A great idea of a product is some sort of unified system for companies to correctly manage subscriptions. There needs to be standards for what makes a user flow acceptable or not when it comes to cancellations.
To add to this, Apple has the subscriptions panel on iOS in the settings app showing you everything on your account including third party apps as long as you subscribed through apps instead of websites.
Yep, in the US you can have the debt sent to collections.
My spouse got fucked by Shutterstock and we have to have a calendar reminder to cancel this when the year is up, since cancelation prior will result in us still paying out the year, but not getting the remainder of the service.
They're extremely scummy. I could certainly block the charges, but they'd just come after us and cause a headache.
But they make way more money implementing the dark pattern playbook. It's hardly an accident when subscriptions are hard to cancel it's a deliberate optimization.
I had been paying monthly for 13 years straight and they still demanded a cancellation fee because it turned out I was on an annual commitment (which by the way they hiked the price of by 50% with a month’s notice and by the time you notice the larger payment go out you are in a whole new 12 months).
Ok so you were on an annual plan to save money and when you cancelled you had to pay an exit fee to account for the annual discount. Seems reasonable to me.
They gave you a months notice of the price increase and you didn't cancel until after it went into effect?
It’s perfectly normal to have a fee for breaking a lease. And that’s what an annual subscription paid monthly is anyway. It’s a commitment for an extended period of time.
If you could just stop paying and retain the discounted rate, what is an annual subscription vs a monthly one?
Because it is not obviously theft. If you are getting a discount for making a year-long commitment, and then cancel, breaking that commitment, isn't a cancelation fee appropriate?
An annual plan shouldn't require a termination fee. If I purchase an Annual Subscription, I should be able to cancel it whenever, with no fee whilst retaining the benefits for my subscription, as I paid for a whole year up front anyways....
Adobe software being a subscription service is nonsense too, but thats for another discussion.
Yes, and if you get an annual plan from adobe and pay up front there is no fee for cancelling. The fee is if you get an annual plan with a monthly payment and cancel early.
I remember when it was like $600 for photoshop for a single version(like 25 years ago so what would that be today?). The subscription pricing is a steal.
If the subscription pricing was a "steal" and the perpetual licensing was genuinely more expensive and worse, they'd still offer the perpetual licensing.
Instead they killed it, they clearly do not want to cannibalize their subscription offing. It clearly makes them more money.
Your first point is valid, I was misunderstanding the yearly subscription pricing, they offer an upfront payment as well as a monthly (but with year commitment).
I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.
The subscription pricing makes it more accessible to consumers where as previously the only people that paid for licenses were companies(and probably only large companies given it was basically always the most popular warez). So they charge less per release but they dramatically increase the possible consumer base and release lumpy revenue based around semi-regular annual releases with constant cash flow. So on a per user basis it is without a doubt cheaper but overall they can still make a lot more money.
>I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.
I've not seen anyone claiming this actually happened but maybe I just missed them? Everyone I've seen has said the opposite.
Appreciate the suggestion but I'm terrible at editing so I just stick with PS because the cost for a month or two when I need it isn't much and it's really easy to find videos walking through exactly what I need to do. Even a single hour spent trying to translate a tutorial would more than wipe out the savings.
No, the complaint with Adobe is that if you cancel, they terminate access immediately rather than at the end of the billing period. There is no explanation for this other than a predatory one; they’re betting you’ll forget to cancel by the time your bill comes around. The immediate termination is effectively depriving you of the next N months of access for which you already paid.
>No, the complaint with Adobe is that if you cancel, they terminate access immediately rather than at the end of the billing period. There is no explanation for this other than a predatory one
This is exactly what Shutterstock does. What's maddening is that you can be getting a monthly charge, but are locked into a year contract. If you cancel, they'll continue to charge monthly but without being able to use the service. It's absurd.
This isn't true though. Again like with the annual plan people are confusing things. I just looked it up and checked a few reddit posts to confirm and heres what's happening.
If you cancel in the first 14 days they terminate immediately and refund you. After the 14 days the subscription is cancelled and you keep access until the point you paid for. If you signed up for an annual contract you have a cancel fee of 50% of the remaining agreed amount.
I hope freelancer.com will be the next one. I canceled and renewed my credit card because of them. Even though I deleted my account, they continued to withdraw money.
They let you sign up for an annual discount but still pay monthly. The cancelation fee is if you try to end the annual commitment early. If you just sign up monthly(seriously always do this when you see these offers) there is no cancellation fee.
Canceling a card isn't the same thing as canceling a subscription. Most businesses will have you still pay via a different payment method to resolve your debt.
They'll invoice you but don't actually pay. They aren't going to take you to court over a $50/month subscription; the easier route for them is to just disable your account, which is what you wanted anyway.
Never give them your actual residential address (they don't need to know it), birth day, or SSN, or be tricked into giving them such. If they ask on any customer service chat or phone, the answer is they don't need to know it.
Without these things they can't exactly put it on your credit report, either. They may send it to collectors, but don't talk to them. Let them cry. They still won't serve you a court summons over $50.
Keep businesses in check from this money-grabbing behavior. Any kind of subscription should be easily cancellable.
Conde Nast is _horrible_ this way, tried for a second year in a row to charge me for Wired, which i do not subscribe to, could not explain where they got the idea i did, evidently had access through some dark pattern from years earlier to charge for something i must have bought as a magazine on iOS.
It took hours of online chat argument with the unfortunate real employee fielding such pissed customers, and threats of legal action, eventually citing their legal counsel by email address and full name (from the Conde Nast site), before they agreed to _not_ charge me whatever obscene yearly subscription would be.
They can burn in crooked hell after that nonsense. I wonder if the Reddit people are bothered by their owner, as I had a personally signed generally cheery note from maybe Alexis back when i first subscribed and bought a tshirt, going on 20 years ago i guess.
I'm old enough to remember when we had a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to push back against this kind of anti-consumer crap. It got doge'd by Dumpty/Musk.
Good. There needs to be a US-wide law that any method used to sign up for a subscription has to be a valid way to unsubscribe too. If you allow users to sign up online, you should also be required to let them unsubscribe online too.
Basically, take the Californian setup, and apply it to the whole US. And pretty much every country in Europe.
One time for my small business I shared a login with one of my employees and they tried to get us to buy some sort of Enterprise subscription because they claimed that dozens of IP addresses were logging into the account and when we refused they simply closed our account. We were paying like over $300 per month and not even using the full subscription limits... We ended up finding a cheaper solution and now just use AI images so yeah it was pretty dumb on their part.
I didn't use the service. Well sometimes I would log in just to check they were actively using it and seeing which images were licensed to make sure they weren't using it for other purposes (remote employee). Only my one employee actually used it. I think she used a VPN which is why they thought dozens of people were using it apparently. Regardless the only loser in all of this was Shutterstock...
The only options they have is single seat or "talk to us" Enterprise level and for basically a one-person company using a virtual assistant we pretty much fall through the cracks there.
chancek | 7 hours ago
t-writescode | 7 hours ago
Stripe? https://stripe.com/billing/subscriptions
Paypal? https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/manage...
f001 | 6 hours ago
Modified3019 | 7 hours ago
x86hacker1010 | 6 hours ago
echoangle | 4 hours ago
supern0va | 4 hours ago
My spouse got fucked by Shutterstock and we have to have a calendar reminder to cancel this when the year is up, since cancelation prior will result in us still paying out the year, but not getting the remainder of the service.
They're extremely scummy. I could certainly block the charges, but they'd just come after us and cause a headache.
recursive | 6 hours ago
dawnerd | 6 hours ago
benoau | 4 hours ago
neallindsay | 5 hours ago
rectang | 7 hours ago
Is 35 million and the potential for future punishment a sufficient deterrent?
bpodgursky | 6 hours ago
altrum | 4 hours ago
josh_p | 3 hours ago
whh | 7 hours ago
sanswork | 6 hours ago
A lot of people sign up for discounted annual commitments though then complain when they can't cancel before the year is up.
IneffablePigeon | 6 hours ago
So yes, I complained about that.
sanswork | 6 hours ago
They gave you a months notice of the price increase and you didn't cancel until after it went into effect?
hartator | 6 hours ago
sanswork | 5 hours ago
DangitBobby | 2 hours ago
sanswork | 2 hours ago
HDBaseT | 2 hours ago
Do you think that is fair? After all they gave you 30 days!
sanswork | 2 hours ago
Marsymars | an hour ago
There are a number of subscriptions where I regularly want only a single month of service at a time.
DangitBobby | 5 hours ago
koolba | 5 hours ago
Where’s the theft?
It’s perfectly normal to have a fee for breaking a lease. And that’s what an annual subscription paid monthly is anyway. It’s a commitment for an extended period of time.
If you could just stop paying and retain the discounted rate, what is an annual subscription vs a monthly one?
DangitBobby | 2 hours ago
anomaly_ | 2 hours ago
whyenot | 5 hours ago
DangitBobby | 2 hours ago
HDBaseT | 2 hours ago
Adobe software being a subscription service is nonsense too, but thats for another discussion.
sanswork | 2 hours ago
I remember when it was like $600 for photoshop for a single version(like 25 years ago so what would that be today?). The subscription pricing is a steal.
HDBaseT | an hour ago
Instead they killed it, they clearly do not want to cannibalize their subscription offing. It clearly makes them more money.
Your first point is valid, I was misunderstanding the yearly subscription pricing, they offer an upfront payment as well as a monthly (but with year commitment).
I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.
sanswork | 13 minutes ago
>I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.
I've not seen anyone claiming this actually happened but maybe I just missed them? Everyone I've seen has said the opposite.
m463 | an hour ago
is this a business relationship with trust and maturity?
sanswork | an hour ago
It's not complex or dramatic.
cryzinger | 6 hours ago
It's not at 100% feature parity with PS but it's pretty darn close.
sanswork | 6 hours ago
cryzinger | 6 hours ago
chatmasta | 5 hours ago
supern0va | 4 hours ago
This is exactly what Shutterstock does. What's maddening is that you can be getting a monthly charge, but are locked into a year contract. If you cancel, they'll continue to charge monthly but without being able to use the service. It's absurd.
sanswork | 4 hours ago
If you cancel in the first 14 days they terminate immediately and refund you. After the 14 days the subscription is cancelled and you keep access until the point you paid for. If you signed up for an annual contract you have a cancel fee of 50% of the remaining agreed amount.
like_any_other | 22 minutes ago
They did a lot more than just making it hard to cancel, too: https://www.deceptive.design/brands/adobe
sanswork | 6 minutes ago
nih567 | 6 hours ago
x86hacker1010 | 6 hours ago
sanswork | 6 hours ago
charcircuit | 6 hours ago
dheera | 6 hours ago
Never give them your actual residential address (they don't need to know it), birth day, or SSN, or be tricked into giving them such. If they ask on any customer service chat or phone, the answer is they don't need to know it.
Without these things they can't exactly put it on your credit report, either. They may send it to collectors, but don't talk to them. Let them cry. They still won't serve you a court summons over $50.
Keep businesses in check from this money-grabbing behavior. Any kind of subscription should be easily cancellable.
charcircuit | 3 hours ago
paulddraper | 2 hours ago
charcircuit | 2 hours ago
hank9 | 5 hours ago
ktallett | 6 hours ago
runako | 6 hours ago
This sounds like it should carry criminal penalties?
zurtri | 5 hours ago
But when Corporate does it, we just handwave it way.
jjtheblunt | 5 hours ago
It took hours of online chat argument with the unfortunate real employee fielding such pissed customers, and threats of legal action, eventually citing their legal counsel by email address and full name (from the Conde Nast site), before they agreed to _not_ charge me whatever obscene yearly subscription would be.
They can burn in crooked hell after that nonsense. I wonder if the Reddit people are bothered by their owner, as I had a personally signed generally cheery note from maybe Alexis back when i first subscribed and bought a tshirt, going on 20 years ago i guess.
runako | 54 minutes ago
Quick note -- Reddit went public in 2024, so Condé Nast is no longer their owner.
raincole | 5 hours ago
bch | 5 hours ago
zackify | 4 hours ago
daveguy | 3 hours ago
paulddraper | 2 hours ago
CM30 | 3 hours ago
Basically, take the Californian setup, and apply it to the whole US. And pretty much every country in Europe.
ge96 | an hour ago
weird-eye-issue | 2 hours ago
jaynate | an hour ago
weird-eye-issue | 29 minutes ago
The only options they have is single seat or "talk to us" Enterprise level and for basically a one-person company using a virtual assistant we pretty much fall through the cracks there.