Adobe exec likened hidden cloud subscription exit fees to 'heroin', says FTC

Adobe's controversial billing practices and punitive fees for those terminating their subscriptions early follow from the software titan's addiction to revenue, the FTC has said. In a newly unredacted [PDF] filing by the US watchdog in its lawsuit against the Photoshop maker, the FTC claims Adobe executives know its " …

[Doctor Syntax]

"Providing consistent innovation through flexible subscription plans"

When you've got to the point of providing, say 95% of what any given customer wants it's very likely that the remaining 5% will be the saem for all customers. Paying a subscription for access to further new features isn't going to be cost effective for most customers unless they get lucky because few customers will be interested in very few additional features.

[Pascal Monett]

Adobe "strives to have a positive customer experience" ?

Yeah, right up until you sign the contract and hand over the money.

Then you're nothing but chicken feed, and Adobe is the one eating.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: Adobe "strives to have a positive customer experience" ?

I'm surprised Adobe haven't said they intend to "provide customers with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different applications" yet.

[James O'Shea]

I just stay away from Adobe cloudy stuff. I still have Creative Suite... which is now functionally defunct. It won't even install on macOS Catalina or later, or Win8.1. (It installs, kinda, on Win 8. Use at your own risk.) i use non-Adobe, non-cloudy, non-subscription, apps when I can't use CS, It is my opinion that I have not yet got my money's worth out of CS. I intend to extract every penny. And I will never, ever, buy anything from Adobe ever again.

Adobe is no the only vendor I have this attitude with.

[Anna Nymous]

Out of interest: what are your usage scenarios that prevent you from using something like the GNU Image Manipulation Program? I am not well versed enough in this type of software but would be interested in hearing how far behind (or not) the open source solution is from what you need.

[James O'Shea]

Why not use The GIMP? Three reasons:

1 The UI. The GIMP was written by programmers who had very little graphics experience, and it shows. Using it can be actively painful, as certain users have been known to go looking to hurt someone because of UI choices. Things have improved, but there are still problems, many of which have been around for over 15 years, and I really don't think will ever be addressed.

2 The plug-ins. A lot of users use several of the hordes of Photoshop plug-ins available. Some (not all, or even most) can be used in the GIMP, but usually with extra effort, sometimes considerable additional effort. Certain users might use Obscure Plug-In X once a year... but when they need it, they need it now, and there's no time to wrestle with the GIMP. Sometimes, using a plug-in is simply ensuring that WINE or similar is turned on. In other cases, things are not so easy. (Yes, there are problems with plug-ins and the GIMP on Windows. Yes, really.) In many instances what seems to me to be the obvious way to make the things work doesn't. There might be a non-obvious (to me) way that I might or might not stumble across later. See the UI problems noted above.

3 The weird bugs. The first version of the GIMP that I ever tried could not print on certain printers, including very popular machines from Epson and HP, back in the days when HP was good. If the GIMP won't print with the most common series of desktop grayscale laser printers in the world and with one of the four most common desktop inkjets in the world, that's not user error. Yes, this particular bug has been addressed. How it escaped into public is unknown to me, and I don't bloody care why. And there are other bugs that have not been addressed. Up to the last time that I tried, maybe a year ago, I could make the GIMP on Mac (but not Linux or Windows) crash any time that I wanted to by a simple sequence of steps, a problem present for at least ten years. At this point, I suspect that it will never be fixed.

Affinity Photo doesn't make users want to inflict grievous bodily harm. Affinity Photo uses Photoshop plug-ins so easily that Adobe has taken active measures to move stuff around to make it interesting to use Affinity. Bugs are (usually) fixed quickly. Yeah, Affinity costs money. I'll pay to avoid the hassle. And it's not very much, especially when compared to Adobe's grand theft.

[Anonymous Coward]

You omitted items 4-10: The UI.

The UI was written by our enemies. Probably aborted foetuses who survived in the sewers under a clinic, drinking from rusting agent orange drums dumped there after Vietnam, and now have a wee bit of a chip on their shoulders. It is an act of war on normies.

[Snake]

That's very strange. I'm not only using CS6 on Win10 but recently reinstalled it on one of the Win10 machines I use. Is there something on your particular machine blocking the install?

[IGotOut]

Affinity

are giving a free 6 month trial on their entire suite. So if you want to slowly get clean, nows your chance.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Re: Affinity

...and no subscription involved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Affinity

I moved over to Affinity a few years back, and had all three of their graphics apps on my Mac. But then they brought out their v2 suite and expected me to pay again - any credit for being an existing customer was negligible. I'd used Serif graphics apps for years before then (starting at PagePlus v2 on my Windows PC back in the 90's). I also bought their photo editing and drawing apps. Serif routinely offered deals on new products and some were well worth trying out, but their marketing team just overdid it and became a pest. Their photo editing app left a lot to be desired so I eventually tried Photoshop - and it was great. I later discovered Lightroom and that became my core photo manager and editor, until Adobe went to their subscription model. I hesitated getting Affinity for two reasons: one was because there was no cataloguing facility (i.e. it couldn't replace Lightroom) and my previous experience with Serif marketing. However, I succumbed when Designer and Publisher were added. And then, when v2 came out, I had deja vu.

I now use Pixelmator Pro and Photomator (on my MacBook) and they do all I need. The test will be when they get upgraded and whether existing customers are gouged or not. As photo editing apps, they do the job: Pixelmator is a good basic photo editor (basic in that that is what it does, and does it well for me); Photomator is more akin to Lightroom as it has batch processing and basic cataloguing tools (but still has a little way to go regarding the latter).

I still have access to the full Adobe suite if I want it, as I do part-time work for a local college and able to use their licence via my education credentials; I have that on a Windows VM (well away from my Mac as it wasn't easy to remove all of Adobe's hooks when I stopped my own subscription) just in case I need to open a file in one of their formats...

[Giles C]

Re: Affinity

I am also a user of affinity mostly publisher but the other apps do get used.

Now the first affinity photo app came out in 2015 and for a one off purchase you got all the upgrades free until the v2 app came out in 2022.

Any you are complaining about paying for the new version you had up to 8 years of free fixes.

The one downside is the lack of a cataloguing function but I can live without that until the intend to make one or not.

The full price photo app is £34 whereas photoshop in the same period would have meant you spent about £800.

I don’t think affinity is a bad deal….

[ecofeco]

Naw

Just plain old naked greed.

[simonlb]

Re: Naw

And this is what Louis Rossman means when he says these companies have a 'rapist mentality'. They aren't interested in you as a customer, just as a revenue source they have control over.

[ecofeco]

Re: Naw

As I always said, the perfect U.S. company that they all aspire to is one that takes your money and gives you nothing in return.

But as one great wit has said: "If buying isn't owning, then piracy is obviously not stealing"

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Naw

If you read a dictionary piracy is not stealing. Stealing means to take something away from the owner, as in take a physical object from the owner. WHen you pirate you are not removing any phsyical item from the owner, that why its called piracy an dnot theft or stealing.

[Snake]

Re: takes your money

And that's the irony of the U.S.

One major political group (you know who) says that regulations are bad, getting in the 'way' of business.

Yet, here we are. It's not as if this is all unique, all one needs to do is study U.S. business history from 1860-1920 to see the abusive mentality of business and WHY regulation was started in the first place: that, when given free reign, most people will take advantage of as much ad they can get away with as possible

So here's Adobe violating consumer laws. Surprise!! Oh, how would we *ever* expect that?? [/s]

Lesson: people never learn from history.

Or tl:dr version: people are idiots.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: takes your money

This is why executives of companies should be held liable for the crimes of the companies they "lead", and when the company like Adobe is found guilty the board gets jail time.

That would instantly fix so many bad companies, its not funny.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Fuck Adobe. Adobe sucks.

I'm having to use Acrobat to revise some internal documentation, and, while I understand the purpose of PDFs (I suppose), the primitive nature of the editing tools just boggles my mind. Acrobat is basically the PDF editing tool (okay, I see the problem), and it doesn't have change tracking or a decent undo function or decent formatting tools. It does have AI, for some reason (and an additional fee), but actual improvement of the product seems to have stopped sometime in the last decade (or century). I guess the PDF specification has to be limited because of, you know, portability, but that's no reason for the editor to be so fucking pathetic.

[Spazturtle]

Re: Fuck Adobe. Adobe sucks.

PDFs are not really meant to be edited, you are meant to edit the original file and then export it to a new PDF.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Fuck Adobe. Adobe sucks.

So I've been told, but I don't have access to the source files, so I have to make do with directly editing the PDF. Acrobat is an absolute dog's breakfast, with controls spread indiscriminately throughout the interface and lacking "advanced" features like "copy to clipboard."

To everyone who complains about the ribbon in Microsoft products, I recommend you try using Acrobat for a day. You will be positively aching to use the ribbon compared to whatever the fuck Adobe calls their UI model. Microsoft's user interfaces are like an eternity of delicate, soft fingers gently stimulating one's prostate gland compared to Acrobat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Fuck Adobe. Adobe sucks.

>you are meant to edit the original file and then export it to a new PDF

Have you ever created a form in Word and then converted that to a PDF? Adobe does a terrible job of it. You absolutely have to edit the PDF itself, almost recreating the form fields and their options from scratch. It's a painful process.

[mt4332]

I got caught out by this, it’s even worse if you sign up for a free trial, after the trial they dump you on annual. I had to fight tooth and nail for my money back because I forgot to cancel after I realised the trial was no good for me.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Just a question, did you actually ready the T&S before you signed up?

That seems to be the crux of everyone's problems with this. Now I'll bet Adobe doesn't make that link to the T&S obvious, as does everyone.

This sounds so much like the TurboTax suit, which IMO was BS. The terms of "free" on turbo tax were right in your face. It was their fault that people had no idea what forms they needed to file BEFORE they started filing.

Believe me, I hate Adobe as much as the next guy, but we've come to a place where caveat emptor has been replaced by "I want the nanny state to protect me from my stupidity!"

And yet, the Government has allowed companies like Fabletics to continue their deceitful "failed to chop this month $60.00 penalty" to continue. Where the terms are very easily missed because of the tiny font hidden in a busy checkout screen.

[JWLong]

Adobe

Started blocking them 10 about ten years ago when they started this bull$hit.

Today, they remind me of Micro$hitShaft. But they have to be delt with by blocking 99% of their crap.

Sometimes I get so burnt out having to update blacklist and then a user will complain that they can't go to Adobe.com (or some other site). I just point them to a document explaining the reasons why web sites and programs are blacklisted.

The first paragraph of this document say's:

The reason for the blacklist are that the end user's isn't qualified to make informed decisions pertaining to the proper operation of most equipment found in the modern office today.

It goes on to say that the end user isn't stupid or ignorent, just that there's alot of hanky $hit on the web and they're not expected to know it all.

Got about 125K apps/host blacklisted, and Adobe (and their software) is defiantly on the $hit list.

[ecofeco]

Re: Adobe

I see the corporate footlickers have down-voted you.

Have my upvote.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Adobe

I didn’t vote either you or JWlong either up or down. FWIW, though, I agreed with JWlong’s sentiments, but the constant use of “$” in words and company names reminded me too much of a frothing screed written by a 15-year-old l33t haX0r in his mom’s basement.

[Ethan :)]

Adobe's practices are flat on their face unethical. There's not even a debate to be had about it, it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that auto-subscribing trial users to the most expensive plan after the trial ends, and also then making it as hard as possible to cancel is atrocious. Either one of those alone is bad enough, but the combination is just heinous.

There's a simple rule for whether your subscription model can be considered ethical or not: if it's harder to cancel than it is to subscribe, then it's unethical. No qualifiers, no exceptions, if someone says to you "I don't want to pay for this service anymore" that's it, it's over. There's nothing else to say, the transaction is already over. No asking "are you sure?" the user wouldn't be here if they didn't already decide that themselves. If they want to come back, they can resubscribe just as easily as they did the first time, but anything you do to try and stop them from leaving is only going to make it less and less likely they'll ever return.

[Anonymous Coward]

Long ago dumped this steaming pile and moved to Inkscape and GIMP without loss of any useful functionality.....

[Adair]

Likewise. I completely understand that GIMP (or Krita) don't do it for everyone, but if they are good enough then they are good enough, and Adobe's uselessness becomes a fading memory.

All software is crap (to some degree), it's just a case of finding the kind of crapness we are willing to tolerate and make work for our needs.

[sgp]

I recently deleted my creative cloud account. I was only using a free version to work on some Adobe XD files. At deletion they asked me for a reason. So I told them I thought their business practices were disgusting. Not that I think it will actually change anything but if only we could collectively do that thing...

[CowHorseFrog]

PLease stop complaining will someone think of the ceo, how else will the poor barstard get tens of millions in compensation for DOING absolutely nothing but sit at his desk and twiddle his thumbs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you exaggerating !

Well, okay, the CEO is making 44 millions.

But the presidentof the digital experience business ? A paltry 15 millions !

He must be doing something right though, because that's a 50% raise from the previous year. Though it was 22 millions in 2020, life has its highs and lows.

https://www1.salary.com/ADOBE-INC-Executive-Salaries.html

[CowHorseFrog]

Are you saying the president of the digital experience division did everything there ?

Its good too see american cult of corporate leadership has brainwashed you into believeing the board does everything at their respective companies, and the board should get billions in bonuses, while those parasite minions below them should get nothing.

Sad too see that people are so brainwashed they repeat this stupid mentality and attribution of work like they believe it.

[ScottishYorkshireMan]

too lazy to change though

From recent conversations it seems that Adobe have an ace in the hole.

People seem to be real happy to be gouged by Adobe because:

1. It meets their workflow needs.

2. They don't have time to learn something new.

3. It is the standard that all the others try and replicate.

4. No other package or suite has everything that Adobe offers.

5. Their work is so pish, they don't give a shit whose AI hoovers it up.

Pick from the above, whatever you need to avoid having to say, You were stupid in signing up and wish you hadn't. It's ok, people take fuck all responsibility these days for anything, especially personal choices which we see in software, politics and life in general, people just don't have the intelligence or personality to say 'jeez, I really did fuck up choosing that'.

Upvote/downvote, don't give a shit, but I guess the downvotes will be from those with who I have struck a nerve. Ha ha.

[riparian zone]

Re: too lazy to change though

If the work can justify the outlay fill yer boots. I reckon that as an off the cuff guesstimate that at least 75% of subs barely make rhe money for a full fat cloudy service. Paint.net for windows, pinta on a mac and krita on Linux do the j9bs I need. Inkscape on all 3 options is also the nuts.

I've also converted in design files in Affinity publisher too..sure it's not as nice as ID, but it's worth the regular free updates, great YouTube channel and blossoming community pages. They all like to help.

[Henry Wertz 1]

stop payment?

If I called, said i wished to cancel and got hung up on etc, I'd consider notice given and stop payment, if any more charges come through I'd reverse the charges. That said the closes thing I have to a software subscription is the couple bucks a month for slack since I have several clients that use it.

[Tridac]

Still have Photoshop 7 on the machine, for the odd times that I need image editing, but suspect that gimp would do just as well. There are others worth looking at, such as darktable, which I thought truly excellent when I last looked at it. Both open source, free, with regular updates

Who needs companies like adobe, rent seeking spivs with cancellation fees an outrage to natural justice. Tell them to spin on it...