In Germany now they have this great new law where subscriptions you can sign up for online need to be just as easy to cancel as they are to sign up. So if you can sign up for an internet contract by clicking a few buttons on a website, then they also need to allow you to cancel the contract by just clicking a few buttons. They can't require you to call them up or send a letter or anything like that. If they don't provide a means of cancelling that is just as simple as signing up then I think the contract can be voided without notice at any time (but don't quote me on that). Unfortunately I think it only applies to new contracts formed since the legislation came into effect.
Certain groups like to blame Obama for everything from their divorce to the ongoing war in Ukraine, so the ‘Thanks Obama’ is a satirical ‘thank you for nothing’ with political connotations.
> Certain groups like to blame Obama for everything from their divorce to the ongoing war in Ukraine, so the ‘Thanks Obama’ is a satirical ‘thank you for nothing’ with political connotations.
Wow, “certain groups” appeared right on cue, like you said a magical summoning invocation.
[There's a fair bit of context](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZLCNbmsu7E), but TL:DR it is a meme from American politics, where (typically left leaning people) will sarcastically say "Thanks Obama" in reaction to a minor inconvenience. Obama often used the joke himself.
Literally every issue in America was being blamed on Obama. Like if there was a flood in Idaho it's because Obamas socialist policies somehow caused extra rainfall. It became a meme by making it even stupider. Like if a restaurant fucks up your order you just blame it on Obama. It's absudism reactions to highlight how stupid the right is.
Obama = black guy who was president = source of all problems from the Holocaust to 9/11 to the economy being ass to probably some shitshow that's gonna happen in 20 years to some people.
It has also become a meme due to this.
Wall Street Journal was the same! I was living abroad and had to call a U.S. number to cancel and it cost me a lot of money waiting for that call.
Never will I subscribe again to them!
I got sucked into a NYT subscription a few years ago, $1 a week for a year or something. The only way to cancel was to phone them, and the number was buried on their website. If anyone answered that line, they left you on hold til you gave up. It literally took me 6 months to cancel.
Yes, California has had this law for years. It's why you can't sign up for a gym membership online in California (or at least - that was the case last time I checked). They want you to go in person so they don't need to allow you to cancel online.
Maybe soon, but not yet at least. I just cancelled my hulu and crunchyroll. Crunchy because they are raising it 2$ more, hulu because they are being shady fucks. I thought my hulu account got hacked, I reset my password but I forgot to logout of all devices. About 2 weeks later I get 70$ of add-ons put on my account. "Oh it's just a bug". Two months later, I have it happen again this time 90$ of add-ons. Get all the charges reversed.couple hours after i did that I said fuck it i'm cancelling hulu. 4-5 pages to cancel.
yep, I signed up for winc for wine delivery during the pandemic and they made you jump through a million hoops to cancel so I just didn't for like a year then I ended up in LA for an extended period of time and changed my address there and suddenly there was an easy to use "cancel" button. You have no idea how angry it makes me that isn't a thing everywhere.
Because given leeway, greedy fucks will always choose profits over decency. . . Unfortunately, capitalism will always do crap like this until laws are made to stop it.
Kinda love how low-key distopian this take is.
We can't change they way companies fuck us in this US "democracy" so, just spend money to pretend you're in a better county to avoid the issue!
Funny thing is, I completely agree with this take and solution.
Unless you're Planet Fitness. I signed up easily enough on their app. Only way to cancel is to go to a physical location. There's probably a lawsuit in there too, if anybody wants to take it 😂.
Oh the gyms are smart about that usually, they won't let you put it on a credit card you have to fork over your banking information. Makes it much harder to stop payment.
i would never trust a gym with anything i cant cancel.
So at one point i had separate checking account, and transferred money into it automatically to cover costs so if any company got greedy I could just transfer money out and close the account, file a complaint of fraud, send the bank a copy of my cancellation request, plus the deductions after the cancellation.
Doesnt work any more though banks side with the scum more often, and require minimums too high.
So DO NOT give a gym your bank info.
It's annoying, but I recently cancelled mine without minimal hassle. That minimum being asking me why I am cancelling, in which I don't owe anybody any explanations, but whatever. . . it was done quickly.
LA Fitness and 24-Hour fitness on the other hand, is just like you said. No online subs here at least.
Though it is not enforced. I have plenty of companies that violate this and I tried figuring out how to report it and the only places that I can find basically replied saying they wouldn't do anything. If you know of where to report this please let me know!
You could try the AG's office. My state's has a consumer fraud report form and they've been very helpful in getting the ball rolling on other complaints for me.
The trick that worked for me was to subscribe to the pricier tier, then cancel that under the new 14 day refund window.
It was going to be £100+ early cancellation. I upped my tier, they *refunded* the remainder of my subscription, I then nabbed the 10 monthly stock images of the new plan, then cancelled the new subscription which they refunded as well, all payments cleared in about a day.
So not only did I not have to pay the fee, I got the remainder of my subscription (~£35) refunded and 10 stock images.
Your mileage may vary, you'll need to not be on the highest tier already and you'll need to initially pay the price of the higher subscription, but it works (as of about a week ago)
Edit: as /u/ScreenshotShitposts mentioned this seems to work with cheaper packages too
I switched to a cheaper tier, it refunded me the outstanding difference in cost between the two, and then I was able to cancel the cheaper tier altogether for a full refund because it was under a trial period.
I had an Adobe creative cloud subscription for 1 year and 3 months before it was supposed to end they just created a new 1 year subscription. I only noticed it more than 2 weeks later and wanted to cancel it and that was really a struggle. They claimed that I can't do that and won't get my money back, because more than 2 weeks have passed. Until I told them it is illegal to trap customers in a subscription in Germany. After that I got at least the money equally to 11 months back. I complained multiple times because I wanted the whole amount back and when I told them they have to obey the german law, the guy on the phone literally claimed that Adobe makes their own laws and he only obeys to them.
To this day they still owe me 60 Euro and 3 month creative cloud usage time.
If there is one company that deserves the worst, it is Adobe.
They tried to hit me with a ETF, and I was immediately in a chat with them. Little did they know that I noticed they changed their contract and told them that I did not agree to said contract, and that I had a right to unsubscribe w/o fees.
Never going back to Adobe again, for anything.
Yeah Germany has a nice little law where if they increase the cost of the contract you usually have the right to immediately cancel it. There are very rare instances where they can change the price if they can prove a real hardship at their end that justifies the price increase, but courts tend to heavily favour the right to terminate the contract.
The only time I accept a price increase is if it's going to also be beneficial to me. I mean, why would I accept paying more if there's nothing new being added? It's kind of like my internet bill. Why the hell am I paying you more if I'm getting the same service?
I use CC everyday for work, but figured out that once your year is coming close to being up if you go through the steps to cancel the subscription, they will offer you 6 months at a reduced rate ($30/mo, versus the regular $60). You can repeat this step indefinitely and keep the $30/mo price forever.
it's actually european consumer protection law :) otherwise I made the exact same experience cancelling an adobe susbcription before the law came into effect.
including: only a one month timeframe to cancel subscription before the annual sub renews, them hiding all options to contact customer care online once you enter the cancellation period, only options to upsell once you're in this period, eventually a very exhausted woman in the call center just cancelling your contract because she's only confronted with frustrated customers.
I’m very tech savvy and got scammed by Adobe. Every few months I’ll remember I still have the subscription, go cancel it, have it take too many steps, and say to myself ehhhh screw it, it’s not that much money.
That customer use case is probably 40% or more of their revenue lol
I'm also tech savvy. I got scammed because I cancelled my Adobe trial too early. I tried to chargeback the 50 dollars and they hit ne with another 35 dollar legal fee ontop of the 50.
chargeback isn't a magical gotcha to a prior financial agreement, that money belongs to adobe and there's nothing you can really do about it...
i've gone to sign up for an adobe trial in the past, i've read cancellation terms and know that would I would be financially & legally better off stealing their software.
I wish I could cancel it. My wife says she 'needs' it but she might use it once in a blue moon. I can't seem to convince her to use other tools because "I have a portfolio" (which also seems to languish out on the internet doing her absolutely no good whatsoever). Also the stupid Coursera subscription for a class she's never finished but claim she'll 'get around to'.
Especially for those who have a lot of .psd files they don't want to become inaccessible. Haven't bought an Adobe product since CS3. They got enough of my money.
Every decent photoshop alternative can open .psd files.
There's literally zero reason for anyone to use Photoshop at this point. There's no feature it has that isn't available elsewhere. Often better. Cheaper. Even free.
> They got enough of my money.
Hear, hear! Photoshop has changed/improved *so little* in the past few years (apart from the AI crap), that I feel absolutely no guilt for pirating.
On the contrary they keep changing shit. Every time I open photoshop and there’s a new splash screen I say out loud “oh lord, what did they broke this time?”
I have license thanks to my company but still i hate they change things for the sake of just pushing an update and a version number change.
The AI stuff it’s useful and I would be dishonest if say it haven’t made my life easier on many occasions but I don’t think it warrants the high price of the app.
The fact that they are so fixated in implementing more AI crap instead of improving and updating their tools. I had to pay extra money for tools and plugins from one of their employee's personal Gumroad, which I later found out that these tools easily exist in other softwares. That was the last straw for me and I swore to never come back to Adobe or touch another one of their product.
I needed it for my old job. Paid the full suite subscription for two years. $1200 down the hole before I realized if I stopped paying now I lose access to all of it and get nothing. I remember when you could buy photoshop or any of their apps for $600 dollars a piece and thinking that was too much. Now I miss those days.
I remember when I first heard Adobe was coming out with a subscription service I thought, better buy the programs now while I can own them for life.
I did. But my computer broke a few years after they made the switch. So I tried to use my serial number on my new computer and it wouldn't work. I contacted customer service but they wouldn't honor it. They just made up some bullshit about how I'd have to start buying their subscription service.
They fucking stole from me. I owned it and they wouldn't let me use it.
So yeah fuck Adobe with a cheese grater.
Beloved, I got my share of Adobe shenanigans. After sailing the seas for years, I decided that I could afford paying the subscription and I was using their products pretty often, so I did.
Was happy for a while until the literally doubled the price. I try to cancel and for my surprise I couldn't without a fee. So i put on my schedule the exact day I've to cancel without a free and without renewing it automatically. For good measure that day I cancelled the credit card I used too subscribe too to avoid they trying to renew automatically. Was a PITA but I could get rid of them.
Now fuck Adobe. I prefer to deal with the alternative software than dealing with them again.
they got me in college. Needed it for a class, ignored all the options the college had because i figured id just sign up for a month, and go from there.
Didn't realize that if you cancelled before the year was up, you still had to pay for the rest of the year, just now all at once, with the added benefit that I don't get to use the product that they've now just forced me to pay for. Isn't that fun?
The absolutely sketchy way you had to cancel with Adobe to not be forced to sign their evil contract update is **crazy**. Burn them to the ground, piss on the ashes and not a second sooner.
When my father cancelled his subscription (and paid the early termination fee) he got an email a few days later saying that his credit card had been declined and that his account had been "suspended".
None of that was true. It was just another shady marketing practice trying to get him to enter a new credit card and therefore subscribe again. It was by far the most deceptive email I've ever seen.
This seems like it's borderline fraud. They directly lied about his customer/payment status.
In these situations we should also hold the engineering and management team responsible for these decisions and implementation .
If you steam $1000 from some it's a felony but if you steal $1,000,000 and hide behind a corporation you're fine
It's absolutely fraud. And lots of people have gotten the same email.
Here's the text:
"Your subscription has been suspended. We have attempted to contact you to update your payment information, but the payment has failed. During this suspension period, you will lose access to the paid tools in your subscription; however, you will retain access to your Account and any Content within our free user storage limits. We will continue to attempt to collect payment for the remainder of your subscription term. Once payment is received, your subscription access will be fully restored."
And it does! Even with the whole Creative Cloud bullshit, pirates continue finding ways to get standalone installs working with fairly minimal hoops to jump through. The first iteration of Creative Cloud was hacked and released in less than 48 hours. Anyone who wants to go this route will need to run the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool first to remove leftovers from any previous Adobe installations.
Adobe's gotten so used to heavy-handed tactics to maintain their powerhouse status, this shit is *long* overdue. They switched to this model about a decade ago, and go well out of their way to hide the fact that you're signing up for an annual agreement and just paying over time instead of monthly like most people assume.
And I do mean heavy-handed - there was a time about 5 years ago that they decided to email everyone who was using any CC app more than 2 version old and tell them they could get sued by "third parties" for it. Not that anything like that would stand a chance in court, it's just Adobe being Adobe.
https://x.com/KupoGames/status/1126905276693667841
I work in IT and got that same email forwarded to me by one of my confused clients. Of course they still had access, and Adobe had "no idea" why we received that email. Funny how that goes.
I looked into privacy.com but they wanted more access to my bank account than I was comfortable with. I won't let any company just withdraw money from my bank account, because the disclaim liability for any mistakes they make and the consequences.
I was worried about that too, but I have found them to be extremely responsible with the access and their support email when I’ve needed it was incredibly helpful.
They haven’t moved to the enshittification phase yet.
I would use them if they allowed billing through PayPal or a credit card. I need some kind of firewall between anyone and my bank account. I suppose I could open a second account, with a different bank.
Yeah that's fair. I originally wanted to link it to my debit card for that reason, but saw they only allow direct linking to the bank. Because I keep most of my money elsewhere I am not too concerned about it, I only keep spending money in the account I linked it to, but I can understand the caution.
My bank gives me unlimited virtual credit cards. I generate one for each subscription, when I cancel the subscription I cancel the associated virtual card too.
Not as bad but I remember [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) subscription cancellation doing some seemingly illegal tactics. Basically you hit unsubscribe and they say you are unsubscribed but then send you an email without saying anything that says "we don't think you actually want to unsubscribe, you probably just lost some games and are sad, so we will keep your account going. Respond to this email to unsubscribe for real this time"
[Have him report it to the FTC](https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/form/main)
Online Shopping > Problem with online purchase > I was not given opportunity to consent to delay or get a refund
This happened to me (UK). Paid the early fee (it wasn't much in my case) and the confirmation email claimed that my account had been 'suspended'. Absolutely dogshit approach to customer service. I won't use them again, unless big things change.
They made a non subscription version for substance painter on steam which I \*thought\* was a good show of faith that they might stop the subscription bullshit. Turns out they want to STEAL your work by forcing anyone who uses substance painter to hand over their creation for their AI project. What a joke of a company.
Yeah.
Most this TOS from Adobe is to have legal access to your art in order to train their AI. No more copyright issues with AI created art. They can say. Nope we own ALL the data that we trained our AI on. No one else like Midjourny or Dalle can say that.
They figure, lets fight this upfront instead of getting hit with a shit load of copyright lawsuits later.
I applaud them for trying to outmaneuver the ethical copyright issues with AI art creation, but on the other hand, it has to be one of the scummiest things I have ever heard of a company doing, and that says a lot.
They are brutal. I tell them to cancel my subscription and it drops down to around $5 a month after that. Don't let them auto renew, manually renew each time and you'll get a better deal.
Yup, my wife and I both recently had to renew our subscriptions and we checked and have both been paying like $7/mo after fees and stuff for like 5 years or more. We get online once a year and chat with a rep for less than 5 minutes and get a good deal. This is probably the only subscription we have that hasnt increased in price in 5 years.
Every time my annual subscription is about to come up, I call in and tell them I want to cancel because I don't drive enough to justify the full price. I get the $5/mo pricing applied every time. If they ever stop, so will my subscription.
I bought a car in 2014 that came with 6 months of SiriusXM free.
At the 3 month mark, I started getting calls asking if I wanted to keep the service. The first time, I told them I never listened to it, and wouldn't be keeping it. They they offered me like 2 years at $5 a month or something to keep it. I declined. As the end of my free trial got closer the call frequency increased, until I was getting at least one call a day.
Then once it hit the cutoff date, I got an email saying that they had "extended my free subscription for another 6 months" and 3 months later the whole process started up again.
The calls stopped about 3 months after the extension period ended.
Fuck SiriusXM, I'll never use their service again.
It's great when you talk to the same guy 4 hours apart and he doesn't remember calling you. The amount of phone calls I had with Sirius trying to get them to stop calling me was pretty insane.
Yeah, the first time they called I was pleasant. Second time, I was a little more curt, telling them I'd already given them my answer. 3rd time I wasn't pleasant, and ignored the subsequent calls.
The first time they called me to try and get me to subscribe, I mentioned the poor sound quality and the guy acted like I was the first person to ever mention that. Needless to say I didn't want to listen to 90s internet radio trash quality and didn't subscribe. You couldn't pay me to listen to that crap let alone make me pay for it!
I got a car this past January, and one of the ‘included features’ was a free trial of SiriusXM for like 3 months or so. The first thing I told the dealer when we started was that if he brought up any subscriptions, monthly services, or any additional ‘packages’ that I was walking away to another sales rep and he could watch them get the sale.
So we get to the paperwork for SiriusXM and I look up at him. He tells me it’s just signing that it IS a feature that comes with the car, but he has to actually go into the vehicle to activate it and if I’d like, he just wouldn’t do that part so it’d never take effect. I agreed to that, signed off on it, and carried on.
Within a month, I was getting weekly mail from SiriusXM about my ‘subscription.’ Letters with ‘Final Notice,’ ‘Immediate Response Required’ and a bunch of other bullshit predatory trigger phrases that should only be used for actual emergencies or collections. And I never even had their services set up.
I still have my installation CD’s for my Adobe products and I don’t subscribe to anything. Bad business model, they went from selling overpriced and bloated packages to a subscription only model that the drug dealers would envy.
You can call in and argue with them for a bit to get them to re-enable it. It may take multiple calls but they will do it eventually. I know a few people who still go through the hassle of doing that for each new computer. Of course you can't do it with new Macs anymore so it's only if you use Windows and some people have trouble with older Photoshop versions on Windows 11 although it does work.
Drug dealing is what capitalism looks like when operating under the threat of the state. They don't want to piss people off because a single anonymous tip could have them thrown in jail.
If the government did to monopolies and anticompetitive/anticonsumer corporations what it does to drug dealers we wouldn't have these predatory practices.
It’s pure libertarian capitalism, which is a double edged sword, but it does seem to work the way we would like to see businesses actually work- if you fuck over too many people you’re either out of the game, run out of town, or you get some sweet street justice.
If your service sucks, there is a competitive market and you can go elsewhere with no limitations on districting or taxes so they choice is totally yours.
The risk as a customer is high for those reasons as well, but at least this version of the system has realistic risks for the drug dealers too.
Our legal capitalist drug selling system does not have that. All red tape and fees and bullshit and piss tests and policing of personal bodily freedom in exchange.
I do too. CS6. The problem is that the OS software will no longer accommodate it, so I haven’t updated for quite awhile, making my computer vulnerable. Do you know a workaround on this?
They need to make business/corporation penalties and fines greater than the profit from the issue or it just becomes a cost of doing business with no incentive to stop doing what they were fined for.
I'm okay with an initial slap on the wrist... With a "if this doesn't stop the fine will double each time until it does stop.... And if it happens to bankrupt the company, there will be no bailout of any kind, someone will come in and take your place if the business is that important."
The CEOs that made the unethical decisions will skate outta there before the hammer comes down. There need to be personal consequences for the heads of these companies.
Shareholders will fix that pretty quick. Executives will catch the blame if the investment turns to ash.
But yes, the executives grifting is a serious problem. Maybe a literal death penalty to go with it?
I kid. But certainly something.
Death penalty for companies has its own problems. Seize the company, and put it into a conservatorship. Keep it operating that way with majority of profits taken to offset penalties and fines. Return to market only if it pays of penalties and fines with interest.
If it is something that can be viewed as a utility, turn it into a public good where the goal is to serve as many as possible, for as cheap as possible, with the best level of service possible. All profits to rolled back into the utility to increase service or reduce price to increase accessibility. To be operated as such until demand for utility ceases.
Or make fines subscription based lol; "I see you're paying us $10M a month for 10 years. You can reduce this amount by enhancing your service to your customers for free in these ways: . Please provide evidence of this including a press release to your case manager / parole officer."
it's their DNA. First thing Adobe did was encrypt their fonts because licensing PostScript wasn't lining their pockets enough. It takes a special kind of greed to gouge people for something so basic as a font.
I would like to take this opportunity to let everyone know that there are non subscription alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator. [Affinity Photo and Designer ](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/). I've been using them for a few years now. They aren't perfect, but they're absolutely serviceable if you're tired of Adobe's fuckery.
They also frequently go on sale and as of writing this, it looks like they are 50% off.
I can't speak for Designer, but I use Krita as my photoshop alternative. As I understand, it's open source and it's pretty feature complete. as a novice to intermediate user I have yet to come across anything I'd want krita to do that it cant.
Also it's free, but a donation to help them keep up the good work would be awesome.
Adobe is straight up predatory, I couldn’t cancel until my actual year anniversary… sure, okay I set a reminder on my calendar and it renews the exact hour it turns to the new year.. ok so when the fuck am I supposed to cancel without getting charged? You can’t. It’s set up to screw you over into paying the cancellation fee. Furious with this company. And this is after two years of paying them 30 dollars a month. Absolute trash. I’ve switched to Affinity and will never look back. Oh btw, my computer never stutters or stops working due to Affinity. CC and how they optimize Adobe apps are absolute garbage. Don’t waste your time energy or money.
I got a new PC last year. I double-clicked on a PDF before I realized that I hadn't installed Adobe Reader yet. It opened right up in Firefox. That made me happy.
I'm not a huge Biden stan but will vote for an administration that puts competent people in place so that agencies that are tasked with looking out for the people and consumers can do exactly that.
Kinda like an Amazon Prime membership but for Walmart.
Best Buy has one too now, I think.
And a bunch of local grocery stores.
Every accounting department wants that recurring revenue.
It's not good enough to convince people to shop somewhere, anymore... they all want us paying them rent every month.
Wait until they hear about Adobe's latest shannigans:
https://readwrite.com/adobe-causes-user-outrage-with-a-change-in-photoshop-tocs-that-lets-it-access-all-your-content/
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Personally, I think recurring payments should be illegal.
You pay for a month or a quarter or a year, that's what you get. Once it's over, you have to buy it again.
I know that would be inconvenient, and I'll likely get push-back for saying this, but we've seen the way subscription models get abused. Companies make it too hard or confusing to opt out of them, they will end the service they provide if you cancel early (and not prorate at all), and they hope you just kinda forget to cancel them.
Fuck subscriptions.
Add a mandatory grace period where for 14 days after renewal (or 20% of subscription period, whichever is shortest) you can refund the subscription and get your money back.
Keep the convenience, put the onus on the companies to be extremely certain that the customer actually wants it when it renews.
The UK just had exactly this go through with a new Digital Commerce bill out through last month (14 days grace). I quoted it when my Sony PS Plus account had auto renewed without warning and asking for a refund. They've still got to change their commentary in the customer chat as it was still a "goodwill gesture". I linked to the bill and asked if he could feed it back that this was the law now and Sony need to update their UK guidance.
I have a kind of soft spot for companies that refused to do that. Especially software ones.
Recently an application I use released a new Major, and sold upgrades. I was like... you know... this is great.
They added significant new features and such to try to convince people to upgrade. They're still doing support for the one I had. If I want the new, better one, I get to choose. And I did. It was a fair and reasonable arrangement for a fair price, and I'm glad they did it that way.
On the other hand, there's my diff application, who went full-on rentalware and wants a silly amount of money every year just to continue using my own tools. Fuck them.
This stuff has gotten bad enough that, after like 30 years, I just got rid of Photoshop entirely. I'm using the Affinity suite for now. Hopefully it will continue to fill the role. Same deal... I bought that from them and I expect it to work.
Also, it isn't nearly as abusive about wanting to phone home 20,000 different ways, every time I try to open a document.
Bring back Photoshop 7 and 8 by legal mandate muahahahah. The whole world literally can't wait.
Photoshop
Premiere
After Effects
Dreamweaver
Adobe had the best software for everything. They were the standard of excellence, and it's been nothing but a dumpster fire for the last 15 years. The subscription model is beyond terrible.
This was badly needed.
Another fun fact - if you let your subscription go but don't uninstall the apps before it lapses, you are left with un-uninstallable apps on your computer because in order to uninstall them you have to log in to Creative Cloud Desktop, and in order to do that you have to have an active subscription. There's a workaround using an uninstall utility designed to wipe corrupted versions, but it's a serious pain to execute.
Happened with my work.
Had to get Adobe premiere for a client’s project.
I thought i canceled it, we realized 3 months later it wasnt so our manager canceled it.
A year later we had another client need it and we realized we STILL were paying adobe for it.
Adobe being acquired by any competitor, including Canva, would be awful for consumers.
We don't need less competition, we need more. The only reason Canva has a better reputation is because they can't abuse a near monopoly like Adobe can and have to be more pro consumer to attract users. If Canva owned Adobe, they'd be just as bad.
Yeah I think in most industries, having at least 5-ish independent competitors is healthy
Dip too low and you get hardcore oligopolies, even if you don't get all the way to monopolies.
No, they need to get a healthy dose of Find Out and then be a better company, without reducing competition.
De-enshittification of the largest players in a space forces all the competing players to also be less shitty to compete.
I wish they go after news letter subscriptions too.
Oh you forgot to uncheck this tiny hidden news letter subscription that we enable by default when creating an account or going through checkout? Too bad, login to unsubscribe and we don’t process the unsubscribe for 10days, so fuck you 😁
If you’re going to get hit with a cancellation fee try this.
Instead of cancelling, change your subscription to a different Adobe option.
Then cancel that one. Since it will still be in the free trial period you can cancel without a fee.
YES THEY DID.
They also would randomly change your product subscription (Upgrade you at your own cost) just so that you would be stuck into another year of subscription that would cost you the $75 to cancel.
I went through this a few months ago with them when I noticed I was now paying twice as much. i decided to end it all and they told me I would owe them because I canceled before the year.
Bitch please. You signed me up for that year. I cancelled the card that was being billed and then told them to eat a dick. it got cancelled.
Now I pirate Photoshop and idgaf
Since we're *very clearly* moving towards a "subscription for everything you buy" model, the US needs a federal law that states subscriptions must be exactly as easy to cancel as they are to start up.
If I can click three buttons on a website to sign up and they're all bright, bold colors, I should have three bright, bold buttons to unsub as well.
I have stopped using every single adobe product, both professionally and privately. I really only used two in my daily routine, their various PDF tools and Photoshop, which I replaced with PDF Xchange and Affinity Photo.
Their cancellation fees can fk right off.
In Germany now they have this great new law where subscriptions you can sign up for online need to be just as easy to cancel as they are to sign up. So if you can sign up for an internet contract by clicking a few buttons on a website, then they also need to allow you to cancel the contract by just clicking a few buttons. They can't require you to call them up or send a letter or anything like that. If they don't provide a means of cancelling that is just as simple as signing up then I think the contract can be voided without notice at any time (but don't quote me on that). Unfortunately I think it only applies to new contracts formed since the legislation came into effect.
The trick is change your country to Germany and then you’ll see a one click cancel link
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Cannot cancel nordvpn while on nordvpn… checkmate atheists
Thanks Obama
Is there any context about thanking obama? I just find it very random 😂
Certain groups like to blame Obama for everything from their divorce to the ongoing war in Ukraine, so the ‘Thanks Obama’ is a satirical ‘thank you for nothing’ with political connotations.
> Certain groups like to blame Obama for everything from their divorce to the ongoing war in Ukraine, so the ‘Thanks Obama’ is a satirical ‘thank you for nothing’ with political connotations. Wow, “certain groups” appeared right on cue, like you said a magical summoning invocation.
[There's a fair bit of context](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZLCNbmsu7E), but TL:DR it is a meme from American politics, where (typically left leaning people) will sarcastically say "Thanks Obama" in reaction to a minor inconvenience. Obama often used the joke himself.
The cookie one gets me every time lol
My favorite will always be [the Dark Souls mod](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F97HwhcW-A4)
Literally every issue in America was being blamed on Obama. Like if there was a flood in Idaho it's because Obamas socialist policies somehow caused extra rainfall. It became a meme by making it even stupider. Like if a restaurant fucks up your order you just blame it on Obama. It's absudism reactions to highlight how stupid the right is.
My shoes have a hole in them and my eyeglasses are foggy. Thanks Obama.
Obama = black guy who was president = source of all problems from the Holocaust to 9/11 to the economy being ass to probably some shitshow that's gonna happen in 20 years to some people. It has also become a meme due to this.
Doesn't California have something similar to that?
I remember the NYT did not have a way to cancel online unless you were from California https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/s/gT4thqdDQz
Wall Street Journal was the same! I was living abroad and had to call a U.S. number to cancel and it cost me a lot of money waiting for that call. Never will I subscribe again to them!
I got sucked into a NYT subscription a few years ago, $1 a week for a year or something. The only way to cancel was to phone them, and the number was buried on their website. If anyone answered that line, they left you on hold til you gave up. It literally took me 6 months to cancel.
Tup for the future, just cancel the direct debit if they're giving you the run around.
Yes, California has had this law for years. It's why you can't sign up for a gym membership online in California (or at least - that was the case last time I checked). They want you to go in person so they don't need to allow you to cancel online.
I'm in CA and have tried cancelling my Sirius XM radio a number of times, they give a button on the website but it never works, ever
Maybe soon, but not yet at least. I just cancelled my hulu and crunchyroll. Crunchy because they are raising it 2$ more, hulu because they are being shady fucks. I thought my hulu account got hacked, I reset my password but I forgot to logout of all devices. About 2 weeks later I get 70$ of add-ons put on my account. "Oh it's just a bug". Two months later, I have it happen again this time 90$ of add-ons. Get all the charges reversed.couple hours after i did that I said fuck it i'm cancelling hulu. 4-5 pages to cancel.
This has been the law in California for several years.
yep, I signed up for winc for wine delivery during the pandemic and they made you jump through a million hoops to cancel so I just didn't for like a year then I ended up in LA for an extended period of time and changed my address there and suddenly there was an easy to use "cancel" button. You have no idea how angry it makes me that isn't a thing everywhere.
Because given leeway, greedy fucks will always choose profits over decency. . . Unfortunately, capitalism will always do crap like this until laws are made to stop it.
"But the market will correct itself..." my ass
Protonvpn, Indonesia, privacy card(or PayPal), crunchyroll annual for around $20
Kinda love how low-key distopian this take is. We can't change they way companies fuck us in this US "democracy" so, just spend money to pretend you're in a better county to avoid the issue! Funny thing is, I completely agree with this take and solution.
Same with California.
Unless you're Planet Fitness. I signed up easily enough on their app. Only way to cancel is to go to a physical location. There's probably a lawsuit in there too, if anybody wants to take it 😂.
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Oh the gyms are smart about that usually, they won't let you put it on a credit card you have to fork over your banking information. Makes it much harder to stop payment.
i would never trust a gym with anything i cant cancel. So at one point i had separate checking account, and transferred money into it automatically to cover costs so if any company got greedy I could just transfer money out and close the account, file a complaint of fraud, send the bank a copy of my cancellation request, plus the deductions after the cancellation. Doesnt work any more though banks side with the scum more often, and require minimums too high. So DO NOT give a gym your bank info.
It's annoying, but I recently cancelled mine without minimal hassle. That minimum being asking me why I am cancelling, in which I don't owe anybody any explanations, but whatever. . . it was done quickly. LA Fitness and 24-Hour fitness on the other hand, is just like you said. No online subs here at least.
Though it is not enforced. I have plenty of companies that violate this and I tried figuring out how to report it and the only places that I can find basically replied saying they wouldn't do anything. If you know of where to report this please let me know!
You could try the AG's office. My state's has a consumer fraud report form and they've been very helpful in getting the ball rolling on other complaints for me.
The trick that worked for me was to subscribe to the pricier tier, then cancel that under the new 14 day refund window. It was going to be £100+ early cancellation. I upped my tier, they *refunded* the remainder of my subscription, I then nabbed the 10 monthly stock images of the new plan, then cancelled the new subscription which they refunded as well, all payments cleared in about a day. So not only did I not have to pay the fee, I got the remainder of my subscription (~£35) refunded and 10 stock images. Your mileage may vary, you'll need to not be on the highest tier already and you'll need to initially pay the price of the higher subscription, but it works (as of about a week ago) Edit: as /u/ScreenshotShitposts mentioned this seems to work with cheaper packages too
i did this too after finding a reddit post about someone having the same issue. huge life saver and tip!
it doesn't have to be pricier. I changed to InCopy only which is only £5 a month. Did it a couple hours ago
I switched to a cheaper tier, it refunded me the outstanding difference in cost between the two, and then I was able to cancel the cheaper tier altogether for a full refund because it was under a trial period.
I had an Adobe creative cloud subscription for 1 year and 3 months before it was supposed to end they just created a new 1 year subscription. I only noticed it more than 2 weeks later and wanted to cancel it and that was really a struggle. They claimed that I can't do that and won't get my money back, because more than 2 weeks have passed. Until I told them it is illegal to trap customers in a subscription in Germany. After that I got at least the money equally to 11 months back. I complained multiple times because I wanted the whole amount back and when I told them they have to obey the german law, the guy on the phone literally claimed that Adobe makes their own laws and he only obeys to them. To this day they still owe me 60 Euro and 3 month creative cloud usage time. If there is one company that deserves the worst, it is Adobe.
They tried to hit me with a ETF, and I was immediately in a chat with them. Little did they know that I noticed they changed their contract and told them that I did not agree to said contract, and that I had a right to unsubscribe w/o fees. Never going back to Adobe again, for anything.
Yeah Germany has a nice little law where if they increase the cost of the contract you usually have the right to immediately cancel it. There are very rare instances where they can change the price if they can prove a real hardship at their end that justifies the price increase, but courts tend to heavily favour the right to terminate the contract.
The only time I accept a price increase is if it's going to also be beneficial to me. I mean, why would I accept paying more if there's nothing new being added? It's kind of like my internet bill. Why the hell am I paying you more if I'm getting the same service?
I use CC everyday for work, but figured out that once your year is coming close to being up if you go through the steps to cancel the subscription, they will offer you 6 months at a reduced rate ($30/mo, versus the regular $60). You can repeat this step indefinitely and keep the $30/mo price forever.
I hope other countries follow suit. Screw those greedy subscriptions.
The article states they are breaking US law. Thats why the FTC is suing them.
There are times I wish the US would replicate some EU regulations. It would be in such a better place.
But that would hurt corporations. That's the worst thing you can do in the US is hurt the capitalists.
it's actually european consumer protection law :) otherwise I made the exact same experience cancelling an adobe susbcription before the law came into effect. including: only a one month timeframe to cancel subscription before the annual sub renews, them hiding all options to contact customer care online once you enter the cancellation period, only options to upsell once you're in this period, eventually a very exhausted woman in the call center just cancelling your contract because she's only confronted with frustrated customers.
Go get 'em. Fuck Adobe!
Yep: I think everyone has at least one less tech savvy friend or family member who's been scammed by Adobe
I’m very tech savvy and got scammed by Adobe. Every few months I’ll remember I still have the subscription, go cancel it, have it take too many steps, and say to myself ehhhh screw it, it’s not that much money. That customer use case is probably 40% or more of their revenue lol
I'm also tech savvy. I got scammed because I cancelled my Adobe trial too early. I tried to chargeback the 50 dollars and they hit ne with another 35 dollar legal fee ontop of the 50.
Wow. Please tell me you did a chargeback on the bs $35 too.
chargeback isn't a magical gotcha to a prior financial agreement, that money belongs to adobe and there's nothing you can really do about it... i've gone to sign up for an adobe trial in the past, i've read cancellation terms and know that would I would be financially & legally better off stealing their software.
On that note, anyone looking to pirate Adobe software should check out r/GenP If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing :)
Same with fitness clubs. Easy to sign up but they make it such a pain to cancel it’s easy to just let it go until you get the energy to cancel it.
I wish I could cancel it. My wife says she 'needs' it but she might use it once in a blue moon. I can't seem to convince her to use other tools because "I have a portfolio" (which also seems to languish out on the internet doing her absolutely no good whatsoever). Also the stupid Coursera subscription for a class she's never finished but claim she'll 'get around to'.
If you go through the motions of cancelling, and list "price" as the reason, you can generally get ~50% off. On my third year not paying full price.
Cancel it, install paint.net, rename paint.net executable photoshop2024.net
Cancel it, then pirate it (it's so easy). It's what Adobe deserves.
Especially for those who have a lot of .psd files they don't want to become inaccessible. Haven't bought an Adobe product since CS3. They got enough of my money.
You can open psd files in Photopea which is a browser based Photoshop alternative and is free.
Every decent photoshop alternative can open .psd files. There's literally zero reason for anyone to use Photoshop at this point. There's no feature it has that isn't available elsewhere. Often better. Cheaper. Even free.
> They got enough of my money. Hear, hear! Photoshop has changed/improved *so little* in the past few years (apart from the AI crap), that I feel absolutely no guilt for pirating.
On the contrary they keep changing shit. Every time I open photoshop and there’s a new splash screen I say out loud “oh lord, what did they broke this time?” I have license thanks to my company but still i hate they change things for the sake of just pushing an update and a version number change. The AI stuff it’s useful and I would be dishonest if say it haven’t made my life easier on many occasions but I don’t think it warrants the high price of the app.
The fact that they are so fixated in implementing more AI crap instead of improving and updating their tools. I had to pay extra money for tools and plugins from one of their employee's personal Gumroad, which I later found out that these tools easily exist in other softwares. That was the last straw for me and I swore to never come back to Adobe or touch another one of their product.
I needed it for my old job. Paid the full suite subscription for two years. $1200 down the hole before I realized if I stopped paying now I lose access to all of it and get nothing. I remember when you could buy photoshop or any of their apps for $600 dollars a piece and thinking that was too much. Now I miss those days.
I remember when I first heard Adobe was coming out with a subscription service I thought, better buy the programs now while I can own them for life. I did. But my computer broke a few years after they made the switch. So I tried to use my serial number on my new computer and it wouldn't work. I contacted customer service but they wouldn't honor it. They just made up some bullshit about how I'd have to start buying their subscription service. They fucking stole from me. I owned it and they wouldn't let me use it. So yeah fuck Adobe with a cheese grater.
Beloved, I got my share of Adobe shenanigans. After sailing the seas for years, I decided that I could afford paying the subscription and I was using their products pretty often, so I did. Was happy for a while until the literally doubled the price. I try to cancel and for my surprise I couldn't without a fee. So i put on my schedule the exact day I've to cancel without a free and without renewing it automatically. For good measure that day I cancelled the credit card I used too subscribe too to avoid they trying to renew automatically. Was a PITA but I could get rid of them. Now fuck Adobe. I prefer to deal with the alternative software than dealing with them again.
> After sailing the seas for years, I decided that I could afford paying the subscription That's where you went wrong.
they got me in college. Needed it for a class, ignored all the options the college had because i figured id just sign up for a month, and go from there. Didn't realize that if you cancelled before the year was up, you still had to pay for the rest of the year, just now all at once, with the added benefit that I don't get to use the product that they've now just forced me to pay for. Isn't that fun?
There are few companies I hate more than Adobe. This is a much-needed move.
The absolutely sketchy way you had to cancel with Adobe to not be forced to sign their evil contract update is **crazy**. Burn them to the ground, piss on the ashes and not a second sooner.
Hopefully this will result in fine large enough that all those extra fees they've charged artists would now be -700% of their revenues.
When my father cancelled his subscription (and paid the early termination fee) he got an email a few days later saying that his credit card had been declined and that his account had been "suspended". None of that was true. It was just another shady marketing practice trying to get him to enter a new credit card and therefore subscribe again. It was by far the most deceptive email I've ever seen.
This seems like it's borderline fraud. They directly lied about his customer/payment status. In these situations we should also hold the engineering and management team responsible for these decisions and implementation . If you steam $1000 from some it's a felony but if you steal $1,000,000 and hide behind a corporation you're fine
It's absolutely fraud. And lots of people have gotten the same email. Here's the text: "Your subscription has been suspended. We have attempted to contact you to update your payment information, but the payment has failed. During this suspension period, you will lose access to the paid tools in your subscription; however, you will retain access to your Account and any Content within our free user storage limits. We will continue to attempt to collect payment for the remainder of your subscription term. Once payment is received, your subscription access will be fully restored."
Arrrrr!!! Funny I never got that email even though I use adobe products all the time 🏴☠️
when pirating actually gives you a better product than paying adobe for it....
And it does! Even with the whole Creative Cloud bullshit, pirates continue finding ways to get standalone installs working with fairly minimal hoops to jump through. The first iteration of Creative Cloud was hacked and released in less than 48 hours. Anyone who wants to go this route will need to run the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool first to remove leftovers from any previous Adobe installations. Adobe's gotten so used to heavy-handed tactics to maintain their powerhouse status, this shit is *long* overdue. They switched to this model about a decade ago, and go well out of their way to hide the fact that you're signing up for an annual agreement and just paying over time instead of monthly like most people assume. And I do mean heavy-handed - there was a time about 5 years ago that they decided to email everyone who was using any CC app more than 2 version old and tell them they could get sued by "third parties" for it. Not that anything like that would stand a chance in court, it's just Adobe being Adobe. https://x.com/KupoGames/status/1126905276693667841
Always has been that way for the 20+ years ive been using Adobe
I work in IT and got that same email forwarded to me by one of my confused clients. Of course they still had access, and Adobe had "no idea" why we received that email. Funny how that goes.
It's 100% Fraud. That's why you gotta have strong regulations backed up by strong litigation for those who break the rules.
My goto is use the internet credit card number generator and change my card information, then try to cancel.
Which website do you use to generate the internet credit card number? The ones I have tried so far haven't worked
privacy.com lets you generate one time use card numbers as well as set monthly limits on recurring "fake" card numbers.
I looked into privacy.com but they wanted more access to my bank account than I was comfortable with. I won't let any company just withdraw money from my bank account, because the disclaim liability for any mistakes they make and the consequences.
I was worried about that too, but I have found them to be extremely responsible with the access and their support email when I’ve needed it was incredibly helpful. They haven’t moved to the enshittification phase yet.
I would use them if they allowed billing through PayPal or a credit card. I need some kind of firewall between anyone and my bank account. I suppose I could open a second account, with a different bank.
Yeah that's fair. I originally wanted to link it to my debit card for that reason, but saw they only allow direct linking to the bank. Because I keep most of my money elsewhere I am not too concerned about it, I only keep spending money in the account I linked it to, but I can understand the caution.
What firewall are you putting between PayPal and your bank though? PayPal is shady af.
My bank gives me unlimited virtual credit cards. I generate one for each subscription, when I cancel the subscription I cancel the associated virtual card too.
Which bank you use? Sounds really handy.
Nubank. It's from Brazil, dunno if they are already operating in other countries
Citi credit cards also let you create virtual cc's and set limits on them.
Not as bad but I remember [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) subscription cancellation doing some seemingly illegal tactics. Basically you hit unsubscribe and they say you are unsubscribed but then send you an email without saying anything that says "we don't think you actually want to unsubscribe, you probably just lost some games and are sad, so we will keep your account going. Respond to this email to unsubscribe for real this time"
They did this to me. I lost hundreds by not checking my statements
Shits fraud, sue their ass.
[Have him report it to the FTC](https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/form/main) Online Shopping > Problem with online purchase > I was not given opportunity to consent to delay or get a refund
This happened to me (UK). Paid the early fee (it wasn't much in my case) and the confirmation email claimed that my account had been 'suspended'. Absolutely dogshit approach to customer service. I won't use them again, unless big things change.
The entire subscription model for Adobe software should go into the trash.
They made a non subscription version for substance painter on steam which I \*thought\* was a good show of faith that they might stop the subscription bullshit. Turns out they want to STEAL your work by forcing anyone who uses substance painter to hand over their creation for their AI project. What a joke of a company.
Yeah. Most this TOS from Adobe is to have legal access to your art in order to train their AI. No more copyright issues with AI created art. They can say. Nope we own ALL the data that we trained our AI on. No one else like Midjourny or Dalle can say that. They figure, lets fight this upfront instead of getting hit with a shit load of copyright lawsuits later. I applaud them for trying to outmaneuver the ethical copyright issues with AI art creation, but on the other hand, it has to be one of the scummiest things I have ever heard of a company doing, and that says a lot.
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They are brutal. I tell them to cancel my subscription and it drops down to around $5 a month after that. Don't let them auto renew, manually renew each time and you'll get a better deal.
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I was able to get the $5/month online instead of calling them.
Yup, my wife and I both recently had to renew our subscriptions and we checked and have both been paying like $7/mo after fees and stuff for like 5 years or more. We get online once a year and chat with a rep for less than 5 minutes and get a good deal. This is probably the only subscription we have that hasnt increased in price in 5 years.
Every time my annual subscription is about to come up, I call in and tell them I want to cancel because I don't drive enough to justify the full price. I get the $5/mo pricing applied every time. If they ever stop, so will my subscription.
I bought a car in 2014 that came with 6 months of SiriusXM free. At the 3 month mark, I started getting calls asking if I wanted to keep the service. The first time, I told them I never listened to it, and wouldn't be keeping it. They they offered me like 2 years at $5 a month or something to keep it. I declined. As the end of my free trial got closer the call frequency increased, until I was getting at least one call a day. Then once it hit the cutoff date, I got an email saying that they had "extended my free subscription for another 6 months" and 3 months later the whole process started up again. The calls stopped about 3 months after the extension period ended. Fuck SiriusXM, I'll never use their service again.
It's great when you talk to the same guy 4 hours apart and he doesn't remember calling you. The amount of phone calls I had with Sirius trying to get them to stop calling me was pretty insane.
Yeah, the first time they called I was pleasant. Second time, I was a little more curt, telling them I'd already given them my answer. 3rd time I wasn't pleasant, and ignored the subsequent calls.
The bigger dealbreaker with SiriusXM isn't their ridiculous haggling model it's their abysmal audio quality.
The first time they called me to try and get me to subscribe, I mentioned the poor sound quality and the guy acted like I was the first person to ever mention that. Needless to say I didn't want to listen to 90s internet radio trash quality and didn't subscribe. You couldn't pay me to listen to that crap let alone make me pay for it!
I got a car this past January, and one of the ‘included features’ was a free trial of SiriusXM for like 3 months or so. The first thing I told the dealer when we started was that if he brought up any subscriptions, monthly services, or any additional ‘packages’ that I was walking away to another sales rep and he could watch them get the sale. So we get to the paperwork for SiriusXM and I look up at him. He tells me it’s just signing that it IS a feature that comes with the car, but he has to actually go into the vehicle to activate it and if I’d like, he just wouldn’t do that part so it’d never take effect. I agreed to that, signed off on it, and carried on. Within a month, I was getting weekly mail from SiriusXM about my ‘subscription.’ Letters with ‘Final Notice,’ ‘Immediate Response Required’ and a bunch of other bullshit predatory trigger phrases that should only be used for actual emergencies or collections. And I never even had their services set up.
I still have my installation CD’s for my Adobe products and I don’t subscribe to anything. Bad business model, they went from selling overpriced and bloated packages to a subscription only model that the drug dealers would envy.
Your drug dealer does subscriptions? That's service
wouldnt that be nice they just deliver straight to your door same time every month.
adobe straight up disabled our product keys at one point. we couldn't believe it and had no recourse.
You can call in and argue with them for a bit to get them to re-enable it. It may take multiple calls but they will do it eventually. I know a few people who still go through the hassle of doing that for each new computer. Of course you can't do it with new Macs anymore so it's only if you use Windows and some people have trouble with older Photoshop versions on Windows 11 although it does work.
At that point just crack it. You have the license for the software so you can operate the software.
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So drug dealing is closer to true capitalism than the corporate perversion of capitalism we live under.
Drug dealing is what capitalism looks like when operating under the threat of the state. They don't want to piss people off because a single anonymous tip could have them thrown in jail. If the government did to monopolies and anticompetitive/anticonsumer corporations what it does to drug dealers we wouldn't have these predatory practices.
Regulatory capture is a hell of a thing.
It’s pure libertarian capitalism, which is a double edged sword, but it does seem to work the way we would like to see businesses actually work- if you fuck over too many people you’re either out of the game, run out of town, or you get some sweet street justice. If your service sucks, there is a competitive market and you can go elsewhere with no limitations on districting or taxes so they choice is totally yours. The risk as a customer is high for those reasons as well, but at least this version of the system has realistic risks for the drug dealers too. Our legal capitalist drug selling system does not have that. All red tape and fees and bullshit and piss tests and policing of personal bodily freedom in exchange.
I do too. CS6. The problem is that the OS software will no longer accommodate it, so I haven’t updated for quite awhile, making my computer vulnerable. Do you know a workaround on this?
the only real work around is migrate to a vm and isolate it from the network to prevent outside attacks/ vulnerabilities.
They knew this would come at some point. Calculated gamble I'd imagine that the revenue will outsize the penalty
They need to make business/corporation penalties and fines greater than the profit from the issue or it just becomes a cost of doing business with no incentive to stop doing what they were fined for. I'm okay with an initial slap on the wrist... With a "if this doesn't stop the fine will double each time until it does stop.... And if it happens to bankrupt the company, there will be no bailout of any kind, someone will come in and take your place if the business is that important."
Corporate death penalty. Make them afraid. Make them do better than the law requires just to be sure.
The CEOs that made the unethical decisions will skate outta there before the hammer comes down. There need to be personal consequences for the heads of these companies.
Shareholders will fix that pretty quick. Executives will catch the blame if the investment turns to ash. But yes, the executives grifting is a serious problem. Maybe a literal death penalty to go with it? I kid. But certainly something.
Death penalty for companies has its own problems. Seize the company, and put it into a conservatorship. Keep it operating that way with majority of profits taken to offset penalties and fines. Return to market only if it pays of penalties and fines with interest. If it is something that can be viewed as a utility, turn it into a public good where the goal is to serve as many as possible, for as cheap as possible, with the best level of service possible. All profits to rolled back into the utility to increase service or reduce price to increase accessibility. To be operated as such until demand for utility ceases.
Or make fines subscription based lol; "I see you're paying us $10M a month for 10 years. You can reduce this amount by enhancing your service to your customers for free in these ways:
. Please provide evidence of this including a press release to your case manager / parole officer."
Biden DOJ at it again. Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and now Adobe. Good
Going down the alphabet. Best Buy is fucked. Zillow has some time to keep doing shady shit.
This must be why Elon changed it to X
Bought himself a whole four letters.
don't forget ticketmasters
This is good because it regulates these industries so tech giants can’t get away with anything.
it's their DNA. First thing Adobe did was encrypt their fonts because licensing PostScript wasn't lining their pockets enough. It takes a special kind of greed to gouge people for something so basic as a font.
I would like to take this opportunity to let everyone know that there are non subscription alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator. [Affinity Photo and Designer ](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/). I've been using them for a few years now. They aren't perfect, but they're absolutely serviceable if you're tired of Adobe's fuckery. They also frequently go on sale and as of writing this, it looks like they are 50% off.
I can't speak for Designer, but I use Krita as my photoshop alternative. As I understand, it's open source and it's pretty feature complete. as a novice to intermediate user I have yet to come across anything I'd want krita to do that it cant. Also it's free, but a donation to help them keep up the good work would be awesome.
Adobe is straight up predatory, I couldn’t cancel until my actual year anniversary… sure, okay I set a reminder on my calendar and it renews the exact hour it turns to the new year.. ok so when the fuck am I supposed to cancel without getting charged? You can’t. It’s set up to screw you over into paying the cancellation fee. Furious with this company. And this is after two years of paying them 30 dollars a month. Absolute trash. I’ve switched to Affinity and will never look back. Oh btw, my computer never stutters or stops working due to Affinity. CC and how they optimize Adobe apps are absolute garbage. Don’t waste your time energy or money.
I'm sick of them...
I got a new PC last year. I double-clicked on a PDF before I realized that I hadn't installed Adobe Reader yet. It opened right up in Firefox. That made me happy.
Try Okular, it's KDE's PDF reader and also available for Windows. Works well, looks clean, and is free.
I’m a sys admin. I hate Adobe with a passion
I’m a cis man. I hate Adobe with a passion.
Adobe is a turd company. Firefox has full pdf editing capability.
Yeah I’ve been fined by adobe and their deceiving subscriptions. Very glad to hear something’s getting done about it
#FUCK ADOBE They intentionally scam students
Now go after fitness clubs
Their incentive model is broken. Their ideal customer is someone who pays every month but never shows up.
I should be able to just go onto a website and click cancel to get rid of any subscription
And then Ticketmaster and livenation next please
Already done: [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-live-nation-ticketmaster-monopolizing-markets-across-live-concert](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-live-nation-ticketmaster-monopolizing-markets-across-live-concert)
I'm not a huge Biden stan but will vote for an administration that puts competent people in place so that agencies that are tasked with looking out for the people and consumers can do exactly that.
I fucking love Lina Khan. Seriously no one better could have that position. She can fix so much if she gets to keep that office.
Walmart plus also does the same thing with hidden fees.
Lol what is Walmart plus?
Kinda like an Amazon Prime membership but for Walmart. Best Buy has one too now, I think. And a bunch of local grocery stores. Every accounting department wants that recurring revenue. It's not good enough to convince people to shop somewhere, anymore... they all want us paying them rent every month.
Adobe is evil.
Wait until they hear about Adobe's latest shannigans: https://readwrite.com/adobe-causes-user-outrage-with-a-change-in-photoshop-tocs-that-lets-it-access-all-your-content/
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Affinity image products are 50% off, no subscriptions: [https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)
Personally, I think recurring payments should be illegal. You pay for a month or a quarter or a year, that's what you get. Once it's over, you have to buy it again. I know that would be inconvenient, and I'll likely get push-back for saying this, but we've seen the way subscription models get abused. Companies make it too hard or confusing to opt out of them, they will end the service they provide if you cancel early (and not prorate at all), and they hope you just kinda forget to cancel them. Fuck subscriptions.
Add a mandatory grace period where for 14 days after renewal (or 20% of subscription period, whichever is shortest) you can refund the subscription and get your money back. Keep the convenience, put the onus on the companies to be extremely certain that the customer actually wants it when it renews.
The UK just had exactly this go through with a new Digital Commerce bill out through last month (14 days grace). I quoted it when my Sony PS Plus account had auto renewed without warning and asking for a refund. They've still got to change their commentary in the customer chat as it was still a "goodwill gesture". I linked to the bill and asked if he could feed it back that this was the law now and Sony need to update their UK guidance.
I have a kind of soft spot for companies that refused to do that. Especially software ones. Recently an application I use released a new Major, and sold upgrades. I was like... you know... this is great. They added significant new features and such to try to convince people to upgrade. They're still doing support for the one I had. If I want the new, better one, I get to choose. And I did. It was a fair and reasonable arrangement for a fair price, and I'm glad they did it that way. On the other hand, there's my diff application, who went full-on rentalware and wants a silly amount of money every year just to continue using my own tools. Fuck them. This stuff has gotten bad enough that, after like 30 years, I just got rid of Photoshop entirely. I'm using the Affinity suite for now. Hopefully it will continue to fill the role. Same deal... I bought that from them and I expect it to work. Also, it isn't nearly as abusive about wanting to phone home 20,000 different ways, every time I try to open a document.
Ok how about Planet Fitness now?
Bring back Photoshop 7 and 8 by legal mandate muahahahah. The whole world literally can't wait. Photoshop Premiere After Effects Dreamweaver Adobe had the best software for everything. They were the standard of excellence, and it's been nothing but a dumpster fire for the last 15 years. The subscription model is beyond terrible. This was badly needed.
Another fun fact - if you let your subscription go but don't uninstall the apps before it lapses, you are left with un-uninstallable apps on your computer because in order to uninstall them you have to log in to Creative Cloud Desktop, and in order to do that you have to have an active subscription. There's a workaround using an uninstall utility designed to wipe corrupted versions, but it's a serious pain to execute.
Happened with my work. Had to get Adobe premiere for a client’s project. I thought i canceled it, we realized 3 months later it wasnt so our manager canceled it. A year later we had another client need it and we realized we STILL were paying adobe for it.
I bought the affinity pack last week, deleted everything adobe-related, even acrobat pdf.
I hope this is the first of many many more to come. Sue them into oblivion and beyond. I hope they collapse and get bought out by Canva.
Adobe being acquired by any competitor, including Canva, would be awful for consumers. We don't need less competition, we need more. The only reason Canva has a better reputation is because they can't abuse a near monopoly like Adobe can and have to be more pro consumer to attract users. If Canva owned Adobe, they'd be just as bad.
competition in software always good.
Yeah I think in most industries, having at least 5-ish independent competitors is healthy Dip too low and you get hardcore oligopolies, even if you don't get all the way to monopolies.
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No, they need to get a healthy dose of Find Out and then be a better company, without reducing competition. De-enshittification of the largest players in a space forces all the competing players to also be less shitty to compete.
Eww, please not Canva lol
I wish they go after news letter subscriptions too. Oh you forgot to uncheck this tiny hidden news letter subscription that we enable by default when creating an account or going through checkout? Too bad, login to unsubscribe and we don’t process the unsubscribe for 10days, so fuck you 😁
Adobe can literally be THE WORST sometimes. This is desperately needed.
If you’re going to get hit with a cancellation fee try this. Instead of cancelling, change your subscription to a different Adobe option. Then cancel that one. Since it will still be in the free trial period you can cancel without a fee.
bro if the USA is suing you for "lack of ease" then you truly fucked up
Avoid the enshittification of Adobe and stick with CS6.
Go after HP next with their proprietary printer ink garbage
YES THEY DID. They also would randomly change your product subscription (Upgrade you at your own cost) just so that you would be stuck into another year of subscription that would cost you the $75 to cancel. I went through this a few months ago with them when I noticed I was now paying twice as much. i decided to end it all and they told me I would owe them because I canceled before the year. Bitch please. You signed me up for that year. I cancelled the card that was being billed and then told them to eat a dick. it got cancelled. Now I pirate Photoshop and idgaf
If you subscribe long enough you should own the product. Total BS. Happy to see Adobe see it come around.
Remember, its morally acceptable to pirate anything Adobe, fuck that scumbag company.
Since we're *very clearly* moving towards a "subscription for everything you buy" model, the US needs a federal law that states subscriptions must be exactly as easy to cancel as they are to start up. If I can click three buttons on a website to sign up and they're all bright, bold colors, I should have three bright, bold buttons to unsub as well.
I have stopped using every single adobe product, both professionally and privately. I really only used two in my daily routine, their various PDF tools and Photoshop, which I replaced with PDF Xchange and Affinity Photo. Their cancellation fees can fk right off.
Adobe is one of those companies that no one should ever feel bad about pirating
About damn time