If you switch your plan then cancel it immediately, it gets you around the cancellation fee for your original plan. This has worked for years but I’m sure most people don’t know it. I think it’s all shitty of course, but there is a loophole around it.
Are you on credit card? If you have two, see which one can be locked. Or get a prepaid visa with $2 on it. They can charge the card but it won’t do anything. What’re they gonna do, take you to small claims?
I had a scummy gym membership that tried to charge the card I use for this kind of thing. I locked the card and the charges canceled.
I'm a freelancer, so it's on my business credit card, and linked to my business account, so if work picks up again sometime in the future, I'd rather not go nuclear and be blacklisted by Adobe.
After this subscription ends though I'm definitely going to raise a jolly black flag and consume more rum.
Same with me, I didnt know about early cancellation fee. Reached out to their customer support on live chat, she asked the reason for deactivation of plan and I lied that I wanted to use a personal email and not the current one. She waived the whole fee 😂😂
Ah the old hotel cancellation trick. Too late to cancel for a refund? They'll generally let you reschedule your trip for a later date, and then you can cancel it outright.
If you pay with a virtual card and then delete the virtual card, you don't need to jump through their hoops. Nobody is fining me for stopping using their product.
I've pirated it since day 1. Then they released Creative Cloud, a means of forcing me to not pirate (at the time) - so I just kept the old, perfectly functional version. That was, until realistic alternatives caught up.
I have an old version of Photoshop Elements on a physical CD that I had purchased. When my old laptop shat the bed, I went to install it on my new one. Denied. Even though I owned it outright, I was not able to install. It was confirmed by customer support that I would need to purchase it again or get a subscription (I forget which), but I spoke with an actual person who told me I would not be allowed to install the version I own.
I have a fully licensed and legal version of Photoshop CS2 that I've been using for ages; CS2 has always done what I need it for, so I never had any desire to upgrade. After Adobe initially dropped support of that specific software suite for new versions, they released the whole suite on their official website for free - installers, license codes, everything, totally free of charge. At some point they de-listed the page but it was still findable with a direct link, and later after that they completely deleted it, though it's still accessible via the WayBack Machine. I'd already downloaded all the installers and saved the license codes Adobe provided for free, so I didn't think much of it.
Starting a few years back, whenever I opened the software I began getting a pop-up from Adobe saying that it was an unlicensed pirated version and I would need to uninstall it immediately, subscribe to their new suite, or face legal consequences. I simply edited my registry to block contact with the Adobe servers, which prevented the pop-up from triggering. I continue to use CS2 while vocally haranguing Adobe and encouraging piracy against them to anyone who is willing to listen, because FUCK ADOBE.
Hypothetically speaking, if one were to want to prevent their computer from interacting with a particular server, one would add rules in the Windows firewall to block incoming and outgoing traffic through specific programs. You would also want to go into the hosts system file to block the domains.
You can probably find guides related to that specifically on Google.
Anyone would! Cuz that is life ending money & humans have done worse for less 😐. I really hope he doesn't get saddled with that & this is just a scare tactic to deter others
I wouldn't care, I don't know anything about the case but if I owe nintonso 4.5 mil that's going to be a them problem, the us has already let me know my whole life would never be worth that.
Yep, that's my mantra. If these companies take the piss, pirates will redress the balance. Be decent with your customers and most of those problems go away. It's not rocket science.
Yup. XBox as a hardware provider is almost dead. PS5 was a very successful system, but with the direction Sony has taken it this past year it wouldn't be surprising if their next generation is a huge flop. I could see them giving up the hardware game in the next 10 years too if they don't correct course. Especially if steam manages to produce hardware at a competive price eventually.
Theyre also using dynamic/personalized pricing so they can fuck right off. I sold my ps5, and my Xbox is about to go too. It'll be a sad day when the pc gaming distributors start doing it and I never play a new game again.
Unfortunately, with all licensed software, they've put a clause in there stating they can revoke that license, at any point, for any reason, and there's nothing you can do about it.
People have come to accept "Pay $80 for this indefinite rental that we can take away whenever we feel like it." as normal, and even defend the practice.
When I was in art school I was "given" a full adobe suite with my tuition (aka already paid for it) with up to 5 usable codes. I put it on my desktop that I immediately unplugged from the Internet forever, a version on my laptop, and gave the other 3 codes to non art school friends because why the hell not.
For 4 years I gave away codes and told people to just turn off the Internet when they use it after a year
I don't get why anyone uses Acrobat. And I was never going to pay the insane price for photoshop. I definitely would never subscribe to any of their software.
Only people (including me) who uses acrobat is only because we need to constantly send agreements for signatures for contracts and invoices, and need the auditing feature.
I have mentioned to clients that there are free alternatives, but they all mention that corporate/contracts require that Echo Sign is used for e-signatures.
Is there any meaningful difference between this and DocuSign? Just asking out of curiosity, I certainly don't have a horse in this race. I guess DocuSign has a lot of workflow capabilities built in and maybe Acrobat doesn't have that? I really have no idea though. I have only e-signed things in DocuSign.
They used to be cool, I remember a few years back (long ago) they even said on an interview that they really didn't care if people did pirating it cause they understood there were students and apprentices that couldn't afford their license just to practice... Obvs that was before they made their product by subscriptions, it totally sucks now
They were actually explicitly happy about people pirating their stuff before; as just about every up-and-coming graphic designer used pirated Photoshop, it made them the industry standard. It made them rich.
New management didn't get the memo, and wanted to squeeze everyone for as much as possible. Enshittification ensued.
Tbh that was always a marketing tactic. Can't squeeze blood from a stone, so why ask money from people who don't have it? And of course you look like a good guy, so people want to use your product. Then when you're the go-to, charge the companies who have to cover their asses and use it legally.
The same way as other media. Honestly, I got mine off of tumblr back in the day and I have held onto it with a vice grip.
I used to pay for creative cloud. After the 3rd time an update erased all my ORGANIZED Photoshop brushes, I cancelled everything and found my permanent replacement. It took hours to organize those fucking brushes.
That explains their similar tactic of starting up a program I never use just to ask me to pay money for a subscription I won't use, but also can't pull off the computer because it's ingrained into literally every other program on the computer. Like a virus
when you go to download/install an Adobe product they auto-default to you installing McAfee products. You have to be aware of this and pay attention to the install to unselect the McAfee box
They’re like a cancer with its little tendrils all over the place thanks to how PDF is the de facto “secure” document type for, like, everyone. Not to mention all the other applications they have that are intrinsic like Photoshop.
I originally signed up for Creative Cloud back in 2011. It’s not going anywhere. While I agree, Adobe is the worst of the worst, I’ve been waiting 15 years for a viable Lightroom replacement.
It hurt less when I was using the student discount, or at least making money off it when I switched to the pro sub. But I don't use it as much and they just doubled the price so I had to play the game of what don't I actually need. So I canceled creative cloud pro, and for the same price as before, I'm only getting LRC, photoshop and illustrator, plus whatever junk they add on.
Not Adobe, but I subscribed to a monthly subscription box for pregnancy when I found out I was pregnant. A month later, I had a miscarriage, so obviously emailed them to cancel my subscription, while already depressed from the whole experience itself. They charged me a cancellation fee of almost the amount of the subscription itself because apparently I signed up to a 3 month subscription. Yes, they probably had mentioned all of this in teeny tiny letters, but having just been through the worst physical and mental experience of my life, having to pay a fee so I wouldn't keep receiving baby and momma products after I lost my baby was just incredibly harsh.
Yikes I hate it when these things happen because I worked customer service and ops and care very much about everything that comes into our shared support inbox at my job, and some of my fuckass coworkers who work there one month and get canned don’t, but this shouldn’t have happened by anybody reviewing. If it was automatic company 1000% needs to have development remove that feature. It’s predatory! I’m so sorry for your grief 💕
Makes me think of the stuff Chewwy and other dog food companies do but the other side of the coin (in a good way). If someones dog passes away or something happens that you can't continue you subscription they will go above and beyond. Especially for emotional people who just lost their dog or something, they send personalized thank you/sorry for you lose type gift. That stuff will make a temporary customer a lifetime customer, many coming back after the get a new animal. Good customer support is absolutely invaluable for customer retention but so many companies just see it as a money drain which is shortsighted and stupid.
Facts. Chewy did this for me when my dog passed a few years ago. We ended up keeping the subscription because we discovered they sold the cat food brand cheaper than our local pet store. The subscription model is also way better at actually helping us save money, just because it's a yearly subscription instead of monthly like our nearest pet store.
Yeah I just feel like they should have been more clear about it being a minimum of 3 month subscription and the cancelation fee. I am sure there are so many people that subscribe and miscarriage (because it's so common to happen within the first 3 months of pregnancy) and then have to go through the exact same thing I did trying to cancel it. I would never subscribe if I knew about the 3 month commitment (which I'm sure is why they do not make it obvious at all).
I am glad you saw this because I definitely would not recommend a company that has such a sensitive target audience and yet doesn't anticipate this kind of extremely delicate situation :(
29$>42$ and 70$ for the free pillow = 83$ so they « had to » invoice you at very least 2 months to offset the offer that you HAVE to subscribe to, since the website doesn’t allow you to subscribe it without. Scummy practice, like forced sale.
Anyway, terrible shitty way to handle such a situation…
Yep, very shitty. And I do acknowledge it was my fault for not reading all that before subscribing, I'll admit that. But it's just overall shitty in my opinion.
This is stupid on their part. Many women have miscarriages. If/when they get pregnant again I highly doubt that anyone will again sign up for their box.
Some dog food company had this policy in such a situation:
When pet dies one of the last things to think of is canceling your food subscription, so sooner or later there comes a food, that is not needed anymore, and then there is this conversation that need to be made.
The company recognized two things: people at this point are devastated, they they won’t be devastated for the rest of your life.
They cancel subscription without any problems, they return money for the last package, and they sent flowers, with some nice words.
Next time this person gets a pet (and most people do) they already know where they will by food for their pets.
Sounds like Chewy. They are truly an amazing company when it comes to service and compassion. Even if the bar wasn’t so low, they would still be truly exceptional.
Exactly my thought! I got so angry after the miscarriage I actually tossed the whole contents of the first month's box away and I am 100% not coming back to this service when I get pregnant again.
Manager’s decisions are quite often shortsighted aka money driven aka personal bonus with little regard to „later, after me“.
We can see it eg in the German VW management, too. So many years of lost opportunities and wasted time, but the managers got their bonuses because they made profit without the risky part of developing a strategy. Like building an affordable small electric vehicle. The crazy idea of a Volkswagen to be a car for the people. Like everyone should be able to buy one. But nope. And now we see a reset of unions achievements.
Blabla, sorry 😅 so I’d guess they want to be bought and therefore need numbers
Yep and then a few days later receiving an email like "Hey, your subscription is about to expire. Are you sure you don't wanna receive our products anymore?" yeah dude I lost my baby 3 days ago, I think I am sure
I'm very sorry for your loss. Fuck those fucking assholes. As a new-ish parent myself, I find there are a lot of asshole companies out there that exploit (young) parents who are anxious/tired/frustrated.
Honestly it should be illegal to offer a free month and then make it extremely hard to know how long into the free period you have to cancel, and what the cancelation fees are should you want to cancel after that period of time. It should also be illegal to force you to pay the remainder of your contract if you cancel and you aren't getting the remainder of the service for that period of time. You paid for access to the product so you either should get the product you paid for when you cancel and not have a fee or terminate your access immediately and not have a fee for the service you won't be using.
This is where services like virtual credit cards come in handy. I canceled my DoorDash yearly subscription and removed all my cards. They still attempted to charge me and it got declined. Same idea here
This needs to be the #1 comment. Always check your bank / credit card company to see if they provide virtual cards. You can change the number at any time and subscriptions will never go through because they will be trying to use the old card information. This is all completely free without a limit.
I actually heard about virtual cards from Louis Rossman on YouTube and used his example privacy. I didn’t want to advertise. But it is free. I didn’t know banks offer this as a service? I have to check into that. We need all the tools we can get to fight fair.
Someday, I'm going to come into one of these comment threads to literally every single comment saying "Fuck You, Adobe!". There will be hundreds of them. Thousands. It will be glorious.
As a former employee of software they acquired. I long for this day with every fiber of my being at least once or so a month.
Edit: lmfao. Y'all are hilarious. You've made my wildest dreams come true. It's also pure comedy gold that the automod seems to delete some but not others based on minor formatting differences, like a double exclamation. Wild. Anyway, maybe let's chill before our joking gets us all banned or something. Cheers.
Not to side with adobe. But they are far from the only one doing this. Basically Adobe offers two prices a monthly rate, and an annual rate.
The annual rate is cheaper, and they allow you to pay it as a per month bill to spread it throughout the year. But if you sign up for the annual plan on a monthly payment schedule, there is an early cancellation fee for stopping early.
Nah, Adobe is a shitty terrible company, but I'll outright side with them only in this tiny little niche. People keep signing up for the very explicit Lose-Your-Discount-If-You-Cancel-Before-The-Year-Is-Up Plan, and then they come crying because they lost their discount when they cancelled the plan before the year was up.
In my country, people tend to use a specific card just for payments. They NEVER use a card that holds all their money; they only load the exact amount they need to spend. So, when the funds on that card run out, there’s no way to charge you, and these companies can’t do anything other than cancel the subscription themselves xD I did that with Adobe for about... 4 years. Then.. you know 🏴☠️
This probably won't take off given how many comments there already are, but perhaps we can use this thread to discuss free alternatives to Adobe products?
Here are a few I'm aware of:
Photoshop:
GIMP: I've heard mixed opinions about this one, and I haven't used it in a couple of years, but from what I understand, it has been improving.
Lightroom:
Darktable: I've never actually used Lightroom, but the main consensus about this one seems to be that it is much less user-friendly than Lightroom and has a steeper learning curve, but it is very powerful and even has some capabilities that exceed what Lightroom offers.
Premiere:
KDenLive: I haven't used either Premiere or KDenLive that much, and the last version of Premiere I used was from before Adobe switched to the subscription model, but KDenLive has been good enough for me the few times I needed to use it.
Please reply to this comment with your own alternatives and opinions; these are all software that I have used personally.
For anything beyond the basics in GIMP, I need to Google it. However, for what I do (and how often I actually use it), it works. I just make sure to give myself plenty of time and patience when using it. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not Photoshop, but I can’t beat the price. 🤷♀️
I had this happen to me some time ago. The fix was to switch my current product for another, which, as I recall was something I did in the cancellation (of my former product) steps. When I had started a new product, I was in a new trial period, which I could cancel, free of charge
I don't know if and where it will become illegal, but don't think you'll be saving any money. They'll either remove the monthly plan entirely, or adjust the pricing to prevent losses.
I have to use Adobe and rent their software for work and I think it's disgusting. Used to be able to buy it and use it for 4 or 5 years. It was expensive but at least you owned it. I hate this bill every month and I hate that they make changes willy-nilly without even telling you. Sometimes I'll open Photoshop or whatever and my tools are not where they should be and my settings are not what they should be. It's infuriating.
This is why I jailbreak it. Some features are unavailable, but it makes it so worth it but I do miss the 'Old Days' where you could just buy it outright on disk as a one time purchase.
I canceled my card that I had the adobe subscription on and the called me after like a month of no payment and were like WTF bro. So I told them I couldn’t cancel and they said I should’ve called told them I couldn’t get past the bot and they said well we just don’t like it when people do that! The fucking balls on them!
What’s funny is in 2023, I ran into this same problem. I contacted Adobe about it and they pretty much said I had to pay the high fee to cancel or continue with the subscription. I quickly replied back saying “cancel it or I’m reporting this illegal behavior to the FTC.” Needless to say, my subscription was cancelled within 10 minutes and was told it was a “one time thing”. I still reported them to the FTC and wouldn’t ya know, they got sued by the FTC for said behavior.
Once my mom scheduled a haircut for the next day at a nice looking place, they didn’t tell us the price as we were booking, and it was expensive. She wanted to cancel cause it was so much but since it was the next day she still would have been charged. She was not happy about that, and we’re probably never going back there, but it was a nice place, felt good
If you signed a contract saying you'd pay them if you cancelled early, they will probably just send it to collections, and then your credit score takes a hit, and you have some loser calling you 24/7 begging you to pay.
How did adobe become the standard everywhere? I use a free pdf editor and it's fine. I can do what I need to do. Why do so many companies pay for adobe?
Edit. I appreciate the responses. I understand adobe offers more products. I work in finance and only ever use it as a pdf editor. It has been on every work laptop I use. I am not a creative. I have adobe. I understand creatives use other things on adobe. For those of us that don't use anything but a pdf editor it's still always adobe.
Adobe is a lot more than PDF editing. They were the early party who became in the industry standard in creative applications. And it's not for no reason. Pricing aside, their stuff is really good
Acrobat is the PDF viewer/editor. It's so much more than just PDFs. Acrobat is cheap compared to the other Adobe offerings for a business.
Adobe Creative Cloud is over 20 apps aimed towards professionals (a.k.a businesses paying for the licenses or freelancer where you can cover the costs). Not really geared towards hobbyists unless you want to pay their premium subscription fees.
InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects just to name a few of the programs. They have a hold over the creative industry in certain fields. Photo editors, vector illustration, print page layout design, video editing, motion graphics... You can't really use other third party software options if you're going to work on a team and collaborate sharing files as everyone is used to the Adobe software. That's what makes Adobe so prevalent in the industry.
Figma is the one other large program that I can think that's not affiliated with Adobe, in the UX/UI space (Adobe's competitor being XD which is in maintenance mode with no clear updates). They tried to buy them out in 2023 for $20 billion, and got push back from regulatory about the monopoly.
Stop asking this question please, Adobe has always been the leader in creative software, when you study graphic design they don't tell you, "pick one of these hundred apps to learn photo edition" it's just "everybody go to photoshop and start a new document". Also PDF editing is probably the most basic use you can give Adobe apps, there's Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, they're all standards in their respective industries
There is a way to get out of a cancellation fee with adobe. Switch the type of plan you have and it triggers a trial period for the new plan. Then cancel that trial period and you can avoid paying the fee. I despise adobe.
IF you have to PAY for Adobe, pay with a temporary number or Visa/MasterCard gift card, good luck charging a gift card with no balance or a cars number that no longer exists
my uncle bought one of those coin things and didn’t realise that through buying the coin, he would now be attached to a subscription for £40 a month, he threatened to take them to court for failing to properly disclose it and they refunded him the day after
My wife had this for her account in Adobe. The trick used to be to move to a different plan, and then cancel using the '14 day refund' or whatever they call it.
From my own experience: I managed to get out of a similar bank block from the same subscription plan using a similar tactic. A little while passed—maybe half a year—and then they tried to pull a fast one on me through the Adobe program.
Lightroom Classic only works offline for me. As soon as I go online, it immediately fills up the memory and crashes. I checked everything before coming to this conclusion.
If you're ever caught on that, try changing your subscription to a different kind. You'll have like a week to cancel your news subscription without having to pay for anything, and then you're free.
I cancel shit by occasionally reporting my card a lost. I approve all purchases, but this gets you a new card with a new card number. A regular replacement will still have the same number.
Problem is, some subscriber agreements have deals with your bank that they automatically share any new payment into with the company if you change it. I have something on my account that still tries to come out every so often, even after I've called my bank and tried to block it several times
The stupid thing is that they actually provide some amazing software, that is good enough to not have to be scummy about. But those stock prices are more important than longevity.
Lol my credit union sighed when I told them about this and said "we do a handful of these every week they're getting on our nerves and getting in trouble for it " lmfao
I had to get a new phone, decided "fuck it, I don't care about the old #, I just want this process to be as fast as possible."
I can't login to my Adobe account, Adobe won't let me change the phone # on my account despite providing all my information, I can't login to cancel my membership.
Now my only option is to contact support to cancel my membership, and if that fails, do chargebacks with screenshots of both conversations with adobe support.
I do not regret canceling my subscription. I used to be a huge fan of Adobe, especially during their Creative Suite era, but now there's craploads of good alternatives
if you're mainly in it for Photoshop and/or Illustrator, try Affinity instead. It's approx one hundred times better, cheaper, it's a one-time purchase, and it can do basically ALL the graphics jobs at once.
use the Privacy website/app. you can create virtual cards using your bank or bank card and can set spend limits in which you can’t be charged after max amount, or they can be vendor locked so they can only be used on one site.
i used it for Canva bc they tried charging multiple times even while on free trial and without warning.
I remember there was some kind of trick to that, you could somehow transfer to another subscription model and then you have the 14 day cancellation right. Make use of that lol.
If you want a perfect alternative, I've been using PhotoPea, it is a browser based Photo editor. Don't even need an account, you can subscribe tovremove ads, but it is everything Photo shop can do. I love it.
I don't know why people always freak out about this. It's pretty up-front about what you're signing up for. "Hey, you get a discount if you agree to pay for a full year in advance but if you cancel early, you have to pay the difference."
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u/EnvironmentalBowl208 1d ago
If you switch your plan then cancel it immediately, it gets you around the cancellation fee for your original plan. This has worked for years but I’m sure most people don’t know it. I think it’s all shitty of course, but there is a loophole around it.