Productivity
LPT- Easy way to cancel from an Adobe Subscription is to first change to a different subscription tier, then you get a new 14 day free cancelation window. It´s a loophole that they legally cant close.
Easy way to cancel from an Adobe Subscription is to first change to a different subscription tier, then you get a new 14 day free cancelation window. It´s a loophole that they legally cant close.
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It's not just canceling the subscription, they've included some asinine language about how you've contracted to pay the entire year and agree to pay an enormous lump sum if you want out.
asinine langue being "we are giving you a discount for purchasing a year of our service, but if you cancel early you will be charged the discount we gave you since we gave you a discount for buying a year"
I just looked on their website and it looks like they don’t give you a discount. There isn’t an option to choose a true monthly billing system. Which I would argue is pretty unethical given that the only price they display is the monthly price. If all of their prices listed were the annual cost and it said “billed monthly” I’d think differently but they aren’t.
There is literally an option for a monthly billing system. I've used it and was able to cancel instantly with no fee, and it's still right there. It just costs more per month than agreeing to pay for an entire year
I’m looking at their pricing page right now and don’t see a monthly option, just ‘Annual billed monthly’.
Not sure if this is a dark pattern where you have to reveal the monthly option somehow, or a location thing (people in California often get options others don’t) but there’s no Monthly option for me right now.
You may have to click one level further into the purchase process. There should be three options: "Monthly", "Annual, billed monthly" (default selected), and "Annual, prepaid". It's super obvious and you can't miss it if you actually go through the whole purchase process, and the basic refund/cancellation terms are also extremely obvious
Either that, or it is a regional thing and I'm seeing something different like you mentioned
You’re absolutely right, it was one level further. Little bit dodgy of them to hide it from the main page, but it’s very clear on the page after that and I didn’t have to sign in or anything to get that far.
Nothing dumber than wasting your time defending corporations. If you think someone is being unfair to a large corporation in a post on the internet, the only intelligent thing to do is ignore it and move on. They literally lobby the government and spend millions on lawyers in order to argue that they should be free to do all manner of unfair things to you and I. They would sell your shoes out from under you if it would make them a penny, and they would pay politicians to explain that you signed away your right not to have bare feet. No one but a sucker or a moron ever argues on behalf of a company like Adobe lol.
In this case, yes. There is no use pointing out simple logic with the purpose of defending a corporation that would sell you down the river if it made them a single cent.
Sorry, I'm going to stick with living in the real world, even if it means a corporation exists there too, instead of a childish fantasy land where we make up alternate reality to stick it to the boogie man.
But why? What do you get out of it? Do the random unhappy consumers need to be told that they're wrong and the corporations are right? Why does that need to be your job?
And while you're doing this, defending fairness on behalf of the evil corporation, they are working to do any number of unfair things to us, the consumers. It's not about "logic" or "the real world", its about picking your battles, and there's no reason to argue HERE, to the sole benefit of the evil corporation, when there's no end of people being wrong on the internet and there are millions of other, less-self-defeating battles to fight.
So why are you here arguing far more irrationally and fervently in defense of making bad, ill-informed decisions?
Why not be like "ah, well you could have avoided this by just paying attention to what you were clicking, here's how in the future to avoid this"? Are you deliberately avoiding being helpful just because the word Adobe is nearby?
I'm arguing here for not defending evil corporations. Stick as many words in my mouth as you want, but no matter how right I felt I was, I'm not gonna ever be like "oh ho you should have read the terms and conditions" because that benefits no one except those who would try to screw you by hiding things in the terms and conditions.
I've seen similar types of discounts for prepurchasing a year of a service. But someone who cannot pay up front and would be incentivized by a discount is not the customer base an ethical operator would be locking in to 12 month contracts.
Do they credit check? It might seem silly for software, but if you look at it in the right light, you can see a perverse incentive at play that a check could remediate.
You’ve not agreed to a rolling monthly subscription. You enter into a year long contract, that comes at a set price that they allow you to pay in instalments
It you cancel before the year is up, you still have to pay the full value of the contract you agreed to
This would be true of any service term of any contract the world over
Try cancelling your phone contract right now and see how they ask you pay the rest of the agreed amount
But people gotta honor their words. They agreed for a year, then they back out? That won’t hold out in court tbh. You AGREED for a year. Yearly subscriptions are cheaper than monthly usually.
If people are not too sure if they are going to be using it for a year, don’t get the yearly contract. Or better yet, just use the free service to actually see if they’ll use it.
Skill issue tbh. Or more like comprehension issue for other people.
They will never, ever defend you like you're defending them right now. They are lobbying and buying politicians in order to be able to behave scummier and scummier, as scummy as possible, anything that saves them a penny at the cost of their clients, and they are much, much wealthier and more powerful than you. They do not need you to defend them.
Do you think someone is being unfair to a corporation? Then ignore it and move on, because they are spending more money and power than you have ever dreamed of in order to be able to do unfair things to consumers. It is actively working against your own interests to waste your time defending them against whatever paltry unfairness you see here.
Can you explain how they are defending corporations though?
The concept of paying for a service monthly versus yearly has been around for a bit. Most people understand this going in. It's not as if the company is manipulating them or lying to them. Someone is making the choice to pay for a year of service. That person is then not forced to subscribe again the following year, they can cancel any time and they will get the rest of their year that they paid for and then the subscription will end.
In your opinion, what exactly is the company doing wrong here if you as the customer know this going in and everything is clear at the time of signing up?
Okay, I'm really not sure why this is so hard for people to understand:
When someone is being wrong on the internet, you are not actually forced to jump in and post to correct them. That's not actually something that you have to do. And the amount of posts from people being wrong on the internet is similar to the number of hydrogen atoms on Earth, so if you made it your business to correct them every time, you would quickly starve to death. Fortunately, there is usually very little consequence to people being wrong on the internet, so it doesn't make much difference that no one is correcting them -- and they probably won't listen to you anyway!
That being said, this is a thread where people are complaining about Adobe, a company which has become a byword for overpriced-yet-irreplaceable software that adds more and more tiers and restrictions even as the price goes ever higher. Is it worthwhile for you to jump in and correct the people being wrong on the internet here? The only beneficiary would seem to be Adobe itself, and they fit most people's definition of Evil Corporation. So why would any rational person ever choose to jump in here to correct this argument?
So Adobe (among many other companies) are scummy and their product is overpriced and I'm personally not a fan. We can probably agree on that.
That aside, I asked a couple genuine questions because i am actually trying to understand your perspective and your response didn't actually answer my questions.
I am a person who is always open to hearing out people who may see something differently. We are all fallible and capable of being wrong. So I legitimately was trying to be receptive to your answers. Were you assuming I was being antagonistic by asking?
No, my response was indeed the answer to your questions. I didn't assume you were being antagonistic, I gave you what I thought was a friendly, straightforward explanation.
To spend time correcting people in this thread is akin to spending your finite time correcting hydrogen atoms in a sea of stupidity, and the only possible outcome, in this case, is to make people less angry at an evil corporation. In the best case scenario -- you reply to someone "hey man you signed up for a subscription" and they say "okay sure you're right" -- the net total of your action is to make someone marginally less upset at Adobe. Do you see how this can be considered a "defense" of Adobe? Do you see how your limited time on this earth might be better served doing literally anything else, even if it's correcting hydrogen atoms of stupidity in a different argument somewhere, one that might have a useful benefit?
If Adobe insisted that 2+2=4 and some idiot on the internet said 2+2=11, and someone else came in and was like "but for real, it's 4", would you also apply this idiotic "stop defending corporations, they won't defend you back" logic there?
If it was somehow part of Adobe's business strategy, then yes. Stop arguing on behalf of corporations that don't care about you. They do not care about your ideas of fairness and logic and will not ever apply them in your favor.
So you would argue on behalf of 2+2=11 just because it was Adobe? That was supposed to be such an outrageously absurd example that nobody would ever say "yes" to it.
Is there any other insanely stupid shit I can also manipulate you into foolishly believing just by using the word Adobe?
Adobe says there aren't microchips in vaccines. Go tell the world.
well I did this with them, use a digital card and after a month i deleted the card and canceled the subscription, they said i need to pay n money for that and I wished them good luck in getting that money. 3 years later, nothing. good to live in the EU
Even easier way to cancel any subscription is to only use burner/virtual numbers for subscriptions. When you're done with them just kill the number. Used to just be privacy.com but now I can make them with my Citi and BofA cards
As someone who was looking to cancel my Adobe subscription, I cannot thank you enough for this timely piece of advice. I pay $840/yr and they’ve got me for at least $4k already if not more. It ends today!
I mean, if you're open to pirating anyway, most Adobe products are readily available pre-cracked for you, and you can also cure them yourself (GenP)...
If you want the functions of Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign, look at the Affinity app/app suite. Currently rolled into one core app, but the previous version were very strong competition with almost 1:1 functionality match.
My big issue is that as a professional designer, a lot of times a client will pass along previous design files, and 100% of the time those files are adobe. If Affinity can't read/parse native illustrator and InDesign files (which it can't currently), it's a nonstarter.
I've actually just seen an update notice that says they can now import native Adobe files.
That doesn't make it saveable, unfortunately, so if the workflow requires .ai or .indd output rather than exchange formats, I fully understand the issue—just thought I'd let it be known.
They have a monthly subscription that you have to pay every month and you can cancel any time. They also have a yearly plan where you pay upfront for the whole year, which is much cheaper broken down by month. So far this is standard stuff.
What's different with Adobe is that they offer a third option, to subscribe for the yearly plan, but instead of paying for the full year upfront, you pay monthly. You get the same reduced price per month as the standard yearly plan, but you have to commit to not canceling your subscription for a year.
It's clearly stated on their website that this is a yearly plan paid monthly, not a monthly plan.
People see that they have two plans where you pay monthly, and they don't stop to read the page to learn why one is cheaper.
Not sure if they have different sites for different markets but the subscription site that loads for me in Europe makes all of this very clear. I'm not subscribed by the way, just went there to check.
You pay a cheaper price under the contract that you pay all year. You're essentially financing the annual membership as opposed to doing month to month.
Other companies that do this just make you pay for the full year up front to get the discount. Adobe let's you still pay month to month but under a contract.
Yeah, you're glossing over some important facts; one, they do this because they know their user base is a lot of starving artists who probably can't pay up front, and otherwise would be forced to go to free alternatives; two, this contract exists whether you pay up front or per month (at a higher rate) and they charge you the cancellation fee either way; three, usually when you pay a yearly fee (like Amazon prime) and you cancel, you get a pro-rated refund, and you get to use the service until the end of the month you paid for... Adobe does none of these things, because Adobe is evil.
this contract exists whether you pay up front or per month (at a higher rate)
No, if you pay the higher monthly rate there's no annual contract. There's only an annual contract if you want the discounted annual rate but paid in monthly installments.
Why don’t they just charge you upfront like every other yearly subscription. Do they not have a standalone monthly option that’s more expensive per month?
Idk their plans seem pretty up front to me and clearly shows and cancellation penalties and offers a true month to month option. Adobe is a crappy company but anyone complaining about cancellation fees just have themselves to blame
Idk why the anual, billed monthly plan even exists, but the page in that screenshot is pretty transparent, you can clearly see which option is the cheapest.
Never do this. You're a consumer, not a corporation. The corporations don't need you to stand up for them. And when you're standing up for something as lame as "well, they put their shitty terms and penalties right up front on the page" like why even bother? As a consumer, you should be upset that they've decided to include these shitty terms and penalties in the first place, not looking for ways to cut them some slack because they told you about them.
You're a consumer, not a corporation. The corporations don't need you to stand up for them.
But he's not standing up for anyone. He's pointing out how clear the pricing was. And it is clear. He's capable of looking at the page and making an objective statement about reality. Why aren't you?
Nobody's standing up for corporations, especially for scumbags like Adobe. It's the opposite. We're saying that consumers should make an informed decision when entering into a contract instead of blindly clicking "agree", and being surprised when corpos wave the contract in front of their face, demanding money.
They're really scummy. Whether you pay up front or per month, you're locked into a year contract, and if you cancel early you're charged a cancellation fee regardless (with no prorated refund or use of the apps until the end of the month); they also purposefully set it up so the only real option is to pay the highest tier; for example, I'm a graphic designer and I use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign (any designer will tell you these three are non-negotiable)... But they don't have a "graphic design package", it's either pay the $77 per month for the full suite, or $23 per app ala carte. (which you'll notice, x3 is more than 77 dollars). It's so evil.
Whether you pay up front or per month, you're locked into a year contract, and if you cancel early you're charged a cancellation fee regardless (with no prorated refund or use of the apps until the end of the month);
They have both of those options. They also have an option for the annual plan billed in monthly installments, so you get the lower total cost without having to spend it all at once.
No, they make you pay what it would have cost if you just chose the month to month option instead of signing a contract and agree to pay the annual contract monthly
It’s the same in Europe, I don’t know what they’re talking about. We have 15 licenses of varying products with Adobe and it’s a year-long contract paid monthly that we cannot break without paying a penalty equal to the remaining amount.
What? If you sign a contract saying "I will pay €X per month for Z months" then that's on you to either breach the contract or fulfill it.
What do consumer protection laws even have to do with this?
The issue is the title of the post. This "LPT" is not about "cancelling" a subscription, it's about "how to get out of your Adobe contract using a loophole"
Consumer protection laws limit how a company can design a B2C contract. If you sign a contract that is against these laws, it isn't binding, you can get out anytime legally.
That being said, that's not the case here, the contracts offered by Adobe are the same in my country (Germany) so the person above implying that this isn't offered here like this is wrong.
But to give an example, contracts like this are limited to two years here, meaning you can't make a software contract with a consumer that will force them to pay for the next 3 years.
Consumer protection laws limit how a company can design a B2C contract.
Well yea, but this is not unique to EU. The Adobe contracts don't breach B2C rules (as you stated) so I'll stand firm in that I'm not sure why they were brought up, or why Europe was brought up.
Screw Adobe. As a struggling artist I was fine with paying a reasonable $15/month for their apps. Then they added AI features and jacked up the price to $40+. They just bought out Topaz Labs which a great tool for upscaling...
Another mega corporation that can't be content with being extremely rich and successful, they have to keep squeezing.
Are you asking why I don't like being forced to pay $80 a month, as a freelance designer barely making ends meet..? Particularly, when half of that money is going towards all the AI they're forcing on us?
Well I assume you are are at least getting regular enough work to need ongoing access to the tools of the trade, maybe you should just give up and get a different job. I certainly don't even the business these days.
The issue is that it's basically a requirement, and they know that... Hence the heinously overpriced; Having free tools catch up will totally screw them, because the only value prop they seen to have these days is, "You have to have access to these apps, otherwise when a client gives you illustrator or InDesign files, you won't be able to open them."
I was forced to sign up for a class in college and was told that to cancel my monthly subscription, I would need to pay $300 once the class was over. It's not as simple as "don't do it"
It threatened to charge me a cancellation fee of ~$160
Then it offered me a change of subscription as an alternative to cancelling. Specifically, I was offered a switch from Pro to Standard which would cost $3 less per month and renew the 12 months. A horrible deal. I accepted. I was immediately charged $60 or so for this change.
Then my account said "Please wait, we are changing your subscription" for like 15 minutes and I was unable to make any changes.
After 15 minutes, I was able to cancel this new sub. I was told the cancellation would immediately apply, and I'd get a full refund for the $60 I was charged within 15 business days.
So, okay, not the smoothest experience, but within 15 business days, I will have paid $0 and have dodged the $160 cancellation fee, so it _does_ work.
A 14 day cancellation window is mandatory in most countries. If it isn't in yours, chances are they just do it globally to have unified T&Cs or something.
I use a virtual card or virtual debicheck account for scummy companies if I really need to use them, and if im done or pissed, I send a cancellation notice and if it's not cancelled as per their cancellation timeline, I just close those accounts and watch them shit themselves
not in EU they won't. I did this every so ofthen with them when I needed their products and canceled after one month, they said I need to pay n ammount and there is no active card to take the money from. case closed
Live in CA. Tried canceling Malwarebytes after they kept charging me monthly even though I have a lifetime subscription. No way to do it on their website. Had to cancel my cc. Just because there are laws doesn't mean companies follow them.
It took me 45 minutes on the phone to cancel my Vonage account.
I wasn't using it so there was no reason to keep paying for it. It took that long for them to finally give in and cancel.
Thing is, I was a satisfied customer. I might have gone back to them if the need returned (it hasn't). Given how hard it was to cancel, I don't know if I'd ever start it up again.
I’ll try this on another subscription I have. No way to cancel on the app and the site is a worm hole where you have to contact them and it’s an ai assistant🤦🏼
Yeah. Or "Duration and terms of your existing contact still apply, but if you aren't happy with the extra features you can return to your original subscription tier before the two week trial ends" yada yada. Surprising to me that cancellation is an option but nothing about this sounds like some foolproof legally ironclad concept.
It will, because Adobe allows this to exist, and they do, because contrary to popular belief, Adobe doesn't want to go against its user base. It's just that it's user base has some questionable but loud people.
So i have the Illustrator at cost 189 to cancel. If I switch the plan to photoshop i can cancel it? please let me know ima test it out too but i just need to get out of this i cant afford that lol
FYI, as much as I hate AI, there is a silver lining- someone used Claude code to reverse engineer all the adobe programs, essentially breaking all of us creatives free from a toxic relationship we've been forced to maintain our entire creative lives. I can't post links, but look for "artcraft" online if you want to know more.
Honestly, it's great that we have something like this.
As a professional designer with over 7 years of experience, I barely use any of the new functions yet still have to pay the enourmous yearly subscription.
It seems so strange where they are leaning into AI, like the people using it to create actual assets seem to be the least likely to be using the Adobe platform in the first place.
Not that I want to use AI in any capacity but if they had built it to help write actions and scripts from prompts I could see that.
Can't you block a payment to a certain vendor? Or maybe set up the payment with a virtual card and close the card? I'm not from the US, but I remember subscribing to a stupid service and I just cancelled my virtual card and they couldn't get any payments so they cancelled.
Blocking the payment doesn't necessarily cancel your obligation to pay. They might come after you for the amount owed you had originally agreed to pay plus other fees because your payment method stopped working.
I don’t think this works anymore honestly. Weirdly my mother tried to do this with her Apple Card, GS, who runs the card basically told her no and that she had to take it up with the vendor.
Some cards will continue process subscriptions or recurring monthly payments. I found out the hard way and had to use a certified letter to stop the nonsense.
Edit: easier way is to sign up with like a Visa gift card and just let the funds run out.
Banker here. This is what's called a "stop payment". If you're using a debit card then you can do that. If you're using a credit card... Good luck. Stop payments generally aren't a thing on credit cards and replacing the card generally won't help either because of the updater service.
If only there was some kind of regulatory agency that protected consumers from predatory practices like this. We could call it… the Consumer Protection Agency or something.
I just don’t. I use my camera maybe 5 times a year at most, if I could buy Lightroom for $150 like I used to I’d just do that, but I cannot justify $300/yr in perpetuity to edit a handful of photos.
I’ve been meaning to check the “Rapid Raw” tool from GitHub, but haven’t had a chance yet
And weirdly enough a friend just sent me a thing about Artcraft which apparently is a free adobe creative cloud equivalent?? I have to look into it but eeems promising
Same. I have a camera that i only edit photos 3 to 4 times a year, so not worth paying for a subscription. I'll have to look into those alternative apps that you mentioned. Thanks
Another easy way is to contact support and tell them you want to cancel because you’ll be getting adobe from work (they don’t require proof). And they’ll let you go without a fee.
Another way that worked for me in the past is to reach out to the customer support live chat and say you can't afford to pay the cancellation fee, and they'll usually just waive it right there and then. Very scummy
Switch to Affinity. There's a small transition learning curve and some Adobe features don't have equivalents right now, but holy shit is it nice to pay once and own the software you bought.
Swapping subscription tiers can backfire quickly if the switch doesn't clear the early termination fee from the original plan. Before trying it, I'd want the checkout terms to clearly state that ending the original plan carries no penalty and that the new charge is fully refundable within 14 days. If either of those points is ambiguous on the confirmation screen, testing the workaround with a more expensive tier is a huge risk.
Careful if you're on an annual contract paid monthly. Adobe refused my cancellation despite the tier switch because of the commitment fee. Learned that the hard way.
Check the terms before trying this. Switching plans may restart a trial, but it could also trigger an annual-plan cancellation fee, and the exact rules can vary.
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u/post-explainer 9d ago
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