Friday, September 6, 2013

Update To Adobe Billing Practices Problem

Wow, they did it again.  They have continued to baffle me as to their billing practices and the way they try to throw up barriers to canceling subscriptions.

You can read the original post here. 

Here is the update: 

 Yesterday, I received a call from their customer care.   They said that that they made a mistake and that I was not entitled to a refund.   


In addition, they told me that this was a yearly subscription and even though I cancelled it, I still need to pay them for the rest of the year.


[ Note: Here is a list of transactions from adobe.  You can see that every month, they called it a renewal.  So, how is it that I have a yearly subscriptions but it 'renews' every month?

Here are the transactions: (with tranaction IDs removed) as you can see you have been billing me monthly for over two years.



August 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.62

totalUS $20.62   Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.62

totalUS $20.62
June 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
May 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
April 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
March 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
February 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
January 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
December 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
November 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
October 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
September 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
August 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
July 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
June 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
May 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
April 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
March 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
February 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
January 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
December 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
November 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
October 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
September 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
August 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
July 15, Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64
June 15, 2011 Renewal

subtotalUS $19.00

taxUS $1.64

totalUS $20.64]




I said, "No, I don't think so".

So, if you don't cancel your subscription at exactly the right time,  you get stuck with another year of payments?  Wow.

I was paying them monthly,  they charged me a cancellation fee and then they tell me that the one month they refunded, I'm not supposed to have.

Wow!

So, I've been paying them for a couple of years on a monthly basis.  I was on some monthly payment plan before being moved to this cloud system of theirs.

I hardly use dreamweaver and I wanted to cancel the subscription.   They made it so difficult that I think it took over an hour of my time.  

I asked for $50 from them in order to cover my time.  My time is valuable.  $50 probably isn't enough. Some people charge $300 or more for an hour of their time.   It shouldn't take over an hour to cancel a subscription.  They appear to make it hard on purpose.   Read my last post for the details. 


What Are They Doing?  


The behavior of Adobe through all of this has been quite disturbing.  I was talking it over with someone and she suggested that perhaps Adobe is in some financial trouble. 

It could be that or it could be the fact that they are losing customers due to their move to the cloud system.  

In either case, that might explain their motivation to make it hard to cancel subscriptions.   The only problem is, this behavior alienates more and more customers.    And it just isn't appropriate behavior for a big company to take.  

You can see the comments in the other post to find out there is already a petition signed by over 30,000 people to stop this cloud subscription thing.  

I didn't know about that until I wrote that last post.  

Share your thoughts below.


Sincerely,



2 comments :

  1. David, I'm inclined to think their egregious behavior is working for their bottom line, and that Adobe products are so well entrenched that many people who object to their business practices will continue their patronage nonetheless. I have a low opinion of Microsoft, but I still own a PC. If I can find a graceful work-around for either Adobe or MS, I use it. If someone claimed they could build a bot that would scrub Flash from the Web, I'd contribute. But predatory capitalism works. If you're a behemoth like Adobe, or AT&T, or PayPal, you can manage your reputation well enough to maintain an endless, fresh supply of innocent victims.

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    Replies
    1. I would have a hard time arguing with you at this point. I am shocked by both the billing practice and the follow up phone call trying to convince me that I should pay them more.

      In fact, it is really hard to believe they would attempt that.

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