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Adobe faces big fines from FTC over difficult subscription cancellation
(appleinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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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.
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.
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
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.