Adobe, the company used for editing and countless other essential computer programs, has come under fire recently as claims of their exorbitant prices and methods of entrapping users to long term plans without their knowledge have come to light.
A Twitter post started the wave of anti-Adobe posts as a user showed a picture of a $291 cancellation fee for ending their Adobe plan early and soon after, hundreds of people shared similar stories of their issues with Adobe.
With that in mind, I think it’s time that everyone knew just how problematic Adobe software is. To start, let’s address the fact that Adobe essentially has a monopoly over the creative community in terms of designing, editing and photoshopping on computers and they know it.
Adobe consistently charges more than their competitors for apps like InDesign and Photoshop. These apps cost on average about $20 a month as compared to other sources like GIMP for photoshop or Scribus for design that are free and open for all to use.
Adobe banks on the fact that its name alone is enough to attract users to its apps and does little to improve them, choosing instead to make as much money as possible from their apps. An article by long term photographer and Adobe user, Mel Martin, expands on this.
“Photoshop and I go way back. I had the first version in 1990, and it has served me well as a photo editor for both my landscape and deep sky work,” Martin said. “Over the last couple of years, though, every time I use Photoshop or Lightroom in their Creative Cloud versions I can't help thinking something is wrong.”
What Martin is getting at here is the massive deterioration in quality of Adobe apps seen across the board. It’s clear that Adobe knows this too, as they’ve begun to submit polls more frequently asking how they can improve, but this doesn’t change the fact that time and time again they fail to keep the promises they make.
For years now, customers have been begging for improvements in apps across the board and Adobe has done little to address these concerns. The company has not only avoided these problems, but they’ve made it even more of a priority to entrap users who wish to cancel their plans.
The first user who claimed to have problems cancelling their plans was met by hundreds of users who had the same problem, including Christopher Ruz who made this post that detailed how hard it was for him to cancel his plan. His repeated attempts to cancel were ignored only until Adobe realized they could not make him buy a plan that he could not afford.
Other users claimed that they were often charge upwards of $100 just to quit a plan they accidentally agreed to. This is likely the biggest issue with cancelling plans from Adobe, as many times users are not aware that they’ve started plans in the first place.
This is due in large part to Adobe’s free trials that are designed to be difficult to understand and to entrap customers, as well as monthly subscription fees that are nearly impossible to get out of according to Ruz.
“Adobe suckers people into ‘monthly’ subscriptions that are actually annual subs in disguise, including massive predatory cancellation fees,” Ruz said.
From this, a huge movement has spawned to find alternate services outside of Adobe and with the amount of people openly claiming their issues with Adobe, this movement is rapidly escalating. Hopefully, Adobe finally starts to address the concerns brought to them by their customers, but if not, there are more than a few options to choose for customers who want better quality.
If anyone has issues with Adobe, this link has a post with several other options for Photoshop and other Adobe apps.