Adobe exec compared Creative Cloud cancellation fees to 'heroin'
theverge.com
theverge.com
But I'm sure Adobe's servers have no issue calculating that fee afterwards.
I can't see how they can remotely argue in court against implementing such a simple requirement like "show the exact cancellation fee before the client accept".
But seriously, what an insulting statement to make — like it’s hard to put “Early cancelation fees up to $180” (a random number I picked) on the damn website. If they’re concerned that the number is shockingly high , well, that’s in their control too
Am I bad at math or is it actually easy and they’re just acting like idiots?
I don’t see how Adobe can have a product like CC with countless complex algorithms, and they’re arguing that no one at the company can figure out a rather trivial math problem that could be solved by a high school freshman.
That said, this continuation of the quote was funny to me:
> "We always have to balance the need to be clear and conspicuous with our terms — which is what we’re trying to do — with the number of things we need to be clear and conspicuous about."
This is a problem that Adobe created and it's a problem that Adobe can solve by just... simplifying the terms. If your terms are hard to explain concisely then that, in itself, is the problem!
Are they selling the MBAs at Fortune 500s? And is that how IBM stays afloat as well?
There is also plenty of 3rd party LoB software that requires Oracle databases as well.
Also, yea, there is still plenty of companies onboarding Oracle Products, usually due to some new exec they hired who used it at last company and swears that it will revolutionize their business.
If you are working in a government or in a large company that can be the main factor for decision.
https://investopedia.com/terms/k/kickback.asp
The other one, is legacy systems.
If you are a big bank, migrating away is a big risk, and anyway you make so much profit that it’s better to leave an extra 10M USD license fees in costs untouched, rather than risk destroying the 300M USD in profit.
(Add that to the risk that your CTO may get mad because he won’t get his kickback)
And that's before we get into the fact that Oracle is not just a database company. They have a bunch of other products targeted at many different industries and applications, such as project management, ERP, procurement, etc.
Oracle wants to be the one-stop shop for technology needed by any of the many, many legacy industries that aren't tech, and in many industries they succeed at that.
take Opera. You buy it to run eg an amusement park or a casino or chain of hotels. That's a relatively complex thing to do, and not something that amusement parks or hotels are capable of building out a team of devs to build themselves.
The list of things that are table stakes would run $10-$20m of devtime for a decade to build out. Bookings (both individual, block for events, and syncs w/ expedia or others) / payments / loyalty + customer relationship management / etc.
When they talk to actual tech companies, they probably laugh when we can’t figure out what they actually do. We’re children playing with Postgres and node apps while they’re owning entire markets every quarter.
Took me a while to realize this, but the need they serve is just that people want their businesses to work, including complying with all laws, do payroll, keep customer lists updated, send documents to the CEO for approval, order supplies from China and produce financial reports. Every business with a decent size will need that, so Salesforce, Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft and friends, with help from McKinsey, Accenture & Co pick up the slack, with kickbacks all around.
$X per month when you make no money and just want to play around, have a fun hobby, or just try to learn so that maybe one day you too can have a job utilizing that software, then yeah, it can be expensive. I get it. Back in the days of installing Adobe software from floppies, I too was too broke to pay for it. Now, the use of Adobe software pays my bills. For people with hobbies, these other packages might be great alternatives. For working professionally, it's just easier to use the same tools as everyone else. It's just an expense of running a business.
My biggest gripe now is all of the generative AI bullshit, but I don't use it, and it's just one of those things. I also don't use their cloud offerings, so I'm not worried about my work used for training data.
However, back in the day, Photoshop was ~$1000 (using nice easy round number) for the full package. I think it was closer to $1500 for full, and $999 for upgrades, but that's too in the weeds. Updates were pretty much annually. So, you've got $1000/12 months = $83/month (but it was a lump sum payment only). Now, it's ~$60/month with much more frequent updates. If you paid the lump sum and then went on hiatus, you were still out that money.
People complain about forced to not be able to use their 10 year old version because that's all the features you need. Okay, sounds legit. However, good luck installing any 10 year old software on modern OSes. There are times were software has to be kept up to date with the OS. The 32bit to 64bit was a big one even if it was more than 10 years ago.
Again, I get trying to learn while not getting paid but needing to know it so you can have a chance to get paid. That's what I always told myself, that my using the pirated versions was for learning only. I never made any money from its use. Now, I get paid to use it, and I have a legit license. Pirating was much easier before the SaaS offerings, so I can appreciate that. For once, it pays to be old.
Apart from the network effects, are there many exclusive features that you use, or is it more that it's just not worth changing?
At this point in time, for me to switch to a different system would hinder my performance in an edit bay drastically while trying to learn something new. I'm old now, so the time that I used to spend doing all of that extra stuff is now spent on adulting. I used to try to learn every new thing, but I never left my computer. Now, I just want to get the work done as quickly as possible so that I can go back to my non-work activities.
Lightroom was the ultimate one-stop shop but I’ve now come to split my workflow up so much that the editing is now hot-swappable. C1 is looking vulnerable to RawTherapee, I gotta say. Lightroom is sadly a dot in the rear-view mirror.
Unless you created a fake alias from the getgo when you original signed up expressly for this purpose, simply not paying won't be the end of it.
This feels extremely disingenuous.
Because how many people see the early termination fee and then decide to continue with Adobe for the remainder of the year rather than switch to a competitor, because of the sunk cost?
The point of the early termination fee isn't to get people to pay it. Measuring how many people pay it is to miss the point entirely.
The point of the early termination fee is to prevent people from cancelling entirely. It would be much more interesting to see how many people try to cancel, get to the point where it reveals how much they'll be charged to cancel, and then don't.
Great, so you should have no issue removing them altogether because it's not really a material source of revenue and it would result in meaningfully more satisfied users.
> “I look at a lot of cancellation flows that are out there. There’s people you can’t even cancel online, you have to call. That doesn’t seem simple at all. When you start talking about the the range of what a cancellation flow can and should be, we’ve always been in the category of good, and we want to be great.”
Who are you looking at that requires calling? Certainly not big names like Adobe. This is such a disingenuous argument that it almost counts as evidence that Adobe's culture is one of trying to mislead.
I paid for a year of Ghost Pro and realised after only a few weeks that I’d really rather use something else. It’s my mistake and there’s no comeback.
I have an annual Adobe subscription that I’m keeping around until the renewal - just for the last few jobs I might need it for - rather than cancelling. Maybe I’m just a sucker for sunk cost fallacy?
> Adobe updated the design again in June 2023.
Well, it’s been a few years Adobe, and whatever “overhauls” you did clearly didn’t solve the problem!
0: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...
Whenever someone complains that you've taken something "out of context" your response is "OK, so what's the 'context'? "
As for unexpected charges being placed on your credit card: you always use a temporary, amount-limited card, which a lot of institutions offer. I use privacy.com.
Someone always says here, "Oh, but they can still come after you." But they don't. You should make a best effort to follow their rules, stop using the service, and then close the card. "Cards becoming invalid" are an event handled in their normal course of business.
I am lawsuit-proof and actually suing me for a half-grand for an early cancellation to a license, and winning, is a great way to encourage me to find ways to cost you tens of times the judgment both in indirect lost revenue and direct damages (if I can find any way to). I hold grudges for a very long time, and I know how to use search engines and darknet forums. Simply, I am not someone to try and leg over using the legal system unless you are ready to wage extralegal war for your financial survival.
Again, I am lawsuit proof and my time counts at a million dollars a year in revenge if I am involuntarily committed (if you secure contempt of court).
> Can a credit agency post something on my credit report without my Social Security number?
> Yes, they can.
Bonus points if it's Adobe.
No, they don't.
Maybe the specific fee isn't disclosed, but looking at the screenshot it's quite clear that the monthly option says "cancel anytime" and the annual-billed-monthy option is a year commitment and "fee applies if you cancel after 14 days."
Anyone who was later surprised didn't read what they were buying. This didn't look confusing or deceptive to me at all.
The issue is that their current wording is deceptive.