Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud

gistfile1.md

To everyone who got here through Twitter or Facebook or Hacker News or whatever: THIS IS NOT ME.

The "Me" in this transcript is @raddevon, who shared his story first on reddit.

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List of incompetent jackasses who can't check a source if their lives depended on it:

• geek.com
• nasdaq.com
• craveonline.com
• zive.cz
• wopular.com
• hexus.net
• rocketnews.com

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Chaitra: Hello! Welcome to Adobe Customer Service.

Me: Hello

Chaitra: Hi Devon

Chaitra: I understand that you wish to cancel your subscription, let me help you with that.

Chaitra: May I know the reason for cancellation please?

Me: I'm not using the software enough to justify the cost.

Chaitra: Thank you for the information.

Me: No problem!

Chaitra: I have checked and see that you have Creative Cloud membership (one-year) subscription, which was purchased on 18 Jun 2013.

Chaitra: Before you decide to cancel your subscription, let me give you an offer.

Chaitra: I can give you 1 month free subscription which will help you save a months subscription fee and next month of your membership will be free, with your annual commitment.

Chaitra: Will you be interested in 1 month free offer?

Me: No, I don't think so, but thank you for the offer.

Me: Is that it?

Chaitra: If you wish I can provide you next 2 months free as an exception which would save next 2 months fee for you , If you are willing to continue and complete your current annual commitment.

Chaitra: Would you wish to continue with the subscription with 2 months free subscription?

Me: The only way I would consider keeping the service is if you could permanently lower the monthly cost. I'm not getting value out of my $50 monthly subscription and a free month or two won't change that. I would keep the service if I could have access to all the apps for $20/month. Otherwise, I'd like to cancel.

Chaitra: If I change the plan to 29.99 USD, do you wish to continue with the subscription?

Me: No thank you. Please cancel it.

Chaitra: Before , I go ahead and cancel your subscription are you interested in photography so I can change your subscription to photography plan which is 9.99 USD per month which includes Lightroom and photoshop in it ?

Me: No thank you.

Chaitra: Devon, you have purchased a subscription with annual commitment, since you wish to cancel the subscription before the end of one year period, you will be billed 50% of your monthly rate for the remaining months in your annual commitment as early termination fee.

Chaitra: If you pay early termination fee, you will not be able to use the product, however If you continue with the subscription with 2 month free subscription you will be able to use the subscription and also get two months free subscription. In this case, I would suggest you to take an advantage of two months free subscription.

Chaitra: Are we still connected?

Me: I thought you said my subscription started in 2013? Why would I pay an early termination fee?

Chaitra: I see that you have change the plan on Jan 7, 2014.

Me: OK. So, one year from that date would have been January 7, 2015.

Chaitra: Yes.

Chaitra: you have renewed for the another year.

Me: How?

Chaitra: I would like to inform you that, all Adobe subscription renew automatically, if you don't cancel the subscription in 12th month you will be moved to second year cycle. We have sent the notification email regarding the second year commitment for the subscription as we send a notification email for every renewal of the subscription.

Me: If that's true, this is the 12th month of my subscription. Today would be the day it would renew. I want to cancel before that happens.

Chaitra: I checked and see that I your subscription billing date is today, that is 07 Jan 2016.

Chaitra: In this case, If O cancel the subscription also the subscription will reactivate.

Me: You're telling me that if I cancel today, the subscription will automatically renew for another year even though it has been canceled?

Chaitra: Yes.

Me: That sounds like a bug in your billing software. I'm not responsible for that.

Chaitra: Since today is the billing date, the monthly billing has already been started and it is not possible to stop it

Me: Can you connect me with your supervisor?

Chaitra: Also once you get charged, the payment gets updated and it reactivate the service so that you can use it till the month.

Chaitra: I am canceling it now

Me: Can you ensure I won't be charged any termination fees since I have satisfied my year commitment?

Chaitra: And forwarding the case to our relevant department to make sure it gets canceled permanently

Chaitra: Yes, there won't be any fee.

Chaitra: I have already taken care of that

Me: Excellent. Thank you.

Chaitra: You will have access to the apps till Feb 7 2016

Chaitra: You will no longer get charged except today for it,.

Chaitra: You are welcome.

Chaitra: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: Nothing else. Thank you.

Chaitra: You are welcome.

Chaitra: Have a great day.

Chaitra: Thank you for contacting Adobe. We are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Goodbye!

Terrible!!!

Seems to me if Adobe would just charge the REAL price... which is apparently $29.99 per month... they wouldn't have to worry about as many people cancelling. It's like dealing with the cable company. You have to call every single year and talk to a rep just to get the price you SHOULD have gotten at the beginning :/

Just got off the phone with CS and they cancelled my Illustrator subscription but not after a lengthy online chat. At one point I had resigned to the fact that they were not going to let me out of the contract, so I asked them to cancel the auto renew, which most companies have; Your subscription continues for the length of the contract but the contract does not auto renew. Simple. However, apparently, Adobe does not have that option. You either cancel and get charged the fee, or you have to wait until the contract end nears and contact them to cancel.

This is big. The fact that you do not even have the choice to decline auto renewal just tells me that they are intentionally building in systems to ensure their profits. I'm starting to despise all these subscription models. Very few are actually built with the customer in mind. There should be a law - similar to what they have for email - that requires the customer to opt-in to auto renew.

Adobe may see record profits now, but long-term, it's not a sustainable practice to disappoint your customers like this. They're spending more money, time, resources managing cancellations, unhappy customers, and bad publicity that this will all catch up to them; Especially if more people start looking to FOSS as alternatives.

And hey, why not offer 3 month or 6 months subscriptions??

wow, wanted to cancel today after impulse black friday thing, and they wanted to charge £210, are they serious?

Ok I got an offer of 3 months free, gonna push for 4.

Nope, got only 3.

Adobe the cable company

They will charge you for 50% annual fee even when you cancel your yearly plan for those crappy apps you will not use. I have to talk to a support to get this fee waived. And he has to check TWICE with his " supervisors". They just need to know if they want to keep customers THEY SHOULD BUILD BETTER APPS instead of being money thirst assholes.

I've had the same issue with Adobe attempting to charge me a termination fee on Adobe Lightroom CC. I used LR mainly to organize the occasional photos I took. I still have a perfectly good copy of Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 so their Photoshop CC was of no value to me.

At the point I decided to cancel, I had not taken any photos in about 2 months and felt it was a waste of money to continue to use what amounted (in my use case) to a photo tagging/organizing app. After an infuriating chat with their customer support, they charged my card for the remaining year.

I promptly opened up a complaint with the BBB along with the transcript of our conversation, as well as my demands for a full refund. Nothing will get Adobe moving faster on a refund then a complaint with the BBB. When Adobe responded, I loved how they made it look as though they were giving me a one-time courtesy refund out of the goodness of their heart. If you ever have a problem with Adobe file a complaint and let them know you're serious!

BBB Complaint Center

To be honest, i was thinking very hard about CC, because i need something as powerful as Photoshop. But i hate subscription models and Adobe CC is too damn expensive.
After reading this gist i have decided not to go Adobe route. And i just found Affinity Photo. $70 and it's yours with updates - no subscription. Right now i'm watching videos about features and what's different from Ps.

It is the end of 2019 and they still have the same T&C, 50% cancelation fee. I'll tried to cut my expenses as I use Adobe products occasionally, their 30EUR/m yearly subscription is nonsense. Then I found out that I'd have to pay 120 EUR fee for early cancellation?! I thought it was a joke but the lady on chat confirmed that. So I asked if I really do have to block my CC as this is the daylight robbery from their site. As much as I was willing to get back to the subscription once it would make sense for me, after this I will never again use any Adobe product. She at the end cancelled my subscription without any fee but this will not change my decision. I went right to the Affinity webpage and bought Photo and Designer ~75EUR for both products. One time payment. So no Adobe, never again. Stay away from them!

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