When trying to cancel my subscription I was faced with a ridiculous "cancellation fee." Surely this can't be legal? How do I avoid paying this outrageous money grab?
It goes without saying that I'm never going to use any of their products again.
At some point there was the hack that you could switch your subscription to a offer they throw at you when you try to cancel, and then that counted as a new subscription, which you could cancel within the first 14 days. Not sure if that still works.
*where i am at the moment, if i buy something in a shop i have 7 days to return it as i could have 'examined' the item there. Online, delivered, i get 30 days.
Empty shops, retailers, empty shops...I 'remote' purchase. But i do go looking first in your store...
1: https://github.com/abatsakidis/PDFDeSecure
2: https://www.google.com/search?q=remove%20pdf%20copy%20protec...
3: https://github.com/wilfredwee/wilfred-TILs/blob/master/comma...
If you don't get the "do you want to switch instead of cancelling?" retainer dialog, you may have already declined it. Clearing cookies and local storage did the trick for me in that case.
Is this ethical? You're not using the software anymore, so you're not getting something for nothing. Rather, you're avoiding paying something for nothing.
Are the seller's terms unethical? Perhaps. I don't think that justifies being unethical in response, though.
Arguably the PayPal trick is more ethical because they decide it's not worth chasing the cancellation fee.
Trying to generalized actions are unethical or ethical or more or less ethical is completely subjective based on your understand and acceptance of the society rules you have been exposed to.
Company work with objective laws with judges deciding disputes.
With pirating, you're continuing to use it without paying.
Luckily I subscribed using PayPal, so when Adobe charged me the cancellation fee I immediately contested it. My guess was that Adobe won’t bother to deal with a contested fee of around $100.
They didn’t, so PayPal refunded me the fee.
Edit: I replaced Photoshop with Pixelmator Pro, which is an excellent piece of software. Most other needs are covered by Sketch/Figma. Haven’t found a good Illustrator alternative yet, but didn’t look much.
Hoo boy, do I have some bad news for you!
> Haven’t found a good Illustrator alternative yet, but didn’t look much.
I’m very happy with Affinity Designer
On physical media.
I won’t say it is as good or better than Adobe.
Only that it is good enough for me at this time.
I first bought a copy of Corel in 1998. The version I bought this year — prefixed “2021” — is not all that different from how I remember the oldest one which I stopped using around 2010.
For me, that’s a feature. The hammer has a familiar handle, and my nails haven’t changed much.
Benign neglect provides stability. Particularly in regards to user interface.
When it comes to my creative tools, I am the slow part of the loop now that computers are so well resourced.
I mean I’ve gone from a PIII with 128mb of RAM and 320 mb of spinning rust to four cores hypertheadeed, 8GB RAM + 4GB on the GPU with a two TB SSD.
But 300dpi and 32 bits are still the same. Basically what required a wait twenty-five years ago doesn’t because the new resources haven’t been consumed with new features.
Or slowed to the speed of the internet to ensure speed is an argument for upgrading.
Amazon sells (at least in EU) CC annual prepaid subscription. Buy that instead and redeem it on Adobe to activate subscription. No direct purchase from adobe, no credit card on file. End of one year, your subscription will just expire out.
Then just cancel.
Worked for me plus two others that I know of
Now that the free trial is over, Adobe keeps trying to charge my card for the monthly fee every 2-3 days or so. I'm not sure if my Acrobat license will get disabled and everything will be dropped, or if my account will get sent to collections, or what.
Eager to find out.
EDIT: I should append this with "It Depends"/YMMV/Do this at your own risk. Based on my years working in and around the collections space, I can say with a fairly high degree of certainty that you will most likely not be pursued in a meaningful or enforceable way for a small amount like this. But then again Adobe might sell your "debt" to someone who will choose to pursue you heavily for it in the hope that they can find a court to agree with them.
Then in the future, depending on your needs, use alternative applications, like many of the excellent Affinity programs such as Affinity Photo (vs Adobe Photoshop), Affinity Designer (vs Adobe Illustrator), etc. that are an affordable one-time purchase. Likewise Luma Fusion video editor (on iPad) instead of Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut.
No need to go that far, you just have to read the very obvious part that says it's an annual subscription. This thread is baffling.