Adobe faces big fines from FTC over difficult subscription cancellation

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 729 points – Adobe faces FTC fines over subscription practices
appleinsider.com

Adobe faces big fines from FTC over difficult subscription cancellation::Adobe could face hefty fines related to its overly difficult and costly subscription cancellation practices due to an ongoing Federal Trade Commission Probe.

94

remember boys and girls it's always morally responsible to pirate Adobe programs.

Or better yet, just don't use Adobe products. Staying in their ecosystem is how they end up getting money anyways if that's what you know how to use.

They’re the de-facto option in most of the industries they have products for, if you decide not to use any of their products, you’re alienating yourself from your peers.

Why? I use bought or free stuff all of the time, they all export to documents they can read.

And they'll keep being the de-facto option if you just keep accepting that they are. In the end, Adobe software and their alternatives are often similar enough that transitioning from one to the other isn't difficult.

We used to use frame.io which is now owned by Adobe. We had been with frame.io since the beginning so we were on one of their older business plans which they no longer offer to new customers, but throughout the years as we have been expanding we have purchased extra seats and storage when needed.

Earlier this year they came to us and said they are getting rid of the business plan completely for all existing customers. So either we upgrade to their enterprise plan which will cost us about $12k per year more, a 300% price increase. And of the enterprise features we would gain from upgrading, we won't even use in our current workflow. Or downgrade to their teams account which maxes out to 15 users only. We needed 22 for our current team so we physically couldn't downgrade to that plan.

Basically for the size of our business. We were too big for the teams account and not big enough to justify an enterprise account. There was no longer a plan to cater for business of our size.

And we had about a month to make a decision. As our yearly plan was coming up for renewal.

And the way the Adobe sales team approached this was terrible too. They kept emailing everyone on my team wanting to meet up and help 'optimise' frame.io into our workflow better. The way it was worded everyone thought it was a scam email at 1st. I eventually replied to see what they wanted as I'm the account manager and normally deal with frame.io for account renewals and what not, and straight away their call turned into a sales call telling us we needed to upgrade to enterprise.

We went looking for an alternative as we knew we couldn't use frame.io any more. And luckily came across krock.io which is a very similar video review platform which actually has some really nice features frame.io didn't have. And priced at a reasonable price with unlimited users. So if anyone wants to get away from adobe/frame.io. I encourage you to try out krock.io and see if that fits your video review needs. They have a free trial to try it out. Hopefully more people can get away from adobe/frame.

Yarr/Yo-Ho!

Can you get a semi current build of photoshop? Asking for a friend who is struggling with gimp and hasn’t sailed in ages…

There is an "Adobe Master Collection 202X" crack (where X is the current year) that includes all the current Adobe programs and a custom installer made in the style of the old Creative Suite installer. I believe it's by m0nkrus, or at least that's who uploads it to the private tracker I use. They release several new ones throughout the year so you can keep the programs up to date, and obviously the installer lets you choose which of the programs you want to install.

Gave up on Photoshop and Gimp. Take this, you'll need it:

https://www.photopea.com/

Haven't used anything else in years.

I use Photopea all the time, I love it because the UI is almost an exact copy paste of PS, my only complaint is I wish they had a lifetime license to get rid of that side bar ad, the only options are all subscriptions/monthly. And I know the donate page literally says they don’t do subscriptions, but what else do you call a one time payment for 30 days of ad free?

Ad block works to block the ad, but I haven’t found a way to get that screen space back.

I haven’t found a way to get that screen space back.

uBlock Origin's element picker is probably what you're looking for. Install the addon, click the uo icon, towards the bottom click the eye dropper icon, select the element on the page you want gone, then click create the button. So long as the underlying name of the element doesn't change, you should be all set!

I just have to say that this is now my photoshop replacement without a doubt. Thank you so much for this! Completely changes everything for me 👍 👍

Back in the day there used to be a patch that could block the app from communicating with adobe’s servers to verify the subscription.

That might still exist in some form, but with all of phthoshops new AI features I’d imagine that you’d need constant communication with those servers for the app to actually function.

I’m sorry I didn’t provide any actual help.

That takes me back...I used to work at a computer training company where we would build PC images with the trial versions of everything on them, and every 30 days we'd reimage the machines. The president of the company was shady af. I got out of there just as Adobe was making the transition to subs. I do not miss explaining to the class attendees why everything was watermarked as trail versions.

Acrobat X started failing for me using that crack. Launches and immediately shuts down.

Their terrible business practices is why I refuse to use Adobe. I have heard too many horror stories.

I haven't found it too tough to remove all Adobe products from my workflow. And not even just by going full Richard Stallman, underpants-on-head raving Free Open Source and subsisting on pinecones and berries in the forest, either.

There's basically nothing Adobe software does that some other company doesn't also offer (or a FOSS alternative, if you don't need to do anything heavy duty). CorelDraw and PhotoPaint are comparable options to replace Illustrator and Photoshop for 2D vector and bitmap manipulation, respectively. DaVinci Resolve or even OpenShot can replace Premiere for the majority of users. And sure as shit nobody needs Acrobat or Reader or whatever the fuck they're calling their PDF package these days; everything supports PDF's natively. The days of Adobe having a stranglehold on that are over.

The only viable excuse for being locked in to Adobe products anymore is if that's what your workplace or school uses and you're stuck with it. Otherwise, they can just fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

Clip Studio Paint and Krita are fantastic options for 2d art, and can be better than Photoshop for drawing and painting.

Clip Studio Paint has mostly taken over the small time/independent illustration industry, unless you've got an ipad and use procreate. Krita seems ok, too, though after testing both briefly I preferred CSP.

This is a fucking trap. Monthly subcription is a bait to force you into monthly but commit annuall subcription. And you got to pay the fine if you cancel.

So, it is basicly lock in unaware user.

I wonder what if a user use adobe for 13 months and cancel ? Do they have to pay the fine too ? Got to cancel the percision moment to avoid fine ?

I hate Adobe as much as anyone but they make it pretty damn clear that it's a 12 month commitment and you obviously get a cheaper price for that.

Of course they want to discourage people from committing to 12 months and then cancelling after 6 months. So you have to pay a fine of half of what you committed too.

A normal rental company would be equally pissed if you promised that you were gonna pay them for 12 months and instead cancelled after 6.

If people can't be bothered to read what they are buying or any of the multiple warnings, then imo that's their fault. It's not like they bury this in their TOS or something, it's prominent on and before the checkout page.

It's software. There's literally no reason to treat it like a car lease. There is no overhead or cost on their part which justifies an early termination fee.

But this is the business model they chose, software usage leasing. I agree it sucks, but we can’t expect software leasing to be ruled illegal. Lol

No, but they offer a better price if you agree to a contract where you pay for a year.

If you don't want a better price then don't go with an annual plan, easy.

The cheaper annual plan wouldn't exist if they didn't have any way to stop people from abusing it.

I started a free trial of Adobe stock. I forgot to cancel after the first month. They charged me $30 for the next month, ok, that's on me. But when I tried to cancel during that second month, they said I had signed a contract to pay them for a year (I didn't, all I did was sign up for the free trial) and I now owe them $165 to cancel the subscription. So in essence they were going to charge me $195 for one month of Adobe stock. That's insane.

Every annual discount plan I know of (at other companies) is paid once per year. If you pay monthly, then you get the higher monthly price. If you stop paying, then your access stops. No extra fee to pay.

Adobe offers a prepaid annual plan, an annual plan paid monthly, and a normal monthly plan.

They make that very clear from their order page.

If you get a $5/ month discount on a $30lmonth plan and decide to cancel after 6 months, you shouldn't be fined $150 for the remaining 6 months.

You should be fined $30 for the $5/month you saved on the 6 months you already used. They would try and charge you for the rest of the term instead while removing your ability to use the product for that time, making it pointless to cancel.

By my calculation it's actually cheaper to go with the annual plan (creative cloud all apps) and cancel after 6 months and pay the fine than it is to just go with the monthly plan. (The discount is 30 USD per month)

So I consider that to be reasonable.

They're in thouble because they made it too complicated.

If they said no refunds, or made every option 50% refund, the FTC wouldn't be up in their grill.

It seems that they don't mind the fee it's the cancellation process that they take issue with. It has been a while since I last used Adobe products but I can't recall that it was so bad. But maybe it's still not legal.

They are probably entirely within their rights to offer no refunds but I suspect that would anger people even more.

50% refunds on the normal monthly wouldn't make sense, because the plan doesn't cancel until the end of the month anyways. So they would offer 50% refunds for essentially nothing.

I long for the day when people who think about doing this kind of shit worry about jail time, not just slap on the wrist fines.

At a minimum they should have their business license suspended for a period of time.

Let's see how many customers a business gets when there's the risk that said business gets shut down for a month.

With the requirement that all staff below management still get paid regular salary.

They'll keep doing it until we start taking the problem of monopolies seriously

deleted

I cancelled my credit card which incidentally was used for a photoshop and lightroom subscription I had used for an intro period. They sent me threatening emails for about 4 months before they gave up.

deleted

It was a real card. I cancelled it because of fraud. The service worked until the end of the period.

How do you get one of those?

A lot of the newer online-only banks offer virtual cards. Revolut, N26 etc.

Forgot which one, but my traditional CC offers this.

I have used privacy.com for this in the past. Don't know if there are better options.

Pre-paid card?

deleted

I had a prepaid card that let me transfer the balance of one to the other. I don't recall the bank but it was a VISA prepaid.

Not surprised. I have been using Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher for 5 years and don’t miss Adobe at all. People should check them out if they haven’t found their own good alternatives already.

The alternative is cracked cs6

Any reason 6 in particular?

Last major version before it went to subscription I believe. And I have a working crack, no need to look for a new one, nothing in the new versions I use anymore.

2 more...
2 more...

I was an Adobe customer years ago, but due to things like the above, they inadvertently pushed me to Open Source alternatives and I have not looked back. So I guess, Thank You Adobe is in order. Hope the fine is actually big as they really played dirty.

Same here.

I remember suggesting alternatives like GIMP to photography pros years ago simply because I could see where Adobe was heading when they changed to the subscription model.

Don’t get me wrong, they were innovative a long time ago however now they are structured purely on greed and add nothing deserved my of their services nowadays.

Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus were terrible to use after using Adobe for years. Get Affinity suite instead and save yourself the rage and frustration. It's one-time payment license (not a subscription) and they have deals. I got the license for the three of them for $90. They are way closer to Adobe products and definitely worth the one-time cost.

I love the concept of open source, but you can only make so many compromises in quality and usability, especially if you're likelihood depends on it. Gimp, etc just aren't there.

(On the other end of the spectrum, Blender is so amazing I can still hardly believe it.)

I love the concept of open source, but you can only make so many compromises in quality and usability

I think this is a false dichotomy. You contradict yourself in the next sentence with an example that FOSS isn't necessarily inferior.

You need to check your reading comprehension. I never said there's any such dichotomy about FOSS as a general concept. I specifically named Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus before and after that sentence. Just because a FOSS "alternative" exists, doesn't mean it actually is an alternative, or at least an acceptable one. Each software has to be evaluated individually. In the case of Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus, they would not be acceptable in a professional creative space.

Blender enters the chat.

FOSS is a slow moving boulder. Eventually it catches us and consumes competition if it can keep momentum.

Agreed. Plus if you know Photoshop, you know GIMP as they are very similar and GIMP can even open Photoshop files. I use GIMP and Blender 3D daily.

GIMP and Blender are good, but what's a good alternative for video like Adobes Premiere Pro?

Last I looked (Admittedly years ago) the open source offerings for video editing/production were quite behind

This why we have regulations and why we NEED it

This is exactly why you have corporate politicians screaming about "government oversight" and they're adamant about taking away all the corporate teeth from the FEC, FTC, CFPB

So their donors can get away with shit like this

Fractions of pennies compared to what they're taking in. This isn't a fine, it's racketeering.

I always try to buy subscriptions with PayPal for this reason. Because buried in their UI you can go turn off the automatic payments to that payee. They usually cancel the subscription themselves if you stop paying them.

Privacy.com is what I use. It lets you generate virtual cards to use so you don't need to hand over your actual debit card. You can also set a maximum per day/month/transaction.

Capital One does this with a browser extension. It’s great. I can use a temp card for a one month sub, and then just delete the card.

Suck it Adobe. Never buying a product from them again.

Steal their products or use open source alternatives, fuck adobe

I’m sure this all hinges on their weird “annual commitment” thing.

Sadly the fine won’t be greater than the benefits this practice brings to Adobe so they’ll keep doing it.

What if people used burner cards in order to avoid the difficulties canceling?

What kills me, and it doesn't happen often but I've seen it, is when they can detect the burner card as a 'prepaid' (Privacy particularly) and are like "Sorry we don't allow prepaid cards. Credit or debit only!"

How do you get burned cards? I want that for Sirius

It's getting easier and easier to use free alternatives to Adobe products.

Alternate headline: Adobe faces cost of business fee to dupe users out of money

For this reason I have never and will never buy an Adobe product. I'm an anti Adobe activist in all decision making conversations around their product suite and services.

I'll never change my mind.

Can't you just cancel the card on the subscription and avoid the BS cancellation fee?