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Comment by bearmode | Hacker News Reader

>the difficulty in canceling a subscription

Never had an issue with this tbh, it's always very easy. Manage account > cancel plan.

Hell, if you subscribe but then cancel within the same day, they give you a full refund. I've abused this a few times if I just need to do something quick - sub, use it for a few hours, cancel, and it doesn't cost me anything.

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I did a trial of Creative Suite on my mac. When it was time to uninstall, I couldn't do that using Creative Cloud Uninstaller. Because, apparently I have to uninstall photoshop and other softwares from Creative Cloud App before uninstalling CC. I couldn't uninstall photoshop etc. because my login to CC App didn't work. So, I contacted Adobe, there was some issue with getting 2FA to my email for some reason. I had to reset my mac just to get rid of Adobe spywares.

Yep. And that's why I permanently uninstalled Adobe software in favor of Photopea and similar alternatives.

Adobe pioneered the "click cancel plan but we will offer you some stuff that you don't care about in order to stop you from cancelling your plan" dark pattern.

Then on the support call they will straight up pretend that none of their systems work in order to stop you from cancelling.

I have literally cancelled (and later re-obtained) subscriptions to CC at least 15 times. It hasn't been an issue, and I've never needed to call anyone.

They do offer you things, but those things tend to be free months. Not random stuff you won't care about.

If I'm trying to cancel I don't care about free months or free storage space or discount on their new product. those are random things I don't care about.

It's literally one button to skip, then? The whole process takes about 4 clicks.

You need to click one button four times? Doesn't sound very simple.

I have literally never seen a service that allowed you to cancel a subscription in a single click. It always takes multiple.

their systems didn’t work for me when i wanted to cancel. had to sit and chat for way too long - also still charged then refunded.

So apparently service is only good for some people.

And dont get me started about the 400 USD fee I had to pay to get out that I had not at all been informed about.

Their “yearly plan, billed monthly” with early termination fees is blatantly anti-consumer.

how can you terminate it early?

To cancel a yearly plan, you must a) talk to their support staff (not available as an option in the portal) and b) pay the remainder of the period anyway.

The only time you can freely modify your subscription is one month before your renewal date.

It's borderline illegal!

Just playing devil's advocate, why would someone pay the standard monthly price if they could get the annual price discount and cancel after a month?

I do this because I specifically assumed using Adobe there would be some maniacal dark pattern they wouldn’t really let me cancel sooner than a year despite what the main text stated. Seems like I was correct, reading this thread.

Adobe could eliminate this loophole by simply charging the difference (between what they actually paid and what they would have paid on a monthly play) when they opt out.

Presumably the current arrangement is some kind of creative accounting exercise though, and such a pro-customer policy might blow it up.

That doesn't sound right to me either though. You enter a contract for 12 months at a reduced price. The company knows it will get 12reduced price. Now the customer wants to drop out after 7 months and you pay 7delta.

What you just have done is eliminate the monthly price. There can never be an annual contract anymore. That seems beyond silly. Is it really Adobe's fault for you trying to either be sneaky or simply malicious?

You can disable auto-renew any time.

I've definitely cancelled a yearly plan without talking to anyone before. But I did have to pay the early fee

By paying an early termination fee, which is 50% of the subscription cost of the remaining months[0].

0. https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/using/creative-cloud-...

I'm paying via Paypal so I've just cancelled the adobe subscription through their subscription management panel. Is there any reason why this might be a bad idea?

PS I just remembered that I forgot to cancel the subscription and they want to charge me 40 quid for the rest of the year. I even had a reminder set, but I missed it. So annoying.

I did the same with my newspaper subscription (NYT) and they just marked my subscription as inactive once the pay period passed. No issues.

> Is there any reason why this might be a bad idea?

Due diligence? Don't get into adobe without an adequate escape plan.

..."but I missed it".

Given the amount of information regarding adobe being a bunch of cntz over the last many years, you got anyone you actually want to blame?

And £40? You got a write-off procedure?

> Given the amount of information regarding adobe being a bunch of cntz over the last many years, you got anyone you actually want to blame?

I was asking for advice, so I’m a bit confused about your comment.

I’ve been using them since photoshop 5 and generally had a positive opinion for most of that time. I learned about the whole annual sub/weekly payments issue last year.

Come to think of it, I do blame them for dark UX and making the process unnecessarily difficult (which has worked in my case perfectly).

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