The FTC went after Adobe today for "deceiving consumers by hiding the early termination fee for its most popular subscription plan." This might be a tough one to win. Here is Adobe's online order form:
This is very similar to the page shown in the government's complaint. It could certainly provide more information, but it's nonetheless fairly clear that there's a fee if you cancel the annual plan after 14 days. Alternatively, you can pay a higher rate on a monthly basis and cancel anytime with no fee.
Now, it's true that Adobe doesn't tell you how big the fee is. The answer is that it's half the remaining amount owed, so if you cancel after one month you owe $330. That's a lot! But if you pay the annual amount up front you're also stuck even if you decide you don't want it a month later.
The FTC also complains that if you want to cancel anyway Adobe makes it a pain in the ass. I don't doubt this for a second since every single software subscription I've ever tried to cancel does this. I would dearly love a federal regulation that basically says "cancellation needs to be functionally identical to purchase and displayed right alongside it." It's the kind of nitpicky regulation I'm normally not fond of, but the cancellation merry-go-round pisses me off so much that I'd make an exception for this.
In any case, Adobe makes it pretty clear that there's a cancellation fee for the annual plan, and their cancellation process is pretty much industry standard. This is probably not an easy case to win.
Usually early termination fees that aren’t disclosed are less than the recurring charge. For example, my phone plan says if I terminate early I owe the prorated cost of the phone which is specified as $799… the amount is clearly defined and isn’t just some “fee applies if you cancel.”
I’m sure even Kevin would agree that if Adobe charged you, say, $10,000 as an early termination fee for the second option, that would be unconscionable. So at some point “fee applies if you cancel after 14 days” doesnt cover ANY fee, only fees up to a certain reasonable amount. All this lawsuit is doing is trying to establish what is reasonable. The government thinks that $330 is too excessive to hide behind “fee applies after 14 days.” That sounds reasonable for a court of law to determine.
Also presumably that $330 fee applies in the second option if you cancel on the 15th day or if you cancel on the 364th day. That sounds like exactly what phone companies used to do: refusing to prorate the fee across the whole fixed contract so that cancelling on the first day after the grace period was the same fee as cancelling on the last day. I notice that the government fought that in the George W Bush admin (not exactly the most bleeding heart progressive admin) and got the phone companies to change to the current prorated ETFs. I imagine that’s exactly what will happen here too with Adobe. If you’re gonna charge an ETF, you gotta prorate it.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/2006-11-19-lawsuit-takes-issue-with-t-mobiles-etfs.html
On the 364th day, the fee would be low because there'd only be 1 day left in the plan.
Well, it goes by month. So the 364th day and the 334 would be the same cost: 50% of the final months fee. But it still would be less than $30. If you use it for almost a year and then cancel there's a (comparatively) nominal fee.
But if you use it for 14 days and then *try* to cancel, but the cancellation process is so onerous that you give up and come back the next day, you get hit for the full $330. If I were an FTC lawyer, that's what I'd focus on.
Oh yeah, for sure that's ridiculous, and it may be the goal of the suit - to make it so that fees can't exceed the cost of the next recurring subscription amount (so one month's subscription cost).
On the screen form displayed here, there’s a little i next to the line about “fee applies.” I assume that’s the standard “click here for more information.”
When you click on that More Information button does it tell you the fee?
If you click on it, it says, "If you cancel after 14 days, your service will continue until the end of that month's billing period, and you will be charged an early termination fee."
They won it before, so I bet they will again.
I got a PDF reader/editor bundled with my scanner a year ago, and I like it a lot better than Acrobat. Better yet, it runs on my laptop and doesn't demand an internet connection to work!
(Yeah, not all of us are in "civilization" all the time, and sometimes the only wifi is a locked down proprietary network.)
Even if it's tough to win, this looks like the kind of suit that is brought to affect marginal behavior by entities like Adobe on practices like this.
I would have to disagree.
At worst, you should be penalized the difference between the monthly rate of $89.99 and the annual rate billed monthly at $59.99 in the first month, not $330.
I have a few other complaints along the same lines:
* refunds must go through roughly as quickly as the payment did
* if the law requires a user to opt in to some condition, the user should be able to use said service while opting out. I’m thinking of such things as a company being allowed to sell the user’s data. Recently, I couldn’t book a hotel without first granting them this right.
And, for something I’ve seen in Europe: If the user can start your service online, he must be able to cancel your service online. You might be surprised at the number of companies that require a registered letter. They don’t provide a template, and they do their damnedest to hide the details.
They should go after Lyft, who don't tell you that there's a cancellation fee for deciding you don't want a scheduled ride within 1 hour of the arranged time, until after it's happened.
This is why I refuse software subscriptions. The GIMP works perfectly well for my photo editing needs. And if you need something more industrial strength, some people think Affinity is better anyway and it is a one time expense. Same with Office. I use it because my work requires it. But when I retire in two years, I'm kissing it goodbye. Libre Office is perfectly fine and they never lost their damn minds with the user interface like Microsoft did. Can they please take all that goddamn useless garbage out of the title bar?
I would dearly love a federal regulation that basically says "cancellation needs to be functionally identical to purchase and displayed right alongside it." It's the kind of nitpicky regulation I'm normally not fond of, but the cancellation merry-go-round pisses me off so much that I'd make an exception for this.
I think I heard the Biden Administration is actually working on this.