US sues Adobe for “deceiving” subscriptions that are too hard to cancel
www.theverge.com
The DOJ accuses Adobe of trapping users in subscriptions.
  • answersplease77@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2391·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
      681·
      5 months ago

      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)?

      • answersplease77@lemmy.worldEnglish
        901·
        5 months ago

        she told my sister who is also very stupid when it comes to computers to put it. I wish I was making this up

        • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.worldEnglish
          69·
          5 months ago

          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.

          • answersplease77@lemmy.worldEnglish
            37·
            5 months ago

            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

        • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
          7·
          5 months ago

          Adobe is worse than scammers. Scammers at least have the self realization that they are scamming. Adobe will steal your money and huff on the fumes that they are providing a valuable service by letting people open PDFs.

          I recently downloaded their PDF reader (because it’s the only app which allows for digitally signing a document with a visible cryptographic signature) and it’s 400 MB in size. In no world should a PDF reader be that large.

          • AeroLemming@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            Firefox can open PDFs and I’m not sure about the desktop versions, but the Android version is 117MB.

            • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              5 months ago

              There are hundreds of Windows and Linux apps which can open PDF, but so far only Adobe’s version is the only one which can attach a digital signature. I normally use Zathura on Linux which is like a 5 MB maybe. It’s tiny, very configurable and JUST a pdf reader.

      • JonEFive@midwest.socialEnglish
        281·
        5 months ago

        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?

    • bean@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      5 months ago

      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.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
      511·
      5 months ago

      I know it sucks for the call center personnel to have to listen to people yelling at them, but I’ve had multiple of such companies that were so shitty that the only way to get anything fixed was to keep making people cry until finally someone would push you to a supervisor. Well at enough of them and they will either fix the issue or push you through to their supervisors who will do anything to stop the yelling.

      I got to the point where I’ll just make then cry because it’s the only option left to get any normal responsible behavior from companies. I’ll have to call 20 times perhaps but that’s what I’ll do then

  • Jesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1062·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • SorryQuick@lemmy.caEnglish
      301·
      5 months ago

      It’s probably just your tax pennies unfortunately, your tax dollars are still going to the army and such.

  • datavoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
    85·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
      39·
      5 months ago

      Feeling daring? If you have to buy the software anyway, invoice the government department the price of the software.

      • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        5·
        5 months ago

        My mom worked in accounting for the local government. You’d be surprised how many invoices are getting paid without double checking

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      15·
      5 months ago

      You can’t fill it out with Firefox? I think pdf.js (which Firefox uses) supports PDF forms.

      • datavoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
        8·
        5 months ago

        Nope, I’ve tried every other option I could think of. All the browsers, a few websites, ms office products, non ms office products, some graphic design tools… to Adobe’s credit they did a great job making sure people had to pay

        • dan@upvote.auEnglish
          8·
          5 months ago

          Ahh, it’s probably using some proprietary features that only exist in Adobe products.

          I’m not sure if they still sell it, but Adobe used to have a suite of form tools where the person filling out the form had to use Adobe Acrobat (it used some non-standard PDF form features), and the company collecting the form responses had to use software built on top of Adobe ColdFusion (which costs thousands of dollars per server). They really tried to lock people in to their form ecosystem.

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukEnglish
      6·
      5 months ago

      What’s even more crazy, is Adobe has a system called something like “docusign”, where you can just fill the document in in-browser.

      I’m fortunate that I haven’t yet hit a form I couldn’t just edit in GIMP!

    • Septimaeus@infosec.pubEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      I’m curious about this. If demonstrable, it seems many Canadians could sue.

      What is the typical user workflow? For example:

      1. An embedded Adobe applet (e.g. fill, sign, and submit on the government website)
      2. Token-based API (e.g. redirect or spawn child window/tab, user fills and signs on adobe site, user returned to government site)
      3. Something else (e.g. upload button with server-side validation for digital signing)

      Edit: looked into this a bit. Did you receive an error message like the following?

      This document does not allow you to save any changes you have made to it unless you are using Adobe Acrobat Standard DC or Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

      (Regardless it’s totally shitty that government websites recommend a specific company’s software, especially Adobe. I’m just trying to figure out if they actually force citizens to pay a private company.)

  • Restaldt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    73·
    5 months ago

    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

  • Dragomus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    56·
    5 months ago

    Cancelation fees (and steep ones at that) on digital goods/“services” … shows how far things sunk towards the lower hells.

    • Incogknighto@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      It should seriously be illegal. I can’t believe companies are able to get away with this. If you don’t have the money to cancel, you’re just locked in

  • lps@lemmy.mlEnglish
    51·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • realharo@lemm.eeEnglish
      22·
      5 months ago

      There used to be a “loophole”, where if you changed to a different plan, it restarted the 7 day period during which you could cancel with no fee. Not sure if they ever changed that though.

      • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        9·
        5 months ago

        Thats how I got out of it without having to pay the hundreds of dollars in cancelation fees. I was fuming at the time too, and that was maybe close to 5 years ago now.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.socialEnglish
        4·
        5 months ago

        Funnily enough, I just had to sign up for the trial for reasons and made sure to cancel immediately after I was done. I was worried I’d just forget and pay for a month or something.

      • LCP@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        5 months ago

        Apparently it still works. Came across a Short talking about it.

    • samokosik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      Yeah, each time I “subscribe” for sth I use a prepaid card. Once the transaction is made, it destroys itself.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    453·
    5 months ago

    I’m calling it now:

    In other news Adobe forced to pay 0.001% if what they earn every day from subscriptions and still find loopholes allowing them to continue business as usual, with the US government sticking their thumbs up their ass because they can’t make an example of Adobe too soon or the bribes… I mean donations from lobbyists representing large companies will dry up.

  • Jaybob32@lemmy.caEnglish
    39·
    5 months ago

    I decided to try out the new version about a year ago. I had a monthly charge of about $26 I think it was. After about 3-4 months and not really using it, I cancelled a few days before it would renew for another month. $50 early cancellation fee? Wtf do you need to cancel a few mins before or it’s early cancellation? Adobe fucking sucks ass.

    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      5 months ago

      That’s the trick, it’s always early cancellation, there is no allowed time to stop sending them money.

  • Guadin@k.fe.derate.me
    402·
    5 months ago

    I’ve been on the verge of cancelling my subscription for multiple times now. But everytime I try an alternative it’s missing something (for instance capture one mobile does not do masks/layers…), and so I keep shipping shitloads of money to a company which has dickass privacy rules and extorts you out of money.

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      5 months ago

      I’m a big fan of Affinity Photo and Illustrator. I switched when Adobe went to the subscription model. It’s very similar, and they have full tutorials on Vimeo for anything that works differently. It’s definitely worth the $20.

      • thejml@lemm.eeEnglish
        27·
        5 months ago

        As a “prosumer” photographer (I do semi-pro landscape photography mostly, with a little astrophotography as a hobby when the sky is clear enough), I’ve been really happy with Affinity Photo over the Adobe suite. Definitely recommend. I just hope they keep their quality up since being bought out.

      • nnullzz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        5 months ago

        I switched to the Affinity suite today after almost 20 years of using Adobe products. After the trial I realized that I actually enjoyed the layout of the tools and the familiarity between photoshop and illustrator. Their InDesign alternative (Publisher 2) is pretty nice too. It really helps that they’re giving 50% off right now. (Smart marketing btw)

        Only thing I’m struggling with finding a replacement for is after effects. I already made the switch to DaVinci for video so motion graphics is the only hole left to fill and then I’m free from Adobe.

      • Guadin@k.fe.derate.me
        3·
        5 months ago

        That looks great. It’s mostly a Photoshop replacement right? I’m also looking for something to replace Lightroom, with the same amount of functions on desktop as on iPad. Any recommendations?

    • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      15·
      5 months ago

      It doesn’t help Adobe has software patents for their products, so anyone who makes a similar program has to either live in a country that doesn’t recognize the “right” to claim you invented math, or be risk being sued.

    • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      8·
      5 months ago

      Depending on what you’re doing, Krita is worth a look. I gave it a go for cropping and lightly editing some photos recently, and then tried their version of the clone stamp tool. It’s hidden under the brushes presets, but worked better than the Photoshop tool 👍

  • kescusay@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.netEnglish
      34·
      5 months ago

      Did they ever? They bought PageMaker in 1994 and Photoshop in 1995. They bought Macromedia in 2006, GoLive, Live motion, Typekit, Behance… Is there anything they’ve ever bought they haven’t slowly ruined with financialisation or just outright shuttering what would have been competition?