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Comment by runnerup | Hacker News Reader

Would love to see something like this for Adobe as well!

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1489901640777973768.html

I don't think this is as egregious as this person seems to think. A 1 year commitment paid in monthly installments, is exactly how a lease works.

There are good reasons for leases to have minimum terms: a landlord has significant fixed costs around turnovers. That does not apply at all in the case of Adobe. It's just a hack to make their price gouging look more reasonable.

That's why they have minimum terms, but not why they charge rent monthly and not as a lump sum at the start of the lease. They do that for the same reason Adobe created this billing scheme.

> "Should you cancel after 14 days, you'll be charged a lump sum of 50% of your remaining contractual obligation and your service will continue until the end of the month's billing period"

Is basically hidden. So if you forget to cancel the subscription by the end of the 7-day trial, you end up paying 50% of the annual subscription from what I understand from the website

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/

And every newspaper

or just NYT for starters, in my experience. i mean it's super disgusting how shady they are, for such touted journalism

I guess their numbers show it is a net win, but I'm not a subscriber solely on the basis that they don't let you cancel easily.

I heard horror stories but I managed to cancel pretty easily back when I did, just did it online.

Can't do it online nowadays, last verified early 2022, and have to phone some number during particular hours.

Depends on where you signed up. At least in California, you must offer cancellation online for anyone who signs up online.

And The Economist.

Much as I dislike Adobe for moving this way, some of the comments on that page are misleading in themselves.

"Tiny grey text" - it's not that tiny if I can read it from the thumbnail provided.

"Really hard to read" - dark grey on white isn't hard to read. It's easier to read than the "summary" line of a HN comment (runnerup 10 minutes ago | parent | context | flag | on: FTC cracks down on hard to cancel subscription of ...)

And they do state up front before you click buttons to move forward "after 7 days, a fee will be charged to cancel", etc.

I think it's _onerous_ to charge a "50% of balance" cancelation fee, and excessive, but not fraudulent.

And not hard to cancel. Just onerous.

You overlooked the part that it's a one-year minimum commitment, which was by design.

They shouldn't be using monthly price marketing and language when they don't actually offer a monthly plan. It's intentionally misleading, and I cannot find any other SaaS or tool that uses this kind of misleading marketing or pricing mechanics.

What? They absolutely do offer monthly plans. They _default_ to an Annual plan, which is described in two flavors, "Annual plan", and "Annual plan, paid monthly", but they absolutely do offer straight monthly plans:

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html - any click on the "Plans and pricing details" would show that.

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