FTC investigating Adobe over making it too hard to cancel subscriptions | Hacker News Reader

FTC investigating Adobe over making it too hard to cancel subscriptions

9to5mac.com

67 pointsCharlesW33 comments

Oh... glad to see. I just wrote a pissed off feedback message in their unsubscribe page last night.

I accidentally signed up for a "yearly subscription that bills monthly"... I misread it and thought it was just a monthly subscription.. and get this.. if I cancel early I get billed the full yearly amount.... AND there is no way to turn off auto renew.. so now I have to set my own reminder at the end of year to cancel my subscription, and if I forget I need to pay for another "yearly subscription billed monthly".. that I cannot cancel without a fee.

Abusive BullSh**

I don't get it.

Why not just cancel now? You're paying for the whole year either way.

I don't understand why you have to set a calendar reminder.

Sorry if I'm missing a detail here.

it might be possible that you also lose the benefits, in which case that's a terrible customer experience

So I just looked it up and yeah, if you cancel early you have to pay 50% (not 100%) of the remaining year, and yes you lose access immediately.

So that's the detail I was missing.

(And indeed, you can't actually turn off yearly auto-renew until the last month of any year, which is horrendous and feels like it ought to be a highly illegal policy. Hence the calendar reminder. I would be furious too.)

> And indeed, you can't actually turn off yearly auto-renew until the last month of any year

This was conspicuously missing from the article, and is by far the most egregious behavior. Over the years I have personally dealt with it several times, and it’s so disgusting.

Like if you look at the words in print it’s almost hard to make them compute because the phrase seems at odds with itself, “they do not allow you to disable auto-renew until the final month of your subscription.”

You really can't just block them from that card and be done with it? Or switch payment methods to a card you can block and then simply not pay? Abusive bullshit indeed.

Canceling the payment method, easiest if using a virtual card, in the past has resulting in them just canceling service and the full year obligation

Depending on where you are based the law may give you a cooling off period during which you can cancel a subscription which overrides this.

So I just looked it up, and there's apparently a trick which lets you get out of your year-long contract, because you can change plans and then you have 14 days to cancel your new plan:

https://prodesigntools.com/guide-to-change-cancel-creative-c...

It sucks to have to jump through hoops -- this is not defending Adobe in any way -- but hopefully it helps you personally?

(I guess it's kind of like hotels that don't let you cancel the day before, but will allow you to change your date to 2 weeks in the future, and then you call back the next day to cancel that, and it's no problem because it's far enough out -- for anyone unfamiliar with that trick.)

I just found myself in this exact situation today. I picked up "a month" of Illustrator a couple months ago for a few tasks and went to cancel it today, only to discover that after paying for two months I will be billed close to $100 for canceling. The UI included a nice lecture about how Adobe had generously given me a significant discount in return for the annual commitment I have no recollection of making.

Pretty sad, to see the tech company that put the cool symbology puzzle on corporate hq many years ago now applying their innovative efforts to devising ever-more effective anti-patterns. Somebody must have gotten a nice bonus for creating this revenue stream.

Same thing with gyms. I have no idea why such abuse takes years, sometimes decades to resolved by the executive or legislature.

I got so fed up with this that I've been determined to find a replacement ecosystem. I can now wholeheartedly recommend the Affinity suite that is not only subscription-free, but clearly shows the innovation cost of Adobe's business model. Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher replace Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and can seamlessly share files.

Edit:typo

Omg a one time payment for software? What is this the 90s.

So refreshing.

Same, Gimp and Inkscape have been more than adequate for everything I need.

Adobe subscriptions are ridiculous. I only wanted to use it for one month. Ended up paying for a year.

Figma has been much more pleasant. I fear the worst now that Adobe bought Figma.

Figma has its own problems, at least in a company/team setting. I'm not 100% certain how it happens, but it seems that when you follow a link without having an account, it offers to easily 'register' and then silently adds a new paid seat. We've first had this issue with Miro, and then discovered they took a cue from Figma. Admittedly it's even worse in Miro. In both cases we found out when the bill arrived. I fear it's on the way of becoming the norm.

I think Congress should pass a law that if you send a registered letter to the legal department of these e-commerce companies with your name, address and credit card number with an order to drop the service then they have to process it and cancel your "subscription". Companies would be required to print out the address of their legal department on the ordering page and sign-up page. Right now if you complain to your credit card company they won'thelp you and will refer you to the company which won't help you.

That's too milquetoast to even be half assed. You must be able to unsubscribe by whatever mediums you can subscribe by and do so without any bullshit dark patterns trying to trick you into not unsubscribing.

Pretty annoyed with Adobe’s relentless greed.

They should switch to something similar to JetBrains license model.

Its absurd to pay a monthly subscription for a year and still not own a license for that version indefinitely.

Furthermore, the defaults store your art/assets in their cloud, further trying to keep you beholden to maintaining an active license.

Plain and simple greed serving their stakeholders and contempt for their paying customers.

I sometimes think about a possible app idea that manages your monthly subscription payments (like Apple Pay but only deals with monthly subscription fees) which allows all the payments to set the same deadline all at once. Not only that, my idea was to have standardized contract and ToS that users find easy to navigate and understand that also allows subscription and cancellation through the app (generate some sort of token to allow you to receive the service immediately), not through the company website you pay for. I believe Apple already does this to an extent in their app store, but I have not seen any app that works for all platforms smoothly. Of course you need to have the subscription service companies to be on board, and maybe that is why it does not exist.

Use something like privacy.com. you can generate a unique cc for each subscription. just go and cancel that virtual card number to stop paying for the service.

I cancelled all company subscriptions to Adobe after going through their cancellation process and realizing they were just straight up scamming me. Just no. Love me in don’t lock me in you fools.

We just stopped doing business with them. Then they bought figma. And we had to figure out how to divest ourselves of Figma, which we are doing slowly. I really think they control too much of the market.

Adobe needs to stop behaving badly.

> Adobe needs to stop behaving badly.

Are there any good examples of a major company where a non-founder CEO was able to put off seeking profit in exchange for a "lofty" goal like this?

India's TaTa Group? From memory, they donate 2/3rd of profits to selected charities. Patagonia is similar, but I believe founding-CEO-directed.

As for Adobe — GFk'd! I'm still keeping CS4 alive, offline, on legacy hardware =D

Yeah, it really seems like without the gravitas of being a founding CEO, or having some sort of mandate from the board, attempting to do "the right thing" seems impossible in nearly all corps.

I just realized this, and this possibly tangential, but the board with the biggest mandate in modern history, OpenAI, just tried to do "the right thing." Those people/ideas are now gone, and yesterday OpenAI announced a partnership with Axel Springer, Germany's version of News Corp, a hyper-political entity. I have a hard time believing that this would have occurred under the previous regime.

> Adobe told investors it has been cooperating with FTC staff since June 2022...

Obvious reaction: WTF is it taking 17+ months to resolve this?

I wrote about how infuriating this process is EIGHT YEARS AGO.

https://medium.com/let-s-talk-design/bye-bye-adobe-3c3ba22c4...

Interesting that they make you contact support to cancel your subscription, but don't make you contact support to sign up for one. I wonder why the discrepancy.

Do the cable/internet companies next! Looking at you AT&T

Did Adobe hire AOL's Chief Retention Officer?

Do the New York Times next

NYT is now pretty easy. When they raise your subscription price at the end of the year, they will email you. Go to their "cancel subscription" link. Can't remember how I found it but it's not very hard.

Then they lead you down a path, one step of which is to give a reason for unsubscribing. Select "Because the price went up." Keep going with "I really want to cancel" and eventually they will make you an offer to reset the price to what it was before (or less) for another year.

I do this every year now. It's a stupid process and it takes a few steps but at least you don't have to call them on the phone any more.

Linkedin premium has the same trick, try to leave and you get 2 months half off

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