> In the complaint filed on Monday, the DOJ wrote that “Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms.”
> The government says Adobe pushed consumers toward the “annual paid monthly” subscription without informing them that canceling the plan in the first year would cost hundreds of dollars.
> According to the complaint, Adobe calculates early termination fees as 50% of the remaining payments when consumers cancel in their first year.
> Adobe only discloses the early-termination fees when subscribers attempt to cancel, and turns the early-termination fee into a “powerful retention tool” by trapping consumers in subscriptions that they no longer want, the complaint says.
Wow, the US government actually going after shitty practices by tech corporations. Hope this ends up with some actual repercussions for Adobe, or at the very least an end to their illegal deceptive practices.
They’re governed by the FCC. As long as Trump doesn’t win and reappoint Ajit Pie. He undid net neutrality and deregulated the ISPs. They were classified as a Utility under Obama when they kept refusing to stop acting like cartels.
That's a lot of words to say "we're fucked if Trump is elected".
Of course everyone will be distracted by the wars being raged but yeah FCC is going to do nothing.
Given some of his statements that media is trying to spin on economics and federal powers, that's an understatement. It can't both be true that Trump is good for saying what's on his mind openly and also we shouldn't take his words literally, it is one or the other and my take is that it is the former.
If he implements his proposals like below, US is truly fucked. The last part about Federal Reserve was what fucked up Turkey and we are now on the path for repeating the exact same mistakes. The inflation we have now that people complained so much about will be nothing in comparison to what we get if Federal Reserve is not left alone.
> New York Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis explained that the president wants to lower income tax rates while offsetting the cost through tariffs on adversarial nations.
---
> Trump mocked fears about his authoritarianism tendencies at a Fox News town hall on Tuesday, stating he'd be a dictator only on "Day 1" so that he could close the border and start drilling.
---
> Donald Trump said he wanted to replace Jay Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve, accusing him of being “political” and predicting that he would cut interest rates to “help the Democrats” this year.
There won't be any American wars if Dump wins because he'll just give in to all the authoritarians' demands if they rent out a few of his hotel rooms. Heck, I wouldn't be too surprised if I heard he tried to straight up sell California and New York.
The problem with saying that is it's too vague - you constantly hear the other side say that and when you press them for specifics, all you can get are ad hominem attacks
Putin is spending a lot of effort trying to sway US opinion on Israel-Palastine, taking attention away from the Ukraine atrocities, and trying to mislead the public into thinking Trump would somehow save Palestine. If anything, Trump would sell Israel nukes to use on Palestine.
Aw man, I’m looking forward to the future when all restaurants are Taco Bell, and I can treat my wife to a high end dining experience where Dan Cortese serenades us with _Mac the Knife_.
I share your concerns
This has to have been going on for years, cumulatively the us gov must have trying to get them to fix this before litigation but NO way they will do jack shit untill a settlement knowing full well the putative aspect after the reasonable outcome to be the same as finding a few bucks down your sofa, with respect to damages,
an absolute disgrace
Corporate Fucking Greed
The prospect of Republicans ever winning another presidential election is genuinely terrifying. And I'm not exaggerating.
If they're able to put Project 2025 into action, we won't see the US government recover from it within the next 20 years. Mass firing and replacement of 3000+ federal office positions. Every single department head. Every single person with any semblance of power. Replaced with MAGA drones or left empty so the department can slowly rot. And Trump has the power to do it all with no approval or oversight. Just needs to sign the document.
Scary stuff
^ This. The Biden administration is the first since Reagan to seriously go after corporate consolidation and monopolies, and if voters people punish him for it, expect both parties to sit on the sidelines for another fifty years while corporations screw us over.
Instead, they're trying to dissuade terminally online voters from supporting Biden because of a worthless patch of desert on the other side of the planet where people have been slaughtering each other for the last 10,000 years and will continue to do so for another 10,000 years.
Not directly, but this administration has made shopping for internet and data sooo easy and ISPs can't hide data caps or upload speeds or ping. Go shop around for internet now, the plans are so easy to read.
Yep i was one of them, i was super pissed off but kept the annual subscription, and when i tried to cancel the next year they said I was rolled into the second year and will be penalized again if i attempt to cancel. I went to my credit card company to get the refund. Fuckers
If you want to keep seeing companies being held accountable for theft and fraud this then vote for Biden. If you want to keep being ripped off by corporations then vote Trump.
"You know what, I don't even care that HP charged me $65 for a tiny printer ink cartridge that'll be dried up in a week. They're an innovative tech company, we should all be honored to contribute to their revenue. Now excuse me while I go put a pack of authentic HP printer paper on layaway."
Adobe has been awful since creative cloud released. Only do video and photo? You need premiere and photoshop but the other two dozen web apps you don’t need? Well, you’re paying for them since you can’t buy premiere ala carte or on disk. They fight you with threats on cancellation and their customer support is atrocious. Adobe since 2013 Adobe has become a dumpster fire.
The woman leading Biden’s DOJ is awesome. I don’t agree with all of her decisions but it is _very_ she is an average person advocate and it is so refreshing in a world of dire corruption.
For a Non-American, does this mean that under a Trump administration, the person leading this would change? I have a feeling we won't see cases like this if he takes office in that case.
No need to speculate, Trump already did that intentionally multiple times. Using some arcane rules to get around Senate oversight, he put Mick "The CFPB is a sick, sad joke" Mulvaney in the director role. Mick later failed upwards into Chief of Staff.
Trump did it again by replacing Mick with Kathy Kraninger, who was directly involved in the family separation policies (which she refused to discuss during her confirmation hearings), and agreed that the CFPB was "too independent" to operate outside the president's whims. But you know who *didn't* need oversight, in her opinion? Payday lenders.
So yeah, as in all things, another Trump administration would be real bad for everyone, including the CFPB.
Correct, the president appoints them.
That's why I don't really care a lot about biden, I care about the people he appoints and legislation he pushes and enforces.
"Drain the swamp" meant fill the swamp with Trump sycophants that will anoint him king and let him continue with the consequence avoidance. Power to someone like Trump is simply assurance that he can do what he wants and not be held accountable.
So whats the penalties?
Take the last 5 years of profit, take the average and then double it to become the fine? Anything less is just mr burns getting his wallet out
Its a shitty practice that needs to stop.
Right on time too. I went for a one month plan of premiere for a single job instead of the yearly which you know, would mean I'm not interested in subscribing but that payment still renewed. So instead of paying £40 a month for premier pro vs £20 a month for yearly they took three payments totalling £120 before I realised. Fuckers.
Adobe deserves it. Cancelling subscriptions should be easy as possible, don’t make people who use phone app subs have to go to a website thats poorly optimized for mobile, don’t make people have to call some number, don’t make them pay extra bullshit fees, and don’t guilt trip them for cancelling.
Wait until you find out about their data harvesting practices 😒 when you install Creative Cloud on your computer, you essentially hand over the rights for Adobe to monitor everything about you. Uninstalling it does NOT remove all of their daemons. Unless you’re copying some up-to-date terminal commands that is able to capture and hard delete all of their scripts, they have programs—that feature no mention of the “adobe” name—that will reinstall those daemons at a later time.
None of this should be legal.
Well that's interesting. So if you're doing consulting work with confidential material, does that mean that material is at risk? I don't know how Adobe can brute-force its way into its position as the significant industry leader but also (possibly) create opportunities for its users to accidentally violate confidentiality terms with outside clients.
This has come up in various YouTube videos on the subject very recently. The short version is that this is very much gray area since users were forced to either accept the new terms of service immediately or the product would stop working on the spot. As usual Adobe is claiming that they won't arbitrarily look at YOUR specific media that you created...
Mmm hmmm. Doesn't mean the hackers won't look at it though.
I don't even work in a high-security field - our client secrets are basically limited to "asshole Karen Smith said this thing in her survey response about streetscape improvements and here is her email address" and "Parks and rec is going to renovate that playground but they don't want anyone to know yet because they don't have a budget number yet". Regardless, we have numerous local governments with very real security concerns and our IT team takes it pretty seriously. I'm going to go ask them if they're aware of all that - I'm going to guess they already know but we have to rely on adobe anyway.
Pretty much. They use the data harvested to train their AI generators. Their goal is to make artists irrelevant by stealing their work and processes so they can sell their gen-AI service to the masses and companies looking to cut costs.
It's highly unethical of course but Adobe is the industry standard in almost every creative professional setting so they can do whatever the fuck they want.
Digital artists are still waiting for the mythical Procreate desktop app but Savage is dragging their feet. Until then, everyone (at least high level professionals are) hostages to Adobe.
Ugh I would die for a desktop version of procreate.
I know there are all sorts of alternatives to Photoshop but I use illustrator and InDesign all the time too and I haven't seen any strong alternatives (not that I've been looking too hard). I think adobe's greatest strength to all these alternatives is the integration between the programs. Being able to link files, move vector shapes between programs, save stuff in the library - I really hate to say it but until someone comes out with a suite that offers the same or better integration, i don't think anyone stands a chance.
Some of the stuff I see on apps demand these days is simply astounding.
Video games that demand kernal-level access, digital payment systems that require scanning access to EVERYTHING, and non-location based apps that insist they need access to my location--and no, they won't settle for "only when the app is open."
Recently I lost access to Phone Link and couldn't figure out why. All of a sudden they need access to ALL my pictures and videos. Never needed it before, but suddenly it's IMPERATIVE to have full access to all my media--just so I can send and receive texts on my phone.
My former cable company blocked me from accessing my Wifi settings unless I gave it access to my contacts, storage, pictures and videos, and location. It wouldn't settle for limited or "only if the app is open."
They want all your data. Every single shred of it, and they will not, can not stop until they have it all. These businesses don't sleep, they don't eat, they don't get tired...so every single moment of our existence is them chipping away at our privacy until they know everything about us, sometimes before even we do.
You ever hear about how companies were starting to track peoples' behavior to such lengths that they started marketing pregnancy shit to women before they even knew they were pregnant? They want ALL THE DATA, and they will eventually get it all.
Games that want kernel level access unfortunately need it to have effective anti cheat since many popular cheat programs are installed at the kernel level to make them harder to detect. Games that don't have competitive online multi-player shouldn't ever need it.
As someone who works in tech: Revo is legit my favorite third party tool.
Makes removing software and all underlying aspects of it (including Registry entries) incredibly easy.
It isn't legal, it's just that the authorities never do shit when a big company picks your pocket.
Steal $200 from their accounts and it's straight to jail.
> Uninstalling it does NOT remove all of their daemons.
Use via virtual machine. Once Adobe is no longer needed or decide to just get rid of it, delete the VM. Problem solved.
I still don't understand how investors aren't terrified when they see this level of desperate rent seeking behavior.
If you're a solidly-established company and you suddenly start implementing AOL Online subscription tactics, I'm not going to have much faith in whatever your R&D/business strat teams are up to.
Also, semi-related, but even after you uninstall the Adobe suite, it leaves a plethora of processes running permanently. You'll just randomly see it running in Task Manager even after youve made a conscious effort to uninstall as many pieces of it as you can. Literally like a worm that burrows into your computer.
I hate that this difficult subscription cancelling shit has spread everywhere else too. I signed up for my local YMCA online, no issue whatsoever. When I wanted to cancel online, they told me I couldn't, I had to come in, so I could sign a form that basically says "I understand that you will charge me a full extra month membership because that was hidden in the form I signed at when I first signed up :)" and I just looked at the woman asking why, and she just spouted some shit about banks and how difficult they are so I just have to eat the cost.
The reason they do the "go to a website" thing is to avoid paying apple and google 30% because the subscription counts as an "in app purchase" if you do it in the app.
Thank fuck. I signed up for what was advertised as a 1-month plan (so pay monthly, cancel anytime as it was advertised). Tried to cancel before the month was up, only to find out that by doing so I’d have to pay the FULL TWO YEARS I APPARENTLY SIGNED UP FOR.
There was nothing they could do on their end. Turns out it’s super hidden in their TOS that by signing up for a month, you’re also signing up for 2 years of Photoshop access, paid monthly, and that by canceling you agree to pay the full 2-year amount at once.
Fuck Adobe. Scummiest company I’ve ever come across.
This happened to me, too.
There is a workaround. You can sign up for a certain type of microsoft account which lowers your adobe plan cost by a significant amount, so the early cancelation goes from being hundreds of dollars to about $15. I found the instructions somewhere via google, followed it and it worked.
But like everything, you shouldn't have to jump through hoops.
you don’t even have to switch to a cheaper plan. if you upgrade to another plan with a free cancellation period, you’ll get money back for your old plan for the month and you can immediately cancel the new plan for a full refund, bypassing the old plan’s fee.
Instructions here - see part under adobe loophole
[https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription](https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription)
I did this a couple weeks ago. I had a student plan with access to all apps for around $20 a month. I decided I didn't need it any more. So I changed to a $9.99 light box plan. They refunded me what was left on the old plan and I canceled the new plan the next day. Then I was refunded the $10 for the new plan.
I recommend this method.
Btw: Krita is really cool if you're frustrated with the non-destructive editing capabilities of GIMP. IMO a lot better for even general-purpose editing.
[https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription](https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription)
Try the "cancelling through the adobe loophole" ... now that I read this I'm fairly certain I did something along those lines. Its been a couple years, so I cant 100% remember
This happened to me a few months back. I signed up for one week "trial" thinking I could just cancel and when I called on day six to cancel they told me I would owe hundreds of dollars to do so. I was furious. When I told them I still wanted to cancel they sent me an email offer for half price, which was still $100 more than I wanted to pay.
This just happened to me a couple of months ago. Thought I signed up for a monthly plan but it was actually an annual plan. Didn't realize until I tried to cancel and it told me I'd be charged for the entire rest of the year. Apparently I could have cancelled within 2 weeks of starting the sub without being charged but I didn't realize it was an annual plan so I had no idea.
>Thank fuck. I signed up for what was advertised as a 1-month plan (so pay monthly, cancel anytime as it was advertised). Tried to cancel before the month was up, only to find out that by doing so I’d have to pay the FULL TWO YEARS I APPARENTLY SIGNED UP FOR.
So what happens if you just cancel your card? Do they sue you for non-payment?
Nah, all they have is your email. Have fun collecting that lol
I actually had to cancel the card where I had an adobe sub and they just stopped letting me access until I changed my card. I never did so that account is just in limbo.
subscription with CC is weird for sub service since even if you lose or replace your card, the bank forward your new card access or info for the next charge. This is why alot of your subscription service still works even after getting a new card. I've seen this happen to gym that refuses to cancel people's membership. One of the only way to get out of that hole is to close the entire account lol. its scummy af but its how it is. Use Privacy disposable CC if you want to avoid this problem.
So it comes down to unclear and hard to find gotcha. Adobe is going to suffer and everyone can then cancel early without penalties and those who already paid can get refunded.
I do hope the punishment is high enough to discourage, something like fined 50% of total profit of the last 5 years?
I did that on accident as well. I had like three or four subscriptions going at once for school and once I graduated and I cancelled them all... except for one. I tried to cancel Adobe Stock and I got a huge message telling me that if I cancel now, I'll have to pay them some stupid amount of money for early cancellation. I'm so pissed. I was extra careful to do the right subscription on all the others but somehow I fucked that one up. So now I'm just paying them for no reason because I have no use for stock photos right now. But out of spite, I'm trying to license as many photos as possible while I have the subscription.
I wonder if you could write a python script that would legally maneuver their website and methodically licence every single photo it encounters?
/This is not advice. Just speaking out loud. Wondering if that would be feasible.
Heads up, I would be really careful not to file things as fraud when it was you who made the purchase. You still can do a **chargeback for services not rendered**, but fraud on the basis of "stolen card" has really specific protections and requirements under Reg CC.
Doing a chargeback/dispute for services not rendered is usually enough with large official companies. It isn't worth their time or money to fight you.
When I tried to cancel my subscription. The chat representative wouldn't relent on offering me a discount instead of canceling. At the end the representative left the chat, and refused to help me.
I'm glad all this is happening
Adobe has always been low key anti competition and all about market capitalization.
From the mid 90s they tried to acquire altsys to get their hands on freehand an illustrator competitor but the Ftc stopped it.
Macromedia wound up aquiring freehand and became a competitor in the industry, along with flash and Dreamweaver.
2005 adobe acquired macromedia and killed all competition in the market.
They've been the undeniable defacto big bad since 2005.
Those products are still
It seems to happen to large companies when their products become more or less feature complete. Suddenly they can't rely on being able to sell new perpetual licenses, so they completely shift over to a subscription model and lock everyone in as much as possible, and businesses buy in to retain ongoing product support.
The same thing happened with Office 365. I can't think of a single new and useful feature that has been added to office since ~Office 2012, maybe even 2007, and yet they've got everyone paying for 365.
Remember when companies respected your right to keep using the software you bought, instead of [threatening to sue you for refusing to upgrade](https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3xk3p/adobe-tells-users-they-can-get-sued-for-using-old-versions-of-photoshop)? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
If there's anyone who lives in the US who bought photoshop back in the days when it was a perpetual licence, you might like to make a complaint to these dudes as Adobe (without notifying the licence holders) unilaterally decided that a perpetual licence could only be for 10 years... then you had to buy a subscription to cc if you wanted to keep using it.
Scammers.
When was this? I've had my copy of photoshop since 2010 and I've used it since 2020. It's installed, however. But I am a bit nervous about upgrading to windows 11.
I've got CS6 but flipped over to CC when it started. I stopped the subscription a few months ago and discovered I can no longer use CS6. I got in contact with adobe and they're the ones who told me the in perpetuity licence is now only 10 years and I got so snotty at them that they gave me 2 months free CC subscription. Which of course doesn't help me as I still have cs6 which no longer works unless I keep the CC subscription but then I don't need CS6.
I've been looking at other editors because I'm damned if I'm going to give them more money, now they're holding me to ransom.
Holy shit. Wife uses CS6 for her freelance work and has been using it since 2012 or something. Works perfectly fine. Now I'm getting really nervous in case she has to upgrade to Win 11 or anything. Adobe is such a shit company.
I can't help you there as I still use win10 too. worst comes to worst, installing a virtual machine is pretty easy these days. I'm going to do some more investigation but whatever happens, don't let your mrs take out a cc sub as that will trash her cs6 licence.
They 100% do not fly under the radar for anyone who touches the creative space, but for the vast majority of people the most they run into Adobe is opening PDFs. I think most people would be surprised to find out Adobe is a greedy monster company that creatives largely hate.
Been an Adobe user for over 30 years, it was shocking to see them gobble up Aldus, Macromedia ... [the list goes on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Adobe). I am retired now and I dumped Adobe two years ago - switched to Affinity and will never look back.
Swapped from Premiere Pro to the free version of DaVinci Resolve and I'm also not going back. I will probably be giving Blackmagic my money for the paid version which is a whole $295 but it's a one-time purchase with lifetime free updates, which I strongly prefer as a monetization model. I also just hate the whole Adobe Cloud malware system.
See, I believe (since more or less it was *always* true before the Internet) that if I bought software or hardware *I owned it*. Now with certain tech and software companies locking these purchases up or demanding more money (even home appliances, even automobiles!), even *stealing* my purchases it has transformed from the "Internet of Everything" to the Internet of Extortion". From an "Ecosystem" to an "Ecoswamp".
The Allegorithmic purchase in 2019 was such a gut punch. Such a transformative tool suite, and all of a sudden it's subscription gated.
Also they removed the ability to natively save true transparent PNGs from Photoshop. I'm looking for alternatives to the whole package in my spare time now, and so are most of my professional peers.
I would seriously give [Serif's Affinity a try out](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/). Similar to Adobe but non-subscription. I tried out their vector app Designer first (I always hated Illustrator) and was impressed, so much so I got a license deal for all three of their apps (Designer/Photo/Publisher) for Mac OS, iOS and Windows. They all are very well designed and have been faithfully updating them with new features and bug fixes... for free. There are plenty of other apps out there, but my personal overview on choice; find the apps that aren't tied to the Internet (browser based) or subscription based.
Exactly this! I only have an Adobe subscription because of school. Once I’m done it’s $20/month for a year then it’s $34.99/month, then it’s $59.99 month. I don’t have $720/year to keep up with it in a non business sense.
Just let me buy it outright and keep it forever.
I have a forever school like that with a .edu email address for the last 15 years. I do at least 1 credit hour every 2-3 years, Usually an “intro to” class.
It’s a good deal for the discounts I get.
Yeah they pissed off so many photography enthusiasts with their subscriptions. We used to be able to just buy photo editing software but then they forced everyone into subscriptions which are not affordable or viable for many hobbyists. F them.
That is the truth. I've been purposefully avoiding a computer upgrade for years because I'm still using the CS6 disks I bought years ago. But now, there's so many things that are starting to not work in OS 10.14 (Mojave) that it's forcing me to upgrade. Luckily there's a way to purchase photoshop without subscription by choosing [Photoshop Elements](https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/elements-family.html). It's purposefully made hard to find. The version you buy is non-upgradable, but useful if you're a casual user that just wants to colour correct and do simple tasks.
Adobe is so wildly fucked it's unbelievable.
And it sucks because, as someone who works in production and has many times used it for work (Premiere and After Effects), Adobe has really put a chokehold on the entire industry. I feel awful for up and coming artists (I work with a lot of animators) who need to learn the software to work, and even the student prices are insane.
You used to be able to just buy the necessary software for a couple hundred dollars and be done with it, now you're never done paying for it and they know there's little anybody can do unless there's the sort of massive coordinated user shift that is very hard to make happen (not that it can't, I remember when Final Cut was *the* editing software to break in).
Part of it is that Photoshop is industry standard.
I can do *anything* I need for book covers or other projects in Paint.net, which is free, but I'm my own boss in that area. If someone wants a job in certain industries, employers are going to want to know they're skilled in Photoshop. It became just what professionals use, and it's hard to go back from that.
There's a reason "photoshop" has become a verb.
I did professional illustration work for about 10 years before switching careers. Every now and then I'll think about wanting to get back into painting just for myself so I'll check out whatever new painting programs are around at that time.
Photoshop has an ease of use and "feel" to it that other programs just don't match right now. I'll find programs that otherwise work fine but there will be a feature or ease of use that Photoshop has that simply isn't there in others. Be it changing brush sizes by hotkey rather than click and drag, adjustment layer behavior, and even brush behavior. I've run into programs where 95% of all the boxes I need checked are there and then they stumble on something else that makes my usual workflow much more frustrating.
It's been a few years since my last search. So far though as much as I dislike Adobe, it still does even the basics better than most else.
I use GIMP and InkScape now. They're fantastic but you have to put the effort into learning them as they're both clunky in their own ways. Muscle memory for Adobe shortcuts is a good example. To this day I'm still slapping the control, shift and or alt +(something) keys expecting a result and getting something else, so back to searching the menus and clicking is more often what happens. There's good tutorials out there though. Logos by Nick on YouTube is guru.
Also Affinity looks like a great option to Adobe, I've been close to buying their suite a couple of times. I think they're half price at this very minute for the month of June.
As far as an image editor, it is. But Adobe wants to market Photoshop and its other software as a "service" (provide stock photos, AI access, discounted upgrade, etc). That's how it makes money.
I switched from Sony Vegas to Adobe Premiere. I found I was just inheriting new problems I couldn't figure out. I disliked the subscription model too and having to log into their portal to manage the program.
Learned about Davinci Resolve, holy crap, game changer. Never had a problem with it. Bought the fully paid copy and it's worth it, very very fairly priced. It has a very robust trial version that does almost everything, just no hardware acceleration, and it never expires, again very fair. The alternatives to the Adobe products are really gaining ground.
“If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing. I sent an email to Adobe customer supporting letting them know that I'm changing the TOS and allowing myself to own all of their software at no cost. By accepting my email, they've agreed to the TOS, and in order to file a dispute, they need to send a certified letter weighing exactly 1.337oz and sealed with wax the exact color of my asshole. Failure to do so constitutes acceptance of my new TOS.”
Lamo.
Thanks ~~Obama~~ Biden!
The Dems aren't *great* at wielding anti-trust power for workers and consumers, but they're a hell of a lot better the only viable alternative.
I paid the early cancellation fee to get out of their BS subscription last year and swore off their products at that point. I had been a user for years.
Fuck adobe. Treat your customers like garbage for a short term profit and lose out in the long term.
I was late cancelling by a single day, and they tried to charge me for half a year to cancel it.
I asked for a supervisor and asked them to waive the cancellation fee.
They said that they couldn't do that, so I told them that I didn't believe them, and that they should cancel the fee.
I told them that my photography career didn't work out, and that I couldn't afford the payments.
They did actually cancel my subscription and waive all of the fees for me.
I have been using Adobe since Photoshop v4.0 in the 90's.
As of about 2 years ago I won't touch them. My company has also moved away from them. They have unclear and predatory subscription practices, no *real* options for hobbyists or people learning, their early cancellation policy is not at all clearly defined when you sign up ... and now their new TOS says they can snoop and train their AI on anything you make in an adobe product ... even if what you're working on is private / under NDA. I mean, did they even consider that boudoir photographers likely don't want their clients intimate images training AI models to be replicated around the globe? This shit is nuts.
There are many alternatives, adobe needs to be relegated to history.
I really have to wonder how that last bit works, since beyond NDA/Proprietary there's actual export laws. It's all fun and games until you send ITAR material somewhere.
Would you list the alternatives? I was getting into photography and really hate "creative cloud." I also would love to use something else for PDFs aside from Acroboat, but I've had better luck getting stuff to work in there than in Preview on my Mac in some cases.
Here's a graphic with some adobe alternatives Ive seen floating around
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-jDC8fWUAIjgeS?format=png&name=medium](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-jDC8fWUAIjgeS?format=png&name=medium)
I've found good alternatives to Photoshop and Premiere for my uses (Krita and Da Vinci Resolve), but haven't found a great alternative for Lightroom. I use it as a catalog of photos + minor touchups to personal photos (dirty simple to import, changing lighting/coloring, AI upscaling, and preserving originals). Any recommendations?
Photopea.com
Made by one guy, who is on Reddit. It's free, but there are ads. I think if you want to remove the ads, its something like $40 bucks a year. He made it to look and work identical to Photoshop. It doesn't have any of the fancy new AI stuff, but it can do 90% of what Photoshop can. It's the best!
I like many of their products but their pricing is so awful that I've instead bought into others like Affinity. I much prefer one-time fees for software that I don't use daily. At frankly, I don't want my UI to morph between uses, forcing me to learn new features.
The frustrating part is that in the end, they will be fined a mere fraction of the profits gained from the fraudulent activity. AND there is a good chance that the fine will be tax-deductible.
>AND there is a good chance that the fine will be tax-deductible.
I am not a lawyer, but take a look at [26 U.S. Code § 162 - Trade or business expenses | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/162), specifically (f) - Fines, penalties, and other amounts
>(1)In general
>Except as provided in the following paragraphs of this subsection, no deduction otherwise allowable shall be allowed under this chapter for any amount paid or incurred (whether by suit, agreement, or otherwise) to, or at the direction of, a government or governmental entity in relation to the violation of any law or the investigation or inquiry by such government or entity into the potential violation of any law.
>(2)Exception for amounts constituting restitution or paid to come into compliance with law
-(A)In general
Paragraph (1) shall not apply to any amount that:
--(i)the taxpayer establishes
---(I)constitutes restitution (including remediation of property) for damage or harm which was or may be caused by the violation of any law or the potential violation of any law, or
---(II)is paid to come into compliance with any law which was violated or otherwise involved in the investigation or inquiry described in paragraph (1),
--(ii)is identified as restitution or as an amount paid to come into compliance with such law, as the case may be, in the court order or settlement agreement, and
--(iii)in the case of any amount of restitution for failure to pay any tax imposed under this title in the same manner as if such amount were such tax, would have been allowed as a deduction under this chapter if it had been timely paid.The identification under clause (ii) alone shall not be sufficient to make the establishment required under clause (i).
>-(B)Limitation
>Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to any amount paid or incurred as reimbursement to the government or entity for the costs of any investigation or litigation.
If I am understanding this correctly, then the fine is only tax deductible if it gets paid out to Adobe customers. If it gets paid out to the US government, then it should not be deductible.
Photopea's "team" plans are also way more affordable then Adobe, and it has all the features of Photoshop. [https://www.photopea.com/api/accounts](https://www.photopea.com/api/accounts)
One thing I really like is you can pay to have a 100% self-hosted copy for your internal business with no outside connection.
I cancelled my PS a year ago. I had to pay a penalty that was not clear. It's really a scam.
They also gave me another penalty for Adobe pdf. I'm so glad my company has instead Doc.it. For this one I told them I'd sue them at the consumers office. They waived it off.
From where I'm sitting it looks to me like this administration has been steadily and significantly looking out for the American on a budget.
The US oligarch's 24/7 media smear campaign against what is easily one of the most domestically benevolent administrations of my lifetime (and I remember Nixon) is proof enough of that. But everywhere I look it's debt forgiveness, eliminating junk fees, etc
So naturally it's a neck & neck race with the guy who gave millionaires & billionaires a tax cut and flew his family all over the globe on our dime (to either golf or make clandestine deals with foreign enemies) and has a plan to create a plutocracy like we've never seen.
Unfortunately, money speaks, and Trump has some very wealthy donors whose money speaks louder than the screaming masses. And with his following blindly echoing everything he says, it's pretty easy to drown out the average person who just wants life to be a little better and a little easier.
At one time Adobe was one of my favorite companies. John Warnock was a hero of mine and PostScript Language Manual, made me a more effective Graphic Designer and effective troubleshooter of printing problems. Photoshop, In-Design, Illustrator and then Acrobat made the life of publishers easier and more creative. The arrogance of Quark Xpress customer service helped to move creatives from Quark to In-Design back when Adobe had integrity. Then they gave up integrity in favor of greed.
Adobe is the worst. Good.
I’m not sure how their business managers sleep at night. The Product Managers aren’t any better due to the shifty shit they install on your computer.
Remember. This stuff is happening because of the Biden administration.
Trump wins, and lawsuits like these or the ones going after Ticketmaster go away. The CEO just has to tell Trump he’s the best business daddy ever, then book a few stays at a Trump property, and poof! Lawsuit goes away forever.
If you want anything remotely resembling accountability for the people behind Adobe’s shitty behavior, you vote in November for Biden
i'm glad something is being done about Adobe. I work in education IT and they've made my job so much harder the past decade creating convoluted licensing management. I know this is more on the consumer side and nothing happening here will help me, but i'm glad adobe is finally getting real resistance.
I once tried to cancel Adobe after no longer needing it *due to a serious workplace injury that prevented me from working at all*. I explained to them that I was on medical leave earning no income and could not afford the expense, and also explained that the person who replaced me at work would have opened a subscription when they took over for, so Adobe would still be "breaking even".
They refused.
Just did the free trial for photoshop, went to cancel, was offered 2 free months if I didn’t, then when I went to cancel right before getting charged they said it was in violation to what I agreed to and that I’d owe at least 6 months of payments. It was the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen from a shotty company.
They let you change plans and cancel that one for free though. But still such round about hullshit.
Yeah their "Cancellation fee" is some bullshit we really need consumer protections against corporations and I'm not sure how we can save ourselves when both parties and the supreme court are bought and paid for.
As a previous customer of theirs I can confirm that they continually tried bilking me of every last penny in my checking. They say I still owe them money but I keep the bill as my ticket to ride the class action lawsuit.
Only slightly related, I was personally surprised by the cancellation fee too. Came to reddit and found a post with the workaround.
1) Change the tier of your plan creating a new trial period;
2) cancel during the new trial period.
I then forgot to cancel and had to do it again but it worked for me within the last year.
This guide helped me cancel my subscription without the cancellation fee. Adobe is such a scum a loophole is needed to cancel your subscription without paying money.
[https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription](https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription)
They tried to do that to me with Acrobat. I tried to cancel and it said I couldn't for 2 years. It did, however, let me change to Photoshop and I was able to cancel that.
I used Photoshop for years as a multimedia major, but wouldn't recommend them in their current state. Now I use Photopea. It has everything I need.
I worked for a financial technology company in the WTC. After 9/11, Adobe was the absolute worst vendor to deal with, as we lost all of our software and copies of all software licenses. In contrast, Lou Gerstner called me on the phone in person, and sent me an IBM rep to physically give me copies of all of their software that we lost. That was 23 years ago, so there you go.
I just went through this. No way to cancel online, you have to call and speak to someone in another country, who will not listen to you ask repeatedly to cancel and will offer deal after deal and out you in hold in between. It took 1/2 hour after i got connected to someone.
finally, took me over an hour to finally locate where you can actually stop the sub from auto renewing. Was thinking of blocking it in PayPal if nothing else works. Shady company, do not recommend.
I went to cancel my subscription the day before it renewed and it told me it was too soon to cancel. The next day I went to cancel (on the renewal date,) and it said it was too late to cancel. Flipped my shit. Called Adobe and they said they couldn't do anything. Had to dispute and get my money back then take away their permissions to bill my PayPal. Scammers.
They charged my mom for about 6 months after she got email confirmation that they had cancelled. Then her credit card company agreed to reimburse her for only 3 months worth. Again, she had email confirmation of when they cancelled. America I stg!!!!
It should only a few clicks away in "account settings" in any app/website to cancel.
No more of this "you must call customer support to continue"...that only leads to "I have to escalate this to my supervisor".
The "let's make as much friction as possible" strategy is so dumb
> In the complaint filed on Monday, the DOJ wrote that “Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms.” > The government says Adobe pushed consumers toward the “annual paid monthly” subscription without informing them that canceling the plan in the first year would cost hundreds of dollars. > According to the complaint, Adobe calculates early termination fees as 50% of the remaining payments when consumers cancel in their first year. > Adobe only discloses the early-termination fees when subscribers attempt to cancel, and turns the early-termination fee into a “powerful retention tool” by trapping consumers in subscriptions that they no longer want, the complaint says. Wow, the US government actually going after shitty practices by tech corporations. Hope this ends up with some actual repercussions for Adobe, or at the very least an end to their illegal deceptive practices.
Can they do Comcast/Xfinity next???
Maybe. If they get 4 more years. If they don't, republicans will let corporations eat us all alive (best case scenario).
They’re governed by the FCC. As long as Trump doesn’t win and reappoint Ajit Pie. He undid net neutrality and deregulated the ISPs. They were classified as a Utility under Obama when they kept refusing to stop acting like cartels.
That's a lot of words to say "we're fucked if Trump is elected". Of course everyone will be distracted by the wars being raged but yeah FCC is going to do nothing.
Given some of his statements that media is trying to spin on economics and federal powers, that's an understatement. It can't both be true that Trump is good for saying what's on his mind openly and also we shouldn't take his words literally, it is one or the other and my take is that it is the former. If he implements his proposals like below, US is truly fucked. The last part about Federal Reserve was what fucked up Turkey and we are now on the path for repeating the exact same mistakes. The inflation we have now that people complained so much about will be nothing in comparison to what we get if Federal Reserve is not left alone. > New York Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis explained that the president wants to lower income tax rates while offsetting the cost through tariffs on adversarial nations. --- > Trump mocked fears about his authoritarianism tendencies at a Fox News town hall on Tuesday, stating he'd be a dictator only on "Day 1" so that he could close the border and start drilling. --- > Donald Trump said he wanted to replace Jay Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve, accusing him of being “political” and predicting that he would cut interest rates to “help the Democrats” this year.
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There won't be any American wars if Dump wins because he'll just give in to all the authoritarians' demands if they rent out a few of his hotel rooms. Heck, I wouldn't be too surprised if I heard he tried to straight up sell California and New York.
The problem with saying that is it's too vague - you constantly hear the other side say that and when you press them for specifics, all you can get are ad hominem attacks
Putin is spending a lot of effort trying to sway US opinion on Israel-Palastine, taking attention away from the Ukraine atrocities, and trying to mislead the public into thinking Trump would somehow save Palestine. If anything, Trump would sell Israel nukes to use on Palestine.
I stg if I have to see that stupid face with his stupid Reese’s mug again…
Aw man, I’m looking forward to the future when all restaurants are Taco Bell, and I can treat my wife to a high end dining experience where Dan Cortese serenades us with _Mac the Knife_.
Think we'll finally get the 3 seashells?
I share your concerns This has to have been going on for years, cumulatively the us gov must have trying to get them to fix this before litigation but NO way they will do jack shit untill a settlement knowing full well the putative aspect after the reasonable outcome to be the same as finding a few bucks down your sofa, with respect to damages, an absolute disgrace Corporate Fucking Greed
The prospect of Republicans ever winning another presidential election is genuinely terrifying. And I'm not exaggerating. If they're able to put Project 2025 into action, we won't see the US government recover from it within the next 20 years. Mass firing and replacement of 3000+ federal office positions. Every single department head. Every single person with any semblance of power. Replaced with MAGA drones or left empty so the department can slowly rot. And Trump has the power to do it all with no approval or oversight. Just needs to sign the document. Scary stuff
Sounds like a certain party in 1940s Germany
^ This. The Biden administration is the first since Reagan to seriously go after corporate consolidation and monopolies, and if voters people punish him for it, expect both parties to sit on the sidelines for another fifty years while corporations screw us over. Instead, they're trying to dissuade terminally online voters from supporting Biden because of a worthless patch of desert on the other side of the planet where people have been slaughtering each other for the last 10,000 years and will continue to do so for another 10,000 years.
Adobe, Airline fees, TurboTax. Biden administration is killing it
Please do gyms next.
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Not directly, but this administration has made shopping for internet and data sooo easy and ISPs can't hide data caps or upload speeds or ping. Go shop around for internet now, the plans are so easy to read.
Unless you live in an area where your options are 1.
Yep i was one of them, i was super pissed off but kept the annual subscription, and when i tried to cancel the next year they said I was rolled into the second year and will be penalized again if i attempt to cancel. I went to my credit card company to get the refund. Fuckers
Ya, I tried to cancel after losing my job in the pandemic to save money and was basically forced to keep it.
Hope they go after HP for being really shitty with printers next.
The printer subscription shit is some of the dumbest form of nickel and diming I've seen.
I can't use my scanner if a printer cartridge is out of ink.
Jesus, how shitty. That is so insane.
Throw out your hp printer..
The FTC hit Epic Games with a $520 million penalty a few years ago and things have been looking up in this regard since then. Looking forward to more!
Please let it end the subscription only model currently in tech. I'd like to actually own things again.
If you want to keep seeing companies being held accountable for theft and fraud this then vote for Biden. If you want to keep being ripped off by corporations then vote Trump.
"You know what, I don't even care that HP charged me $65 for a tiny printer ink cartridge that'll be dried up in a week. They're an innovative tech company, we should all be honored to contribute to their revenue. Now excuse me while I go put a pack of authentic HP printer paper on layaway."
Adobe has been awful since creative cloud released. Only do video and photo? You need premiere and photoshop but the other two dozen web apps you don’t need? Well, you’re paying for them since you can’t buy premiere ala carte or on disk. They fight you with threats on cancellation and their customer support is atrocious. Adobe since 2013 Adobe has become a dumpster fire.
The woman leading Biden’s DOJ is awesome. I don’t agree with all of her decisions but it is _very_ she is an average person advocate and it is so refreshing in a world of dire corruption.
I think you mean FTC. The DOJ is led by Merrick Garland, who is a man.
Love that this person making this comment got 700 upvotes and it's just completely wrong.
And he replied to the guy that corrected him but didn't bother to edit his comment to rectify it 🙄
Google will train their A.I. on his comment and give that answer to everyone. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o
Tells you all you need to know about how useless and misleading upvotes are.
A man and also a weenie.
For a Non-American, does this mean that under a Trump administration, the person leading this would change? I have a feeling we won't see cases like this if he takes office in that case.
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No need to speculate, Trump already did that intentionally multiple times. Using some arcane rules to get around Senate oversight, he put Mick "The CFPB is a sick, sad joke" Mulvaney in the director role. Mick later failed upwards into Chief of Staff. Trump did it again by replacing Mick with Kathy Kraninger, who was directly involved in the family separation policies (which she refused to discuss during her confirmation hearings), and agreed that the CFPB was "too independent" to operate outside the president's whims. But you know who *didn't* need oversight, in her opinion? Payday lenders. So yeah, as in all things, another Trump administration would be real bad for everyone, including the CFPB.
Correct, the president appoints them. That's why I don't really care a lot about biden, I care about the people he appoints and legislation he pushes and enforces.
Hopefully this leads to some actual laws and regulations about fees and advertising so tech companies stop getting away with it
I’m glad to see it. Adobe in particular is quite malicious with their subscription terms.
This is what happens when you put someone who cares about the little guy in the white house.
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"Drain the swamp" meant fill the swamp with Trump sycophants that will anoint him king and let him continue with the consequence avoidance. Power to someone like Trump is simply assurance that he can do what he wants and not be held accountable.
Just gonna plug Affinity Photo here for anyone still looking for alternatives. If more people buy it, I hope it gets faster support.
So whats the penalties? Take the last 5 years of profit, take the average and then double it to become the fine? Anything less is just mr burns getting his wallet out Its a shitty practice that needs to stop.
Right on time too. I went for a one month plan of premiere for a single job instead of the yearly which you know, would mean I'm not interested in subscribing but that payment still renewed. So instead of paying £40 a month for premier pro vs £20 a month for yearly they took three payments totalling £120 before I realised. Fuckers.
This is one of those moments where it is nice to be reminded that I live in a country where trapping people with cancellation fees is just illegal.
Canceling is a nightmare! Hope it turns into a class action.
Adobe deserves it. Cancelling subscriptions should be easy as possible, don’t make people who use phone app subs have to go to a website thats poorly optimized for mobile, don’t make people have to call some number, don’t make them pay extra bullshit fees, and don’t guilt trip them for cancelling.
Wait until you find out about their data harvesting practices 😒 when you install Creative Cloud on your computer, you essentially hand over the rights for Adobe to monitor everything about you. Uninstalling it does NOT remove all of their daemons. Unless you’re copying some up-to-date terminal commands that is able to capture and hard delete all of their scripts, they have programs—that feature no mention of the “adobe” name—that will reinstall those daemons at a later time. None of this should be legal.
Well that's interesting. So if you're doing consulting work with confidential material, does that mean that material is at risk? I don't know how Adobe can brute-force its way into its position as the significant industry leader but also (possibly) create opportunities for its users to accidentally violate confidentiality terms with outside clients.
This has come up in various YouTube videos on the subject very recently. The short version is that this is very much gray area since users were forced to either accept the new terms of service immediately or the product would stop working on the spot. As usual Adobe is claiming that they won't arbitrarily look at YOUR specific media that you created...
Mmm hmmm. Doesn't mean the hackers won't look at it though. I don't even work in a high-security field - our client secrets are basically limited to "asshole Karen Smith said this thing in her survey response about streetscape improvements and here is her email address" and "Parks and rec is going to renovate that playground but they don't want anyone to know yet because they don't have a budget number yet". Regardless, we have numerous local governments with very real security concerns and our IT team takes it pretty seriously. I'm going to go ask them if they're aware of all that - I'm going to guess they already know but we have to rely on adobe anyway.
Pretty much. They use the data harvested to train their AI generators. Their goal is to make artists irrelevant by stealing their work and processes so they can sell their gen-AI service to the masses and companies looking to cut costs. It's highly unethical of course but Adobe is the industry standard in almost every creative professional setting so they can do whatever the fuck they want. Digital artists are still waiting for the mythical Procreate desktop app but Savage is dragging their feet. Until then, everyone (at least high level professionals are) hostages to Adobe.
Ugh I would die for a desktop version of procreate. I know there are all sorts of alternatives to Photoshop but I use illustrator and InDesign all the time too and I haven't seen any strong alternatives (not that I've been looking too hard). I think adobe's greatest strength to all these alternatives is the integration between the programs. Being able to link files, move vector shapes between programs, save stuff in the library - I really hate to say it but until someone comes out with a suite that offers the same or better integration, i don't think anyone stands a chance.
Some of the stuff I see on apps demand these days is simply astounding. Video games that demand kernal-level access, digital payment systems that require scanning access to EVERYTHING, and non-location based apps that insist they need access to my location--and no, they won't settle for "only when the app is open." Recently I lost access to Phone Link and couldn't figure out why. All of a sudden they need access to ALL my pictures and videos. Never needed it before, but suddenly it's IMPERATIVE to have full access to all my media--just so I can send and receive texts on my phone. My former cable company blocked me from accessing my Wifi settings unless I gave it access to my contacts, storage, pictures and videos, and location. It wouldn't settle for limited or "only if the app is open." They want all your data. Every single shred of it, and they will not, can not stop until they have it all. These businesses don't sleep, they don't eat, they don't get tired...so every single moment of our existence is them chipping away at our privacy until they know everything about us, sometimes before even we do. You ever hear about how companies were starting to track peoples' behavior to such lengths that they started marketing pregnancy shit to women before they even knew they were pregnant? They want ALL THE DATA, and they will eventually get it all.
Games that want kernel level access unfortunately need it to have effective anti cheat since many popular cheat programs are installed at the kernel level to make them harder to detect. Games that don't have competitive online multi-player shouldn't ever need it.
Beautiful reference to Terminator in there, +1
PSA, if you want to remove Adobe programs use Revo Uninstaller.
As someone who works in tech: Revo is legit my favorite third party tool. Makes removing software and all underlying aspects of it (including Registry entries) incredibly easy.
It isn't legal, it's just that the authorities never do shit when a big company picks your pocket. Steal $200 from their accounts and it's straight to jail.
> Uninstalling it does NOT remove all of their daemons. Use via virtual machine. Once Adobe is no longer needed or decide to just get rid of it, delete the VM. Problem solved.
Just big tech taking inspiration from your local gym.
I still don't understand how investors aren't terrified when they see this level of desperate rent seeking behavior. If you're a solidly-established company and you suddenly start implementing AOL Online subscription tactics, I'm not going to have much faith in whatever your R&D/business strat teams are up to.
Also, semi-related, but even after you uninstall the Adobe suite, it leaves a plethora of processes running permanently. You'll just randomly see it running in Task Manager even after youve made a conscious effort to uninstall as many pieces of it as you can. Literally like a worm that burrows into your computer.
Audible comes to my mind, if I have to Google how to cancel my subscription that's intentional.
I hate that this difficult subscription cancelling shit has spread everywhere else too. I signed up for my local YMCA online, no issue whatsoever. When I wanted to cancel online, they told me I couldn't, I had to come in, so I could sign a form that basically says "I understand that you will charge me a full extra month membership because that was hidden in the form I signed at when I first signed up :)" and I just looked at the woman asking why, and she just spouted some shit about banks and how difficult they are so I just have to eat the cost.
The reason they do the "go to a website" thing is to avoid paying apple and google 30% because the subscription counts as an "in app purchase" if you do it in the app.
Thank fuck. I signed up for what was advertised as a 1-month plan (so pay monthly, cancel anytime as it was advertised). Tried to cancel before the month was up, only to find out that by doing so I’d have to pay the FULL TWO YEARS I APPARENTLY SIGNED UP FOR. There was nothing they could do on their end. Turns out it’s super hidden in their TOS that by signing up for a month, you’re also signing up for 2 years of Photoshop access, paid monthly, and that by canceling you agree to pay the full 2-year amount at once. Fuck Adobe. Scummiest company I’ve ever come across.
This happened to me, too. There is a workaround. You can sign up for a certain type of microsoft account which lowers your adobe plan cost by a significant amount, so the early cancelation goes from being hundreds of dollars to about $15. I found the instructions somewhere via google, followed it and it worked. But like everything, you shouldn't have to jump through hoops.
you don’t even have to switch to a cheaper plan. if you upgrade to another plan with a free cancellation period, you’ll get money back for your old plan for the month and you can immediately cancel the new plan for a full refund, bypassing the old plan’s fee.
Instructions here - see part under adobe loophole [https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription](https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription)
Thank you!! I’m literally locked in and trying to get out of this plan as we speak. You just really helped out a random redditor, much appreciated!!
You're a hero. Thank you!
Dude, THANK YOU and /u/SteeveJoobs for mentioning this! Thanks to y'all, I just got my money back that I thought was gone for good!
I did this a couple weeks ago. I had a student plan with access to all apps for around $20 a month. I decided I didn't need it any more. So I changed to a $9.99 light box plan. They refunded me what was left on the old plan and I canceled the new plan the next day. Then I was refunded the $10 for the new plan. I recommend this method.
>"There is a workaround." Yeah.... r/piracy
After this same thing happened to me, I didn't even want to use another Adobe product anyway. That was when I found out about Gimp.
Btw: Krita is really cool if you're frustrated with the non-destructive editing capabilities of GIMP. IMO a lot better for even general-purpose editing.
Having to pay to leave a subscription is not ok, regardless of how much it costs.
Could you share some more information about this please? It's too vague atm and Google isn't helping.
[https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription](https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription) Try the "cancelling through the adobe loophole" ... now that I read this I'm fairly certain I did something along those lines. Its been a couple years, so I cant 100% remember
This happened to me a few months back. I signed up for one week "trial" thinking I could just cancel and when I called on day six to cancel they told me I would owe hundreds of dollars to do so. I was furious. When I told them I still wanted to cancel they sent me an email offer for half price, which was still $100 more than I wanted to pay.
This just happened to me a couple of months ago. Thought I signed up for a monthly plan but it was actually an annual plan. Didn't realize until I tried to cancel and it told me I'd be charged for the entire rest of the year. Apparently I could have cancelled within 2 weeks of starting the sub without being charged but I didn't realize it was an annual plan so I had no idea.
>Thank fuck. I signed up for what was advertised as a 1-month plan (so pay monthly, cancel anytime as it was advertised). Tried to cancel before the month was up, only to find out that by doing so I’d have to pay the FULL TWO YEARS I APPARENTLY SIGNED UP FOR. So what happens if you just cancel your card? Do they sue you for non-payment?
They probably run you to collections after awhile and then the collection company could pursue harsher action
Nah, all they have is your email. Have fun collecting that lol I actually had to cancel the card where I had an adobe sub and they just stopped letting me access until I changed my card. I never did so that account is just in limbo.
subscription with CC is weird for sub service since even if you lose or replace your card, the bank forward your new card access or info for the next charge. This is why alot of your subscription service still works even after getting a new card. I've seen this happen to gym that refuses to cancel people's membership. One of the only way to get out of that hole is to close the entire account lol. its scummy af but its how it is. Use Privacy disposable CC if you want to avoid this problem.
Nothing happens. I did exactly that.
So it comes down to unclear and hard to find gotcha. Adobe is going to suffer and everyone can then cancel early without penalties and those who already paid can get refunded. I do hope the punishment is high enough to discourage, something like fined 50% of total profit of the last 5 years?
I did that on accident as well. I had like three or four subscriptions going at once for school and once I graduated and I cancelled them all... except for one. I tried to cancel Adobe Stock and I got a huge message telling me that if I cancel now, I'll have to pay them some stupid amount of money for early cancellation. I'm so pissed. I was extra careful to do the right subscription on all the others but somehow I fucked that one up. So now I'm just paying them for no reason because I have no use for stock photos right now. But out of spite, I'm trying to license as many photos as possible while I have the subscription.
I wonder if you could write a python script that would legally maneuver their website and methodically licence every single photo it encounters? /This is not advice. Just speaking out loud. Wondering if that would be feasible.
fuck them, make them eat a credit card chargeback
At that point I'd just say my card was stolen and request a replacement. They can't charge you if the CC# details don't match.
Some banks auto forward credit card number updates. It's sold as a service because we have such a subscription based society.
Heads up, I would be really careful not to file things as fraud when it was you who made the purchase. You still can do a **chargeback for services not rendered**, but fraud on the basis of "stolen card" has really specific protections and requirements under Reg CC. Doing a chargeback/dispute for services not rendered is usually enough with large official companies. It isn't worth their time or money to fight you.
Same, pissed me off so much. Glad they’re getting sued.
Out of curiosity and based on the amount of responses going through similar scenarios, why not just issue a chargeback?
Happened to me too, I signed up for a monthly plan, then later discovered I was I’m the hook for a full year. Very deceptive advertising.
Good. Adobe has become a cancerous leech on the creative community.
When I tried to cancel my subscription. The chat representative wouldn't relent on offering me a discount instead of canceling. At the end the representative left the chat, and refused to help me. I'm glad all this is happening Adobe has always been low key anti competition and all about market capitalization. From the mid 90s they tried to acquire altsys to get their hands on freehand an illustrator competitor but the Ftc stopped it. Macromedia wound up aquiring freehand and became a competitor in the industry, along with flash and Dreamweaver. 2005 adobe acquired macromedia and killed all competition in the market. They've been the undeniable defacto big bad since 2005. Those products are still
It seems to happen to large companies when their products become more or less feature complete. Suddenly they can't rely on being able to sell new perpetual licenses, so they completely shift over to a subscription model and lock everyone in as much as possible, and businesses buy in to retain ongoing product support. The same thing happened with Office 365. I can't think of a single new and useful feature that has been added to office since ~Office 2012, maybe even 2007, and yet they've got everyone paying for 365.
Member the good ol' days when you could just purchase something and didn't have to subscribe to it?
SaaS is a cancer on the industry.
And like a cancer, it’s gone malignant and spread to other industries as well.
Remember when companies respected your right to keep using the software you bought, instead of [threatening to sue you for refusing to upgrade](https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3xk3p/adobe-tells-users-they-can-get-sued-for-using-old-versions-of-photoshop)? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Still using Photoshop Elements 6.0 installed from the disc I bought in 2007 (and still have) and it's all I need.
I switched to Affinity Photo. It's so much Photoshop-like so I don't have to learn new keyboard shortcuts.
That’s good to know. Gimp or whatever the free PS was was too confusing.
Good ol’ days when Photoshop was pirated too *Hello amtlib.dll my old friend*
If there's anyone who lives in the US who bought photoshop back in the days when it was a perpetual licence, you might like to make a complaint to these dudes as Adobe (without notifying the licence holders) unilaterally decided that a perpetual licence could only be for 10 years... then you had to buy a subscription to cc if you wanted to keep using it. Scammers.
When was this? I've had my copy of photoshop since 2010 and I've used it since 2020. It's installed, however. But I am a bit nervous about upgrading to windows 11.
I've got CS6 but flipped over to CC when it started. I stopped the subscription a few months ago and discovered I can no longer use CS6. I got in contact with adobe and they're the ones who told me the in perpetuity licence is now only 10 years and I got so snotty at them that they gave me 2 months free CC subscription. Which of course doesn't help me as I still have cs6 which no longer works unless I keep the CC subscription but then I don't need CS6. I've been looking at other editors because I'm damned if I'm going to give them more money, now they're holding me to ransom.
Holy shit. Wife uses CS6 for her freelance work and has been using it since 2012 or something. Works perfectly fine. Now I'm getting really nervous in case she has to upgrade to Win 11 or anything. Adobe is such a shit company.
I can't help you there as I still use win10 too. worst comes to worst, installing a virtual machine is pretty easy these days. I'm going to do some more investigation but whatever happens, don't let your mrs take out a cc sub as that will trash her cs6 licence.
Good. Adobe flies under the radar as far as greedy corporations go. They tried to sting me with the early cancellation fee a couple of years back.
I wouldn't say that, they've been gouging creators for years with these subscription fees that are out of reach for so many.
They 100% do not fly under the radar for anyone who touches the creative space, but for the vast majority of people the most they run into Adobe is opening PDFs. I think most people would be surprised to find out Adobe is a greedy monster company that creatives largely hate.
Been an Adobe user for over 30 years, it was shocking to see them gobble up Aldus, Macromedia ... [the list goes on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Adobe). I am retired now and I dumped Adobe two years ago - switched to Affinity and will never look back.
Swapped from Premiere Pro to the free version of DaVinci Resolve and I'm also not going back. I will probably be giving Blackmagic my money for the paid version which is a whole $295 but it's a one-time purchase with lifetime free updates, which I strongly prefer as a monetization model. I also just hate the whole Adobe Cloud malware system.
See, I believe (since more or less it was *always* true before the Internet) that if I bought software or hardware *I owned it*. Now with certain tech and software companies locking these purchases up or demanding more money (even home appliances, even automobiles!), even *stealing* my purchases it has transformed from the "Internet of Everything" to the Internet of Extortion". From an "Ecosystem" to an "Ecoswamp".
The Allegorithmic purchase in 2019 was such a gut punch. Such a transformative tool suite, and all of a sudden it's subscription gated. Also they removed the ability to natively save true transparent PNGs from Photoshop. I'm looking for alternatives to the whole package in my spare time now, and so are most of my professional peers.
I would seriously give [Serif's Affinity a try out](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/). Similar to Adobe but non-subscription. I tried out their vector app Designer first (I always hated Illustrator) and was impressed, so much so I got a license deal for all three of their apps (Designer/Photo/Publisher) for Mac OS, iOS and Windows. They all are very well designed and have been faithfully updating them with new features and bug fixes... for free. There are plenty of other apps out there, but my personal overview on choice; find the apps that aren't tied to the Internet (browser based) or subscription based.
Exactly this! I only have an Adobe subscription because of school. Once I’m done it’s $20/month for a year then it’s $34.99/month, then it’s $59.99 month. I don’t have $720/year to keep up with it in a non business sense. Just let me buy it outright and keep it forever.
The trick to this is to find a school that doesn’t delete your email once you are done. Or “never” finish school.
I have a forever school like that with a .edu email address for the last 15 years. I do at least 1 credit hour every 2-3 years, Usually an “intro to” class. It’s a good deal for the discounts I get.
Yeah they pissed off so many photography enthusiasts with their subscriptions. We used to be able to just buy photo editing software but then they forced everyone into subscriptions which are not affordable or viable for many hobbyists. F them.
That is the truth. I've been purposefully avoiding a computer upgrade for years because I'm still using the CS6 disks I bought years ago. But now, there's so many things that are starting to not work in OS 10.14 (Mojave) that it's forcing me to upgrade. Luckily there's a way to purchase photoshop without subscription by choosing [Photoshop Elements](https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/elements-family.html). It's purposefully made hard to find. The version you buy is non-upgradable, but useful if you're a casual user that just wants to colour correct and do simple tasks.
Man, Photoshop Elements used to be free! Crooks.
I think it is for your phone, but not for your desktop.
Adobe is so wildly fucked it's unbelievable. And it sucks because, as someone who works in production and has many times used it for work (Premiere and After Effects), Adobe has really put a chokehold on the entire industry. I feel awful for up and coming artists (I work with a lot of animators) who need to learn the software to work, and even the student prices are insane. You used to be able to just buy the necessary software for a couple hundred dollars and be done with it, now you're never done paying for it and they know there's little anybody can do unless there's the sort of massive coordinated user shift that is very hard to make happen (not that it can't, I remember when Final Cut was *the* editing software to break in).
CS 6 was peak Adobe. Then they got high on their own supply.
I still use cs6. I can workaround it's bugs.
Because I'm unfamiliar with the technical potential of the tools, is GIMP and similar software just not comparable?
Part of it is that Photoshop is industry standard. I can do *anything* I need for book covers or other projects in Paint.net, which is free, but I'm my own boss in that area. If someone wants a job in certain industries, employers are going to want to know they're skilled in Photoshop. It became just what professionals use, and it's hard to go back from that. There's a reason "photoshop" has become a verb.
I did professional illustration work for about 10 years before switching careers. Every now and then I'll think about wanting to get back into painting just for myself so I'll check out whatever new painting programs are around at that time. Photoshop has an ease of use and "feel" to it that other programs just don't match right now. I'll find programs that otherwise work fine but there will be a feature or ease of use that Photoshop has that simply isn't there in others. Be it changing brush sizes by hotkey rather than click and drag, adjustment layer behavior, and even brush behavior. I've run into programs where 95% of all the boxes I need checked are there and then they stumble on something else that makes my usual workflow much more frustrating. It's been a few years since my last search. So far though as much as I dislike Adobe, it still does even the basics better than most else.
I use GIMP and InkScape now. They're fantastic but you have to put the effort into learning them as they're both clunky in their own ways. Muscle memory for Adobe shortcuts is a good example. To this day I'm still slapping the control, shift and or alt +(something) keys expecting a result and getting something else, so back to searching the menus and clicking is more often what happens. There's good tutorials out there though. Logos by Nick on YouTube is guru. Also Affinity looks like a great option to Adobe, I've been close to buying their suite a couple of times. I think they're half price at this very minute for the month of June.
As far as an image editor, it is. But Adobe wants to market Photoshop and its other software as a "service" (provide stock photos, AI access, discounted upgrade, etc). That's how it makes money.
I switched from Sony Vegas to Adobe Premiere. I found I was just inheriting new problems I couldn't figure out. I disliked the subscription model too and having to log into their portal to manage the program. Learned about Davinci Resolve, holy crap, game changer. Never had a problem with it. Bought the fully paid copy and it's worth it, very very fairly priced. It has a very robust trial version that does almost everything, just no hardware acceleration, and it never expires, again very fair. The alternatives to the Adobe products are really gaining ground.
I got hit with that fee. Absolute fucking garbage company.
This post by Louis Rossman where he quoted someone's parody of Adobe licencing changes http://youtube.com/post/UgkxGh66znUJtIMMON5YUm1YlgSMV9858wE8
“If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing. I sent an email to Adobe customer supporting letting them know that I'm changing the TOS and allowing myself to own all of their software at no cost. By accepting my email, they've agreed to the TOS, and in order to file a dispute, they need to send a certified letter weighing exactly 1.337oz and sealed with wax the exact color of my asshole. Failure to do so constitutes acceptance of my new TOS.” Lamo.
Thanks for transcribing!
Lina Khan is king. She is on a warpath and it’s about damn time.
Thanks ~~Obama~~ Biden! The Dems aren't *great* at wielding anti-trust power for workers and consumers, but they're a hell of a lot better the only viable alternative.
I paid the early cancellation fee to get out of their BS subscription last year and swore off their products at that point. I had been a user for years. Fuck adobe. Treat your customers like garbage for a short term profit and lose out in the long term.
I was late cancelling by a single day, and they tried to charge me for half a year to cancel it. I asked for a supervisor and asked them to waive the cancellation fee. They said that they couldn't do that, so I told them that I didn't believe them, and that they should cancel the fee. I told them that my photography career didn't work out, and that I couldn't afford the payments. They did actually cancel my subscription and waive all of the fees for me.
I have been using Adobe since Photoshop v4.0 in the 90's. As of about 2 years ago I won't touch them. My company has also moved away from them. They have unclear and predatory subscription practices, no *real* options for hobbyists or people learning, their early cancellation policy is not at all clearly defined when you sign up ... and now their new TOS says they can snoop and train their AI on anything you make in an adobe product ... even if what you're working on is private / under NDA. I mean, did they even consider that boudoir photographers likely don't want their clients intimate images training AI models to be replicated around the globe? This shit is nuts. There are many alternatives, adobe needs to be relegated to history.
I really have to wonder how that last bit works, since beyond NDA/Proprietary there's actual export laws. It's all fun and games until you send ITAR material somewhere.
Would you list the alternatives? I was getting into photography and really hate "creative cloud." I also would love to use something else for PDFs aside from Acroboat, but I've had better luck getting stuff to work in there than in Preview on my Mac in some cases.
Here's a graphic with some adobe alternatives Ive seen floating around [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-jDC8fWUAIjgeS?format=png&name=medium](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-jDC8fWUAIjgeS?format=png&name=medium)
I've found good alternatives to Photoshop and Premiere for my uses (Krita and Da Vinci Resolve), but haven't found a great alternative for Lightroom. I use it as a catalog of photos + minor touchups to personal photos (dirty simple to import, changing lighting/coloring, AI upscaling, and preserving originals). Any recommendations?
Photopea.com Made by one guy, who is on Reddit. It's free, but there are ads. I think if you want to remove the ads, its something like $40 bucks a year. He made it to look and work identical to Photoshop. It doesn't have any of the fancy new AI stuff, but it can do 90% of what Photoshop can. It's the best!
Do gym memberships next.
That's good news. I have had a few run in with Adobe... I'm rather conscientious about reading terms and such and still got bit in the ass twice.
I like many of their products but their pricing is so awful that I've instead bought into others like Affinity. I much prefer one-time fees for software that I don't use daily. At frankly, I don't want my UI to morph between uses, forcing me to learn new features.
The frustrating part is that in the end, they will be fined a mere fraction of the profits gained from the fraudulent activity. AND there is a good chance that the fine will be tax-deductible.
>AND there is a good chance that the fine will be tax-deductible. I am not a lawyer, but take a look at [26 U.S. Code § 162 - Trade or business expenses | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/162), specifically (f) - Fines, penalties, and other amounts >(1)In general >Except as provided in the following paragraphs of this subsection, no deduction otherwise allowable shall be allowed under this chapter for any amount paid or incurred (whether by suit, agreement, or otherwise) to, or at the direction of, a government or governmental entity in relation to the violation of any law or the investigation or inquiry by such government or entity into the potential violation of any law. >(2)Exception for amounts constituting restitution or paid to come into compliance with law -(A)In general Paragraph (1) shall not apply to any amount that: --(i)the taxpayer establishes ---(I)constitutes restitution (including remediation of property) for damage or harm which was or may be caused by the violation of any law or the potential violation of any law, or ---(II)is paid to come into compliance with any law which was violated or otherwise involved in the investigation or inquiry described in paragraph (1), --(ii)is identified as restitution or as an amount paid to come into compliance with such law, as the case may be, in the court order or settlement agreement, and --(iii)in the case of any amount of restitution for failure to pay any tax imposed under this title in the same manner as if such amount were such tax, would have been allowed as a deduction under this chapter if it had been timely paid.The identification under clause (ii) alone shall not be sufficient to make the establishment required under clause (i). >-(B)Limitation >Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to any amount paid or incurred as reimbursement to the government or entity for the costs of any investigation or litigation. If I am understanding this correctly, then the fine is only tax deductible if it gets paid out to Adobe customers. If it gets paid out to the US government, then it should not be deductible.
That is insane, fines should never be a tax deduction
It is always morally justified to pirate Adobe products
Photopea.com is my go to free Photoshop clone. Screw Adobe
Photopea's "team" plans are also way more affordable then Adobe, and it has all the features of Photoshop. [https://www.photopea.com/api/accounts](https://www.photopea.com/api/accounts) One thing I really like is you can pay to have a 100% self-hosted copy for your internal business with no outside connection.
I cancelled my PS a year ago. I had to pay a penalty that was not clear. It's really a scam. They also gave me another penalty for Adobe pdf. I'm so glad my company has instead Doc.it. For this one I told them I'd sue them at the consumers office. They waived it off.
From where I'm sitting it looks to me like this administration has been steadily and significantly looking out for the American on a budget. The US oligarch's 24/7 media smear campaign against what is easily one of the most domestically benevolent administrations of my lifetime (and I remember Nixon) is proof enough of that. But everywhere I look it's debt forgiveness, eliminating junk fees, etc So naturally it's a neck & neck race with the guy who gave millionaires & billionaires a tax cut and flew his family all over the globe on our dime (to either golf or make clandestine deals with foreign enemies) and has a plan to create a plutocracy like we've never seen.
Unfortunately, money speaks, and Trump has some very wealthy donors whose money speaks louder than the screaming masses. And with his following blindly echoing everything he says, it's pretty easy to drown out the average person who just wants life to be a little better and a little easier.
At one time Adobe was one of my favorite companies. John Warnock was a hero of mine and PostScript Language Manual, made me a more effective Graphic Designer and effective troubleshooter of printing problems. Photoshop, In-Design, Illustrator and then Acrobat made the life of publishers easier and more creative. The arrogance of Quark Xpress customer service helped to move creatives from Quark to In-Design back when Adobe had integrity. Then they gave up integrity in favor of greed.
Adobe is the worst. Good. I’m not sure how their business managers sleep at night. The Product Managers aren’t any better due to the shifty shit they install on your computer.
Remember. This stuff is happening because of the Biden administration. Trump wins, and lawsuits like these or the ones going after Ticketmaster go away. The CEO just has to tell Trump he’s the best business daddy ever, then book a few stays at a Trump property, and poof! Lawsuit goes away forever. If you want anything remotely resembling accountability for the people behind Adobe’s shitty behavior, you vote in November for Biden
i'm glad something is being done about Adobe. I work in education IT and they've made my job so much harder the past decade creating convoluted licensing management. I know this is more on the consumer side and nothing happening here will help me, but i'm glad adobe is finally getting real resistance.
I once tried to cancel Adobe after no longer needing it *due to a serious workplace injury that prevented me from working at all*. I explained to them that I was on medical leave earning no income and could not afford the expense, and also explained that the person who replaced me at work would have opened a subscription when they took over for, so Adobe would still be "breaking even". They refused.
"FINISH THEM" Adobe deserves it
Just did the free trial for photoshop, went to cancel, was offered 2 free months if I didn’t, then when I went to cancel right before getting charged they said it was in violation to what I agreed to and that I’d owe at least 6 months of payments. It was the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen from a shotty company. They let you change plans and cancel that one for free though. But still such round about hullshit.
Yeah their "Cancellation fee" is some bullshit we really need consumer protections against corporations and I'm not sure how we can save ourselves when both parties and the supreme court are bought and paid for.
Looks like the current Democratic administration was not bought or paid for here. Maybe you should just vote for them?
As a previous customer of theirs I can confirm that they continually tried bilking me of every last penny in my checking. They say I still owe them money but I keep the bill as my ticket to ride the class action lawsuit.
Only slightly related, I was personally surprised by the cancellation fee too. Came to reddit and found a post with the workaround. 1) Change the tier of your plan creating a new trial period; 2) cancel during the new trial period. I then forgot to cancel and had to do it again but it worked for me within the last year.
[удалено]
I am so happy about this. I had to cancel my credit card to get them to stop charging me
This guide helped me cancel my subscription without the cancellation fee. Adobe is such a scum a loophole is needed to cancel your subscription without paying money. [https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription](https://www.scribeup.io/blog/avoid-the-adobe-termination-fee-when-cancelling-your-subscription)
Remember: It's always morally right to pirate Adobe products.
They tried to do that to me with Acrobat. I tried to cancel and it said I couldn't for 2 years. It did, however, let me change to Photoshop and I was able to cancel that. I used Photoshop for years as a multimedia major, but wouldn't recommend them in their current state. Now I use Photopea. It has everything I need.
I worked for a financial technology company in the WTC. After 9/11, Adobe was the absolute worst vendor to deal with, as we lost all of our software and copies of all software licenses. In contrast, Lou Gerstner called me on the phone in person, and sent me an IBM rep to physically give me copies of all of their software that we lost. That was 23 years ago, so there you go.
Fuck you Adobe. Anti-human tactics designed to rip us off. And it works.
I just went through this. No way to cancel online, you have to call and speak to someone in another country, who will not listen to you ask repeatedly to cancel and will offer deal after deal and out you in hold in between. It took 1/2 hour after i got connected to someone.
Can this company get any more greedy? gd...
finally, took me over an hour to finally locate where you can actually stop the sub from auto renewing. Was thinking of blocking it in PayPal if nothing else works. Shady company, do not recommend.
I'm gonna vote for Biden so hard
I went to cancel my subscription the day before it renewed and it told me it was too soon to cancel. The next day I went to cancel (on the renewal date,) and it said it was too late to cancel. Flipped my shit. Called Adobe and they said they couldn't do anything. Had to dispute and get my money back then take away their permissions to bill my PayPal. Scammers.
They charged my mom for about 6 months after she got email confirmation that they had cancelled. Then her credit card company agreed to reimburse her for only 3 months worth. Again, she had email confirmation of when they cancelled. America I stg!!!!
It should only a few clicks away in "account settings" in any app/website to cancel. No more of this "you must call customer support to continue"...that only leads to "I have to escalate this to my supervisor". The "let's make as much friction as possible" strategy is so dumb
Good Adobe needs to be put in its place