these cocksuckers were charging my 70-yr-old computer-illetrate mom nearly $80 a month because “she wanted to be able to open pdf on her laptop”, and then once I found out and tried to cancel this pro subscription which she had, they forced us to pay a $200 cancelation fee which amounts to 50% of the remaining months until the end of the year. Adobe came pre installed and all she did was click on yes, yes, yes after the triall period finished. It’s a predetory behavior from a scummy company. I will never forgive them for this.
How did it get her credit card info if she only clicked “yes” boxes? Or was it linked to some other payment system that was set up on her system somehow (MS or Apple App Store or something)?
she told my sister who is also very stupid when it comes to computers to put it. I wish I was making this up
People on Lemmy, who kinda are on the upper echelons of technical aptitude, forget that the average user is really fucking dumb. Work a stint in level 1 IT and you will get the absolute wildest head smacking issues ever.
And companies capitalize on that by making it incredibly easy to give them money.
My sister who is stupid with computers is a successful consultant with phd in her field lol.
I’m not exaggerating to say 90% of people in the world treat PCs as non-intresting tools do their job. They have privacy-nightmare settings on their phones and never change the default apps or settings on their PC. That’s how tech companies earn their billions
There’s a reason scam artists target the elderly. If a box on the computer screen says “put payment info here” then who are they to argue with the box?
TRUST THE BOX!
That is peak shittiness. Thank goodness your Mum has you to advocate, and I shudder to think of how many others don’t and were shafted or continue to be shafted.
Their competition for PDF Reader; Foxit, jacked their prices up considerably this last year too. It used to be an affordable alternative. They too got greedy (I assume since Adobe was getting away with it!) and have lost a considerable amount of customers in both the consumer end-users and the business side.
PDF becomes increasingly more used and ‘standard’ with the fracturing of ability to edit them or do ‘advanced’ tasks like merging multiple PDFs.
There are some alternatives which are free but also either Freemium or just plain questionable in their usage. I don’t want to trust some random company and I don’t want to be nickel and dimed for basic features like merge.
I spent a long time testing and trying tools. Sadly nothing as comprehensive as what Acrobat offers, but not an option at their pricing. Same with Foxit. I use PDFsam for some basic merge stuff. An interesting project is also Stirling PDF. but pdfsam is like Freemium and Stirling I’m pretty requires docker and it’s also not in all languages.
My prayers are heard. I hope you burn in the lowest circles of hell, Adobe.
I assumed their HQ was moved there long ago.
Summary:
- The US government is suing Adobe for allegedly deceiving customers with hidden fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions.
- The Department of Justice claims Adobe enrolls customers in its most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms.
- Adobe allegedly hides the terms of its annual, paid monthly plan in fine print and behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks.
- The company fails to properly disclose the early termination fee, which can amount to hundreds of dollars, upon cancellation.
- The cancellation process is described as “onerous and complicated”, involving multiple webpages and pop-ups.
- Customers who try to cancel over the phone or via live chats face similar obstacles, including dropped or disconnected calls and having to re-explain their reason for calling.
- The lawsuit targets Adobe executives Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, alleging they directed or participated in the deceptive practices.
- The federal government began investigating Adobe’s cancellation practices late last year.
- Adobe’s subscription model has long been a source of frustration for creatives, who feel forced to stay subscribed to continue working.
- Recently, Adobe’s new terms of service were met with backlash, with some users interpreting the changes as an opportunity for Adobe to train its AI on users’ art.
- The company has also faced regulatory scrutiny in the past, including antitrust scrutiny from European regulators over its attempted $20 billion acquisition of product design platform Figma in 2022, which was ultimately abandoned.
It’s so refreshing to actually have my tax dollars starting to fund consumer protection again.
If Trump gets in office again, it’s back to backsliding. Because apparently consumer protection is “big government” or some such shit.
Somewhere on my PC I have a several page long rant about how many government websites in Canada require you to pay for an Adobe subscription in order to sign an “official” PDF.
Why the hell isn’t there a better option for filling out legally required, government mandated forms than giving a private corporation money? This bothers me so fucking much.
Hell yeah.
Fuck adobe.
I submitted a complaint about this exact thing to one of the government sites so im going to pretend I had a part in this
I saw this coming, with no easy way to cancel the monthly subscription and decided to pay with a prepaid credit card instead…glad I did, it saved me from getting robbed.
Yeah, each time I “subscribe” for sth I use a prepaid card. Once the transaction is made, it destroys itself.
Cancelation fees (and steep ones at that) on digital goods/“services” … shows how far things sunk towards the lower hells.
Nestle and Adobe, on my special list.
HP
I remember when Adobe was a cool company that built art tools. Now it seems like the art tools are an afterthought, tacked onto a money-siphoning scheme.
Over the barrel, please.
Adobe’s name is mud these days.
This is beside the point, but it might help some people in the short term: I was able to switch my subscription plan without penalty and then cancel immediately without the cancellation fee. Maybe that still works.
let’s fucking goo
Great, now do Amazon
