a valid collection is an easy win in courts if it's not paid, and then it can be garnished from wages, pension, other income, or your property. Collections absolutely can not be ignored here.
I'm not going to engage a collector. They aren't part of the 2-party agreement, they have no rights to any information about me, and I'm not going to give more of my personal information to some 3rd party idiot just because they asked for it.
Pro tip: Never give private businesses your real address or phone number. Make sure they only have your e-mail address. They aren't the police, and don't need to know where you live. If there is a dispute they must engage with you directly by e-mail. If a business needs your credit card billing address, change the street address, as long as the city and zipcode are correct it will usually work.
I see Adobe as equivalent to a grocery store, they're just a business and don't have a legal right to any personal information, I could totally manifest to them as an avatar and pay for services with an anonymous Visa gift card.