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Comment by drooby | Hacker News Reader

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**

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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.

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

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

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

So refreshing.

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

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

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.”

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.

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