Adobe runs what must be one of the largest deceptive rebills. The vast majority of users signing up for a monthly plan do not realize that it is actually an "annual plan, billed monthly" and thus that if they cancel after one month (for example) they'll be billed for the remaining 11 immediately. I honestly don't know how they haven't faced FTC action for this, as it's been their primary model for 5-10 years now.
> actually an "annual plan, billed monthly" and thus that if they cancel after one month (for example) they'll be billed for the remaining 11 immediately
I don't know if this is a recent policy change, but it is not the complete amount but only 50% of the remaining annual amount as per their website[1].
If it were something involving physical goods or services I can understand, but 50% penalty is still a crazy amount for a hosted software service.
That's why you always use throwaway cards for this.
Of course it's highly unlikely they'll go in court for a single user, but if everyone starts doing this, they'll sue. It doesn't matter the payment failed, you still legally owe Adobe (or any other service) money.
Reverse class action isn't a thing, there's no way to sue thousands of people all at once, so they'd have to bring their suit against every individual who did it. Costs would be guaranteed to be much higher than any possible recovery.
Why would they sue? Just send it to collections and let them sort it out?
Collections rarely does anything. I mean they will nag you, but you ask them to only contact you in writing, and it basically goes away. The collection agency could sue you, but it's rare. It involves putting together a realistic case (we are sure this person signed this contract and owes us $X) and that is expensive.
The billing your credit card 50% is a "well we tried" type thing. They're happy if it works out, but not unhappy if it doesn't.
In the US, a collection on your credit report can tank your FICO score by more than 100 points, affecting your ability to borrow at the best rate, rent a home, or get certain jobs. This would be a very risky move if the purchase was made in such a way that you are personally liable.
And in Europe collection means all of your bank accounts get frozen and in some countries they even have the power to direct your salary from your employer straight to them until the debt is paid. You definitely don't want to end up in this situation.
Depending on who you're talking to, none of those are realistic prospects anyway. Your borrowing rate will be crap, no matter what, because of your age/credit history/place of residence/skin color (and, if you really need funding, you turn to the BNPL shadow lenders or GFM); you will never earn enough to rent an entire home, or an apartment with a corporate landlord; none of those jobs will ever even look at your resume.
We are reaching a critical mass of people who have no buy-in to these structures because they've been previously cut out.
I've never heard of someone without your social security number having the ability to do anything to your credit.
This has been my experience as well. I was involved with some payment dispute with the New York Times many years ago. I switched from credit card to Apple Pay and they sent my account to collections. I took no action on this because it was in error and my credit score was 830 before and 830 after. The only thing that's ever had an impact on my credit score was buying a house; went down to 800 after that.
It was an error on their part so take that as you will, but... scary letter != inability to borrow money.
(And just for the record, I no longer subscribe to that rag.)
Straight from the credit reporting agency: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/accounts-may-be-...
A rather famous example of this is when Columbia House sold off accounts from their scammy operation to a debt collection agency, with many folks unaware that the company claimed they owed money.
A collection agency has no problem finding your SSN if they have your name.
>In the US, a collection on your credit report can tank your FICO score by more than 100 points
True, and it sucks, but you can also keep contesting it. I got a few random things off my credit by using the tools provided by the credit agencies to contest them.
Good luck finding Asfghjs Fghdjsk using only his email address, fdsfgsd@tempemail.test.
They use the billing address. KYC makes it easy.
Good luck finding Zyyzzyzx Balleyhew whose address on the temporary card is registered at PO Box 42069, Utqiagvik, AK
And you can just get a card with a fake adress?
No need. You can use services like privacy.com, whose generated cards will accept any address. Just pick a random valid one that you aren't connected to. Picking the address of a public park or library in another city can appease address verification checks.
Those don’t have a fake address. You still have to put the right name and billing to pass verification.
A prepaid Visa/MC/Amex gift card might work, but those are easily blockable. I’d expect Adobe to do so.
I mean, that’s one way of getting users to pirate your software and hate you at the same time.
Payment don't really check if address matches, they don't even check if account name matches with credit card name.
No, but you can type in any fake address in your zipcode. (Or – if your card is from outside US – you can type in a completely random address and generally it will work.)
They could lose because of unfair business practices.
Elaborating on this, it's almost certainly a civil case that goes to arbitration, which really means that the arbitrator has to feel like Adobe is in the right. It's quite informal relative to typical legal settings, and if the arbitrator doesn't feel like siding with Adobe... they won't.
Furthermore, it's going to cost Adobe a minimum of $1500 to even bring the case to arbitration, and probably $15k more in legal fees to actually win.
So yes, it's actually a difficult battle for Adobe to win and the costs will be much higher than the payout.
This.
Adobe knows this. It’s a numbers game; if they have an honest monthly subscription and someone cancels, they get nothing.
If they have this scammy subscription and they collect 50% of the remainder for 50% of people, it’s like a free 25% (of the remaining “annual” term).
Is it? It clearly says "Annual, billed monthly" and "Fee applies if you cancel after 14 days." next to the price.
What it doesn't say next to the price is that if you don't connect to the internet and allow your device to beg them for permission to use the thing you already purchased your software will stop working, or that if their servers are ever down or inaccessible for any reason you may not be able to use the software you paid for on your own machine. Adobe is a shit company. The business practices they use should be outlawed.
>What it doesn't say next to the price is that if you don't connect to the internet and allow your device to beg them for permission to use the thing you already purchased your software will stop working
Neither does netflix. It also doesn't mention that photoshop doesn't run on linux. Are you going to complain about that as well?
>or that if their servers are ever down or inaccessible for any reason you may not be able to use the software you paid for on your own machine
Again, netfilx. Also, isn't there usually enough of a grace window that unless you're working off a cruise ship for months at a time, you'll be fine? This feels like a edge case that gets trotted out in comments than happens in reality.
Netflix is an inherently online service, it does need the Internet to provide its primary function.
An image editor is not an inherently online service.
This is a bit longer than I would have wanted to spend writing about Adobe billing practices, but oh well.
Is it the most manipulative dark pattern in e-commerce? Hardly--there are plenty far more vicious--but it's still an attempt to prime a would-be subscriber to focus on the annual, billed monthly and play on their understanding of the word "monthly" by using it in both options.
"Annual, billed monthly" is set in smaller italicized type right under the actual price of US$59.99/mo on the main pricing page[0]. You've now been primed to focus on the $59.99 price. Only when you select a plan and a modal pops up do you see that there's a separate monthly option available from the annual, billed monthly option that's been helpfully pre-selected or a third annual, prepaid option.
The point is to quickly shepherd subscribers through the payment process. The user sees the $59.99 option they expected is pre-selected, so most hit continue and move on. If they look beyond the price in bold to the plan descriptions in smaller italics, well, there are literally decades of eye tracking studies showing users skim websites rather than carefully reading every single word. The price in bold draws in the eye, the word "monthly" is present so the user catches the word, and then they move on to the continue button.
Adobe could have easily labeled the plan Annual, billed in 12 installments or even Annual, billed in monthly installments to better differentiate the two options. They didn't for a reason. The word "monthly" comes with certain expectations. Using it for both the actual monthly plan and the default annual, billed monthly plan allows those expectations to bleed over to both.
While it mentions a fee for cancelling after 14 days, you'll find nary a mention of what that fee actually is until you track down a legal page[1] that isn't linked to any point during the payment process up until the sign-in prompt (I didn't bother creating a new account to look beyond that). At the very least, it's not present during the stage when you're still relatively uncommitted and somewhat more likely to notice any more onerous terms were they present.
Finally, there's an option for a 30-day free trial of Adobe Stock. I'd have sworn it was pre-selected a few years ago, but I may be mistaken on that. If it was, then at least that's a change for the better. Anyhow, did you notice how it's on a 30 day trial period whereas the normal plan has a 14 day cancellation window? Let those deadlines fall to the back of your mind for a week or two, and will you remember which is 14 days and which is 30? There was no reason why Adobe had to use 30 days for Stock or only 14 days for their other offerings. But it adds to the confusion, and that's the entire purpose of a dark pattern. Stock is also an "annual, billed monthly plan," but nowhere in the checkout process is it mentioned that Stock also has a large cancellation fee. That's hidden in a separate part of the Subscription Terms page.[1]
Adobe could easily just choose to settle for a straight-up monthly payment plan with no bullshit and completely sidestep recurring--but largely toothless, given the state of most alternatives to their software--criticism over their billing practices. They could eliminate the dark patterns and make their plan selection and payment process more transparent. They don't, presumably because those patterns generate more revenue than the lost goodwill they create is worth. That goodwill is diffused, and even if people grumble about it online, it generally doesn't rise to the level of leaving.
>but it's still an attempt to prime a would-be subscriber to focus on the annual, billed monthly and play on their understanding of the word "monthly" by using it in both options.
Do you think "$500 biweekly" car ads, or "$2000/month" apartment rentals are the same?
>"Annual, billed monthly" is set in smaller italicized type right under the actual price of US$59.99/mo on the main pricing page[0].
I might be sympathetic to this reasoning if this was a $2 coffee or something, but $60/month is nothing to be sneezed at, and I'd expect buyers to read the very legible text under the price tag. Otherwise, this makes as much sense as complaining about supermarket price tags that show "$4" in huge font, and "/lb" in small font, claiming that it misled buyers into thinking an entire package of ground beef costs $4, because the $4 price tag "primed" them or whatever.
>While it mentions a fee for cancelling after 14 days, you'll find nary a mention of what that fee actually is until you track down a legal page[1] that isn't linked to any point during the payment process up until the sign-in prompt (I didn't bother creating a new account to look beyond that). At the very least, it's not present during the stage when you're still relatively uncommitted and somewhat more likely to notice any more onerous terms were they present.
Okay but if you read most complaints, it's clear that they're not even aware that such early termination fee even existed. There's approximately zero people who were aware the termination fee existed, found it too hard to figure out what it actually was, but somehow still went with the "Annual, billed monthly" option.
>Finally, there's an option for a 30-day free trial of Adobe Stock. I'd have sworn it was pre-selected a few years ago, but I may be mistaken on that. If it was, then at least that's a change for the better. Anyhow, did you notice how it's on a 30 day trial period whereas the normal plan has a 14 day cancellation window? Let those deadlines fall to the back of your mind for a week or two, and will you remember which is 14 days and which is 30? There was no reason why Adobe had to use 30 days for Stock or only 14 days for their other offerings. But it adds to the confusion, and that's the entire purpose of a dark pattern. Stock is also an "annual, billed monthly plan," but nowhere in the checkout process is it mentioned that Stock also has a large cancellation fee. That's hidden in a separate part of the Subscription Terms page.[1]
This feels like grasping at straws. If we're going to invoke "people might get two numbers confused with each other", we might as well also invoke "people can't calculate dates properly, and therefore a 14 day cancellation window is misleading because they think 14 days = 2 weeks, and set up a cancellation reminder for the same day of the week 2 weeks afterwards, not realizing that would be just over 14 days and thus outside the window".
It isn't grasping at straws because confusing or misleading people is literally how dark patterns work.
> Do you think "$500 biweekly" car ads, or "$2000/month" apartment rentals are the same?
The rentals make it very clear what the contract period is and what the penalty for breaking early is. Those terms are also tightly regulated in most jurisdictions for exactly the reason that they are prone to abuse.
> I'd expect buyers to read the very legible text under the price tag.
Given that the text fails to provide details about the fee is this even a valid contract to begin with? On multiple levels there's clearly been no meeting of the minds.
> if you read most complaints, it's clear that they're not even aware that such early termination fee even existed.
Isn't that a strong case that it's an unfair practice?
>The rentals make it very clear what the contract period is and what the penalty for breaking early is.
On the billboard or in the multi-page rental agreement that they send for you to sign? How is this different from than the ToS/fine print on adobe's site?
>Given that the text fails to provide details about the fee is this even a valid contract to begin with?
It's probably buried in the fine print somewhere, which courts have generally held to be enforceable.
>Isn't that a strong case that it's an unfair practice?
No, the legal standard is "reasonable person", not whether there's enough people bamboozled by it to raise a ruckus on reddit or whatever.
I can only speak for myself here but I have never had an interaction with a new (to me) landlord where I was later surprised to discover what the rental period or early termination penalty was. Every one of them has gone out of their way to verbally specify the length of the term in addition to requiring me to initial it on the contract.
I have had plenty of other issues with borderline dishonest landlords but mutually understanding what was being agreed to up front was never one of them. The issues generally came later when they tried to get out of or add additional things without my consent.
> It's probably buried in the fine print somewhere, which courts have generally held to be enforceable.
People elsewhere in this comment section reported that they checked and claimed that it is not found anywhere directly linked from the sales page. You generally have to specify the terms of a contract up front, before it is signed.
> No, the legal standard is "reasonable person"
It isn't conclusive, but I think it makes for a strong case. The more people who are confused by it the stronger your argument that it is confusing to a "reasonable person" becomes.
> I might be sympathetic to this reasoning if this was a $2 coffee or something, but $60/month is nothing to be sneezed at, and I'd expect buyers to read the very legible text under the price tag.
In some things, expectations are made to be disappointed. This is one of those.
We know that people use all sorts of cognitive shortcuts to make processing their environments easier. It doesn't matter if you're smart, dumb, foolish, or perfectly average. It's just how our brains have evolved to function, and companies have been consulting with industrial and organizational psychologists for decades to help them optimize their marketing and business strategies to maximize the chances that those shortcuts play out in a way that breaks in their favor. Before I/O psychologists, companies tried to do the same by guess and trial and error...and they stumbled upon lots of strategies that were later confirmed by psychological experiments.
Cereal boxes marketed to children have cartoon characters whose eyes are drawn looking down so as to appear as if they're making eye contact with kids walking down the cereal aisle.[0] There are all sorts of "tricks" commonly used by salespeople selling things to sophisticated buyers who are capable of recognize them for what they are. Why did pharma reps take doctors to dinner and give them cheap pens and swag? Or consider the success of psychological pricing[1] and how those strategies somehow manage to be successful despite it being commonly accepted wisdom that odd prices (i.e. $1.99 instead of $2) is a marketing gimmick. We know it's a gimmick, and yet, it still has an impact on our buying behavior.
Yes, the text is there below it, but the whole point of a dark pattern is to manipulate a large enough percentage of buyers/users in a way that generates more revenue than is lost due to any frustration or annoyance created by the same patterns. Most people skim through websites, pluck out key words, and continue on. We can bemoan people for not reading the fine print, but that's not going to change the behavior.
As for the beef metaphor, per unit pricing can absolutely be used to trip up would-be buyers into buying a bit more than they planned. Not because the foolish shoppers don't know any better, but because mixed units usually require a bit more cognitive engagement. Grocery stores absolutely recognize that and benefit from it. On the other hand, you can't really sell beef in a way other than by weight, so it's the opportunity for abuse is much more limited.
> Okay but if you read most complaints, it's clear that they're not even aware that such early termination fee even existed. There's approximately zero people who were aware the termination fee existed, found it too hard to figure out what it actually was, but somehow still went with the "Annual, billed monthly" option.
Sure, because Adobe purposely hides information about the fee. That's one of the dark pattern at play. In the absence of that information, users will insert their own expectations to create meaning. If there's a fee, we'd expect it's probably a reasonable one (even if we have countless examples in our lives of how fees can be anything but reasonable). Does half the annual cost of a subscription seem reasonable to most people? Would that be most people's first guess? Probably not. I might not have been clear about this in my original comment, but there are multiple dark patterns at work here.
> This feels like grasping at straws. If we're going to invoke "people might get two numbers confused with each other",[...]
That particular dark pattern is less about people confusing two different numbers with each other when they're directly in front of them, so much as it is about giving you two different numbers to remember two weeks after you've made your decision and gone on with your life. Literally nobody on the planet is going to keep the free trial or cancellation period as a mental priority over the course of two weeks, so it becomes little more than a random thought at the back of your mind. At best, you might jot it down or set aside the receipt until closer to the deadline. The pattern's purpose is that, if you think of the cancellation/trial periods at all, the numbers will be easily conflated. Think about the times in your life when you've asked yourself something like did I see/do/hear [insert thing] last Monday or was it Tuesday? and weren't quite confident in your answer.
Dark patterns doesn't have to trip up all subscribers or even most of them. But if it trips up a some of them, well, Adobe isn't going to complain about the opportunity. Multiple, more subtle dark patterns together can work just as effectively as one particularly vicious one. They can even be preferable, in that they won't piss off your customers nearly as much, either on their own or as a whole.
0. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/04/food-psychologists-...
They could write they get the blood of your first born.
Just because it’s written doesn’t make it legal
Ask the FTC what they think or at least thought before Trump
>They could write they get the blood of your first born.
Sounds like a pretty good deal given how much money you'd save and how drawing modest amounts of blood has basically zero downsides.
>Just because it’s written doesn’t make it legal
And just because you invoke "Just because it’s written doesn’t make it legal", doesn't make it invalid.
That’s why I wrote they could lose not they would lose.
Who are they going to sue in that scenario? They can't go after every user who pays with a throwaway card.
They sell the debts of the users who do this to law firms, which then collect those debts with scary legal letters. Works most of the time. I don’t know if those law firms actually follow with lawsuits when it doesn’t.
How about fuck them then and do class action for illegitimate business practice. Also, lawsuits aren't real.
As others mention, a reverse "class action" isn't a thing.
I see it a bit differently:
A solid, high value contract should make sense. And guess what? When they do make sense, most people have no reason not to pay and they will, barring emergencies and the usual risks that play out in all business. Most people, myself included, would side with Adobe. The peeps need to pay up.
However, when the contract is shady, abusive, just dripping with greed? A much higher percentage of people are gonna say, "fuck 'em! Plenty will find reasons too. And there is a higher inherent risk associated with all new accounts, potentially going as far as to raise it, while value dilution happens across the board to software subscriptions as a whole.
Who wants all that noise?
I am not sure whether the piece mentioned this or not (skimmed, Ok? LOL), but there are fairly strong second and third order effects playing out that are likely to persist for a very long time:
Network effects: A pretty healthy slice of Adobe users, or forced users I could say, reach their hating peak every year. When I was skill building for creative work, Adobe hate was modest. Adobe love was higher than average too. So far, so good, right?
Just half a decade later, I revisit this work about the time people could no longer buy the suite on physical media with a perpetual license. Hmmm... haters were right! That is exactly what they said Adobe was going to do. Some time after this change, and while watching how Adobe handles the users of one of their more hated acquisitions; namely, Alias and MAYA who came from industry culture that believes Autodesk could quite possibly be one of the worst to end up owning what many observers called "elite" or "career" type software packages with costs starting in the mid to high 4 figures and ending up a solid 5 figure purchase ... (Alias 10 forever hoo rah!) ... um, yeah, where was I?
Yes, Hating Adobe solid now. Not ever going to be a potential customer.
You are reading third order effects. People like me, and the very aggressive first order people are hard at work figuring out just how much they can do with alternatives and also realizing everything they can do with the OSS alternatives are publishing our work, sharing successes and when we are teachers, consultants, department heads, we de-recommend Adobe on sight, while at the same time being very forgiving as people ramp up on the other options.
That catches the attention of many who would never have a clue if it were not for social media bringing us the very best drama like this.
Takes years and real talent to grow a software business while also so damn consistently earning the hate. Amazing!
Or better, just avoid companies like Adobe as much as possible. It is not like they are the only game in town anymore, right?
Not the only... But for many hobbyists the effort to relearn is too much to save a bit of money.
I would be too lazy to bother with a throwaway in almost all circumstances, but I would 100% attempt a charge back in anger. I'm uncertain how my bank would ultimately respond though.
Adobe did a pretty good job at disclosing the "annual plan, billed monthly" aspect so they'll likely win any chargebacks. That said, your bank might just cave and reimburse you out of pocket.
Throwaways/virtual cards are my default state. If it's worth subscribing, it's worth the seconds it takes to generate and copy.
Think about it: you're in control. Not being at the mercy of... whoever is great. You said it yourself: attempt.
Why play with your money? The toys/experiences it can afford are way more fun.
Chargebacks are more effort, and IIRC, weigh negatively on you as well. Can only do so many. I expect your bank would take issue if you really relied on this strategy.
Painful to unsub? How terrible for them. I can be painful to bill. PLONK says the pause button.
Learned everything I needed to know from gyms. If they don't take a virtual card, but want bank details/etc... they're on some bullshit. Pass.
Absolutely, you have excessive chargebacks and you will find your credit card issuer “opting to end their relationship with you”.
It's rather off topic though. To date I've only encountered dispute worthy things approximately once or twice a decade. I feel the Adobe example would qualify if it happened to me though, despite the fact that it sounds as though I'd likely lose on that one.
How do you make virtual cards?
Lots of banks have them these days. In the US there's also stuff like privacy.com (unaffiliated, not even in the US personally :p)
Last I used Revolut 2 years ago, they even had a "disposable" virtual card, meaning after 1 charge it's automatically deleted.
They can force-post right past Privacy.com's veil, NYTimes did it to me. Here's what Privacy's support rep had to say about it:
> Hi, Firstname
> I've been reviewing your dispute and wanted to touch base with you to explain what happened.
> It appears that the disputed charge is a "force post" by the merchant. This happens when a merchant cannot collect funds for a transaction after repeated attempts and completes the transaction without an authorization — it's literally an unauthorized transaction that's against payment card network rules. It's a pretty sneaky move used by some merchants, and unfortunately, it's not something Privacy can block.
How does the force post get to you though? Surely that involves privacy.com participating.
Exactly. The number of times I've caught support for various companies outright lying to me is actually fairly alarming.
It's also very obviously not against the payment network rules, otherwise privacy.com wouldn't be actively participating.
This is my speculation, but I think privacy.com isn't actually in the middle as thoroughly as we think they are. They're just making up a new card number that still corresponds to my same old account, and they're responding to verification queries saying "yup, that's the right name and address, verifies just fine!", which provides the privacy they claim to.
Note, their name isn't SpendingLimit.com.
This shook me plenty and I no longer use them for anything I actually need a spending limit on. They're still good for their namesake privacy, with a very limited scope (i.e. scummy merchants), but it's a very thin veil and easy to pierce.
Aye, 'privacy.com' is who I go with. Would prefer a first-party solution like other countries/financial services.
It's a little counter-intuitive to introduce another party to improve privacy. I find it worthwhile for the pausable and vendor-locked cards.
- [deleted]
Out of curiosity I went to their website to understand how they sell it, because it wasn't clear...
https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html
I am not sure why this should face FTC or any similar mechanism to prevent "deception".
It's written right there:
US$22.99/mo Annual, billed monthly
And if you slightly scroll down the very first question is how much it costs:
> There are several Creative Cloud plans that include Photoshop. You can purchase it as a standalone app for US$22.99/mo. for the annual billed monthly plan or opt for annual billing at US$263.88/yr.
Buying it with the annual billing would save you 1$ per month.
I have seen this model used elsewhere: if you opt in for the yearly subscription, you still pay per month but you save X% over the monthly subscription.
Not sure what could they do to make it more obvious, besides writing big: we only offer yearly subscriptions, although you can pay monthly..
Edit: if you click on buy it, it leads to another option too, the monthly one. Is this the scam one? Because it says you cancel any time...
Edit again: it seems that they did quite some nasty stuff in the past and then US sued them, so now they are more transparent about their subscriptions.
God bless such organizations that sue the hell out of such bad actors until they behave well.
"Annual, billed monthly" is the deception. That's not a common thing and most users just see it as normal month-to-month billing. Annual billing still having a discount just adds to the confusion.
I think they fixed the deception.
Annual, billed monthly cannot be a deception the way it is phrased. Lots of contracts work like that, even my phone/electricity bill and they have been like that forever.
The issue, if you look in one of the links posted in the comments, is that some years ago they didn't mention this specifically. They made you believe it was a monthly subscription and when you canceled it, the termination fees were really high. You know, like those old contracts using 4pt fonts for the important stuff :)
IIRC it used to just say “annual” in some words, then the actual terms included the obligation to pay 12 months or pay a cancellation fee. I remember (a while ago when this made headlines) seeing a screenshot of the plans without it being clearly underscored as “annual, paid monthly”.
We successfully stopped paying for a collection of Adobe products that were for a student license last year. We randomly were charged again in January and February of this year and when I called they couldn't find any records of charges. They recommended contesting the charges on the card and we've not been charged since. Still, crazy that they couldn't even verify they charged my card.
I will never do subscriptions. As you mentioned, the fact that you you have to "successfully stop an automatic payment" is an experience that I'm not willing to go through.
Capital One has a feature where you can generate temporary card numbers. Each one can be authorized for "a single charge" or "repeating charges at one merchant". And you have a toggle switch in the latter case to dis/enable payments. Really handy for subscriptions.
I don’t get it, honestly. It’s very clear. You get a discount for an annual commitment and they let you pay monthly. It’s super clear which you’re signing up for when you do it. I’m in the UK, and there’s a 14 day cooling off period on the plans too, unless you buy the full blown annual one.
I’m no adobe supporter generally, and sure they could do more, but they take an awful lot of flak for people who won’t read two lines of text and then scream bloody murder.
Shown by the video embedded in [1] (which has a screenshot at 2:00), Adobe changed their sign-up process and added those clear options after being sued by the US for deceptive subscription fees.
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/adobe-sued-over-subscription-f...
ok so the problem is they _used_ to do this.
I’m not suggesting we just forgive and forget, but warning people against abusive billing practices that aren’t in place any more is a bit silly. If your argument is we shouldnt support a corporation who requires being taken to court to treat their users fairly then there’s probably a very long list of companies that fail that test much harder than adobe do, especially now.
> I’m not suggesting we just forgive and forget
That seems to be exactly what your posts amount to though?
No, I’m saying call them out on the shit they _are_ doing that you don’t want them to do, and don’t drag every mention of them into the same topic ad nauseum.
> ad nauseum
I disagree. Abusive relationships need constant call-out and their BlueSky post was exactly that, a reminder.
Just because your fed up with hearing it; I am not. It's a a real history to how they acted, got away and demonstrates that they would happily screw you again.
They are just another $corp who show no respect to their users, they've done it once, they will do it again. Let it be a count of permanent mark of how they treat their user-base.
At a certain point it's just beating a dead horse. A bit like screaming "Embrace Extend Extinguish" in every Microsoft thread, you're not really adding anything the discussion when you necro certain topics, and this one in particular has passed this threshold.
> They are just another $corp who show no respect to their users,
Great, so talk about the ways they're actually doing that not just getting mad about something that's no longer an issue.
> At a certain point it's just beating a dead horse.
Horses decay which where if Adobe were being dissolved than it would have no relevance; Adobe isn't defunct so I don't agree. Adobe is far from dead so while they are still operating it's worth a call out of their previous scummy behavior. It was a recent event in time.
> just getting mad about something that's no longer an issue.
I'm not mad. I don't use paid software where I don't need to. When a corporation screws up on their part, I'm going to call them out on it. It sounds like you have more of an issue rather than just skipping past. "Sssh, lets not mention that part because I'm tired of hearing it".
If you want to hear another another grudge from me with Adobe. One is that my mother forked ££ for the whole CS2 Suite on DVD. Adobe has now made it impossible to use without requiring a hack. Why should my mother not be allowed to use her own copy of CS2?
She doesn't require the latest nor can she afford the subscription in her elderly age with other life admin costs. Another show of that Adobe doesn't care for it's users. They extort for money. Not new as history dictates.
This is moot as I not going to change your mind, nor will you change mine. The pricing scandal was recent and that this topic on HN how Adobe trying to act cute does make it relevant to whole conversion of "oh by the way Adobe xyz".
Shall we start ignoring about how Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler were setting up concentration camps? Because that would beating a dead horse yet it's still taught in schools.
Adobe isn't comparable to a mass-genocide of innocent people but that was history of an important event in time. By not mentioning it you are letting it be forgotten which is bad. History is being rewritten; you can see it in action with AI censorship.
The next generation of children will have no clue of such history and that's sad.
Non dark pattern sites show the total price for the annual subscription and the lower /month discount below.
I completely agree. They really should do that.
For me the scummy part is that you can't cancel the recurring subscription in advance. If my renewal date is 2 months from now and I try to cancel they will charge me a fee immediately and end the subscription. The only way to cancel without charge is to come back right as the rebill is about to occur. There is no excuse for that other than they want to fuck over as many people as possible.
Yep, that’s shitty. So let’s give them flak for that, not for something they don’t do anymore.
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If your response to someone disagreeing with you is to just call them a bootlicker I don’t think we’re going to get very far.
When I tried to cancel a regular monthly subscription, they tried to force me to pay a fee to be able to cancel the subscription, and they don't let you disconnect your payment methods. Luckily, I used paypal so I could unauthorise them on paypal. If this happened again to me I would be contacting the consumer rights organisation my country has.
Contact them anyways.
I posted elsewhere in this thread that when I tried to cancel, and discovered that I was actually paying for an annual plan on a monthly basis, I told their support person I'd be speaking with the local consumer affairs regulator[1]. They instantly waived the cancellation fee. I'm tempted to think they've had some trouble with regulators on this issue before.
I just went back through the sign up process to check and it seems pretty obvious these days? I got three options at checkout annual billed monthly, monthly, annual.
I hate annual billed monthly but the wording isn't hidden.
Because last year ...
> Adobe knowingly "trapped" customers into annual subscriptions, the FTC alleged.
> Adobe prioritized profits while spending years ignoring numerous complaints from users struggling to cancel costly subscriptions without incurring hefty hidden fees, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged in a lawsuit Monday.
> According to the FTC, Adobe knew that canceling subscriptions was hard but determined that it would hurt revenue to make canceling any easier, so Adobe never changed the "convoluted" process. Even when the FTC launched a probe in 2022 specifically indicating that Adobe's practices may be illegal, Adobe did nothing to address the alleged harm to consumers, the FTC complaint noted. Adobe also "provides no refunds or only partial refunds to some subscribers who incur charges after an attempted, unsuccessful cancellation."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/ftc-sues-adobe-o...
I think it's still not great. The annual/monthly plan says:
>Annual, billed monthly
>US$22.99/mo
>Fee applies if you cancel after 14 days
There's a popup you can open with more information, but that just says:
>If you cancel after 14 days, your service will continue until the end of that month's billing period, and you will be charged an early termination fee.
It doesn't tell you anywhere what that fee is, and I can't find any link to a page with more information.
Fee application for cancelling a subscription service should be absolutely illegal.
It’s a fee for cancelling an annual subscription that you agreed to.
That's exactly why it should be illegal: so people don't have to agree to an abusive and money thirsty contract.
Do you think multi-month agreements like car insurance or leases should also be illegal? Maybe if you leased a car but 3 months in you're not really feeling it, you should be able to cancel your lease without penalty?
You're extrapolating to cases that are different to a subscription to a digital software service. Companies have slowly but steadily made us shift and put subscriptions in our heads because is the easiest way to make more money and strictly control their software. This is just as pushing ads everywhere is the easiest way to make money on almost every website. The ideal, most fair consumer approach is to charge the user by its daily usage. Why? Because companies are doing exactly the opposite, they are charging us for future usage for max profitability. Just log each day I have used the app and charge me fairly. It can be perfectly done. But the excuse obviously from their side would be that is too much complex to do that, right? BS.
>You're extrapolating to cases that are different to a subscription to a digital software service. Companies have slowly but steadily made us shift and put subscriptions in our heads because [...]
Sounds like you're less against the concept of "annual, billed monthly" or even the "dark patterns" that Adobe is using, and more against the fact that Photoshop is now behind a $30/month subscription rather than an one-time purchase price like in the Good Old Days™.
I'm against how all big companies have enshitified themselves and their products in every imaginable way to squeeze the last penny from its clients using bordeline consumer practices.
>I'm against how all big companies have enshitified [...]
"enshitified" is so vague that the statement almost a tautology. "Bad things are bad". Moreover the original claim was not that, but "unfair business practices". Uber cutting back on their generous coupons is arguably "enshittification" or whatever, but as much as I miss those discounted rides/takeouts, it'd be totally ludicrous to complain that yanking those coupons was some sort of "unfair business practice", as if uber had some sort of obligation to offer such coupons in perpetuity.
They have the option right next to that for a monthly only option.
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Nope.
I just think it’s insane to attack a company for something they’re not doing, with the implication they are still doing it.
The implication is they can't be trusted
Honestly, that should be your default stance with any agreement with a company.
Okay, but you can also take the company's well-deserved reputation into account when deciding whether to do business with them.
Failure to disclose the exact amount of the fee up front should invalidate it.
It’s 50% of the remaining balance. I do agree that should be listed there.
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Yeah, that whole "annual plan billed monthly" thing feels intentionally shady
Should adobe only offer an annual subscription up front and a monthly rolling bill? Should they not offer a discount for people who want to make an annual commitment but don’t have the cash flow for the annual spend all in one go?
From what I recall, it's difficult to figure out how to just pay for the non-discounted monthly, which is the biggest part of the problem.
When you click buy now there’s three options. Annual, monthly, annual paid monthly. They could put the cancellation fee for annual paid monthly, I agree. But short of that they’ll run into the “how can anyone ever be expected to read all that information when they just want to sign up to a service” problem.
Almost every single one of Adbobe post on HN has a top comment about this evil subscription plan.
I fell for it once. But I’m in India so I just cancelled my debit card and that was that. Good luck to them to chase me through legal means in India. It was still bit of a hassle though.
I had to cancel a card thanks to PayPal’s shenanigans.
Now it’s much easier to deal with the subscription problems due to the new RBI norms.
Which norms?
Any renewal must be preceded by a notification from the vendor and the owner of the card has to enter an OTP to allow the transaction.
Earlier the vendor would just take your money and you’d have to fight a long battle to get it back.
> But I’m in India so I just cancelled my debit card and that was that.
i also use separate cards for everything, just through privacy.com, so i also can just cancel things. services have started falsely blocking it for abuse though which is really sad :/
I looked at their plans a few years back and it was very clear that they had 3 payment options: Monthly, Annual, and Annual billed Monthly. Of course if you get the third option, getting out of the contract is going to cost you. Otherwise what would ever be the point of choosing the Monthly plan when both Annual options have a discount for going with a longer subscription period?
I only see annual and annual billed monthly in photoshop pricing plans. Where do you see the monthly one?
Edit: I just clicked on buy, and it leads to what you said. Apparently the monthly one is not mentioned in the front page. Weird.
It seems like this would/should be covered under Australia's unfair contracts law, which requires the term to have a legitimate interest as well as being transparent (which I dont think would be met if they are charging 50% of the remainder, when they would have been happy for you to get a monthly subscription and cancel after a month, only having spent a fifth of what they would charge for termination)
I found this out the hard way…
But you know what? Karma’s a bitch. I think I am likely not alone in having used a cracked version of photoshop for far, far more time than I ever did an actual paid up copy.
I’m not unaware that piracy was part of their strategy for market penetration, and I guess it’s now a case of “we have the market cornered, let’s monetise”.
Wasn't there some action around this like a year ago? Can't find it now, but I thought it was investigated at some point.
Yeah, you can change plans (at no cost), then cancel right after the change. You get 14 days of free cancellation, which resets on plan change.
Did exactly this, got hit with the cacellation fee a couple of days later.
Really? Worked for me in February. In that case, this workaround might’ve been patched.
It seems you're right. I can't find how big the fine was. ChatGPT says it is still ongoing. Not sure if that's right. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...
We all have access to chatgpt. If we want hallucination ridden bullshit, we'll find it ourselves.
Yes. AI becoming the first place people go for information and replacing facts and first degree of source is going to be a scary world.
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I agree with you about ChatGPT "facts", but the parent commenter shared valuable information with a source. No need to treat them in such a rude way.
The ChatGPT bit brings nothing. Just the source would be enough. Nobody feels the need to justify anything by saying "looked it up on Google". What matters is the actual source, and ChatGPT isn’t one.
It doesn't seem to me like the linked page contains "hallucination ridden bullshit".
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Yeah this is terrible, I remember for creative suite there used to be some weird workaround where you could switch your plan to the cheapest one (I think it was Photoshop+Lightroom) and then cancel, and then it would not charge you for the remaining time. I wonder if that still works.
I would love to know how this goes in the Netherlands where we have strict rules on this. If it's not really clear rules dictate the customer is right, so that yearly subscription is simply a monthly subscription.
I have one of those "annual plan, billed monthly". How the hell do I figure out when I initially signed for it? Along the way, I got two free months for getting a Logitech mouse, does that change my annual month?
When you're logged in at https://account.adobe.com/plans, click the first link in the left sidebar with your current plan, it should mention the day you signed up.
> I honestly don't know how they haven't faced FTC action for this
FTC Takes Action Against Adobe and Executives for Hiding Fees, Preventing Consumers from Easily Cancelling Software Subscriptions
June 17, 2024
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...
I still don't see why this is a point against Adobe. When you select a plan, they very clearly give you 3 options. Monthly, Annual billed monthly, and Annual prepaid. The Annual billed monthly is just flat-out better for end users over prepaid. Why do people want to get rid of it? Because some people FAFO when trying to get an annual price while still being able to cancel any time?
I do not like Adobe in the slightest, but it's not because of their billing practices.
It used to not be clear at all. Maybe it is now.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...
Interestingly, just fyi, they do a reasonable-person test when trying these cases. That means they literally pull 100 people off the street and ask each one to go through the funnel and then give them a quiz with questions like "How much am I going to be billed?"
So if people are confused, it's basically on you, regardless of whether you think you were being clear about the terms.
That's fair - I don't know what their sales page looked like prior to the FCC investigation. However in its current state, I see no issues with the way the information's presented. If a majority of the 100 people can't figure it out, I'm not sure what else they can do other than remove the option which is better for the consumer. I wouldn't be surprised it that's where it'll end up
Well, you would be surprised how many issues in financial education would 100 random people off the street have.
But the contract plan is not aimed at them, but at literate computer users most of them working as freelancers (so with at least some financial knowledge).
The same way a Pilot Operating Handbook cannot be judged by the understanding of random 100 people off the street.
A pilot might want a PDF reader to read important aviation related information.
No one needs a pilots license to read a PDF.
Signing a contract where, even if you stop using the company's service or having anything to do with the company, you still have to keep paying them nevertheless... sounds like one of those types of deals† that we invented the concept of "inalienable rights" to prevent companies from offering.
† I.e. the type of deal where the individual is being asked to trade away something they cannot reasonably evaluate the net present value of (their own future optionality in a future they can't predict) — which will inevitably be presented by the company offering the deal, in a way that minimizes/obscures this loss of optionality. In other words, it's a deal that, in being able to make it, has the same inherent flaws as indentured servitude does — just with money instead of labor.
I just cancelled my house insurance plan as we're moving out. Actually my partner did it, and she told me that there was a ~AU$50 cancellation fee.
My natural instinct was to be ropable. But then I realised that I had actually been paying an annual insurance policy, monthly. I wasn't paying a monthly insurance policy.
Presumably when we signed up, there was a monthly option. Presumably it cost more. And so I can hardly be annoyed that they're essentially making up that difference now that I've chosen to terminate that contract early.
You're not buying a monthly plan for their Annual billed Monthly option. You're literally buying a year's worth, but paying it off in 12 installments over time. If someone were to buy the monthly plan, cancel it, and still get billed for it, yes you would have a point.
You're not buying "a year's worth." Adobe can't roll a truck up with all your future project rendering hours on it and dump them on your lawn, such that they would have a valid legal argument of "you can't cancel, we already gave you the whole thing." What Adobe are giving you, each month — each second, even — is the DRM licensing functionality built into Photoshop continuing to spit out a "valid" signal. Because that activation is a continuous online process, you receive that service on a second-by-second basis (or maybe at most on an online-activation-check-granularity basis.)
That being said, maybe we're talking past one-another here.
Where I come from (Canada), even if you prepay for a service that charges annually (no "annual charged monthly" language needed), as long as that service can be common-sense-construed as delivering value on a finer granularity (by the month, by the second, etc), then if you only use that service for some fraction of the plan length, and then cancel it — you are then legally obligated to a pro-rated refund of the remaining plan length. So if you cancel an annual-billed service after a month? You get 11/12ths of your payment back. If you subscribe to a monthly-billed service on January 1 and cancel on January 2? You get 30/31ths of your payment back. Etc.
Under such a legal doctrine, there is no difference in the total amount owed between "billed monthly" when subscribed for one month, vs "billed annually" when subscribed for one month and then cancelled, vs "annual, billed monthly" when subscribed for one month and then cancelled.
If you're curious about the set of countries where this doctrine applies, here's a page from the Microsoft Store support outlining the set of countries where they will give out pro-rated refunds for subscriptions: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/countrie...
(And if it isn't sickening to you that in general, corporations will write logic into their billing systems to support this, and then only activate that logic for countries where they're legally obligated to do so, while — now with intentionality — continuing to squeeze everyone else for services they've knowingly already cut off... then I don't know what to tell you.)
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And yes, if you're wondering, there are a few exceptions to this pro-rated refund doctrine.
One is real-estate leasing — because chancery courts are weird and make their own rules; but also because a lot of the "work" of being a landlord is up-front/annual. (Though, admittedly, we also have laws here that force real-estate annual leasing contracts to revert to month-to-month after a low set number of years — usually 1 or 2 — with the month-to-month lease rate carried over from the "annual, paid monthly" rate.)
The other is for commercial leasing of assets like vehicles, construction equipment, servers, etc. This is because corporations have much more predictable optionality, sure — but it's also because corporations don't "deserve" protections in the same way individuals do. (Same reason investment banks don't get the protections of savings banks.)
This is useful and informative. But also, no I don't expect companies to keep track of everything that is illegal anywhere in the world, and then not offer it anywhere. Otherwise we'd have no alcohol or chewing gum or pet cats.
The point is that they already have to be aware of and have logic to deal with this if they do business in the relevant countries. So they've already implemented it and are intentionally choosing to withhold it in countries that do not legally require them to provide it.