Adobe, the creative software giant behind apps like Photoshop and Illustrator, is in hot water with the U.S. government over its allegedly deceptive subscription practices. The Department of Justice recently filed a lawsuit accusing Adobe of trapping consumers into lengthy, expensive subscriptions through hidden fees and complex cancellation processes.
At the heart of the controversy is Adobe’s “Annual, Paid Monthly” (APM) subscription plan, which the company presents as the default option for accessing its popular design tools. While the up-front pricing for the APM plan looks tempting, the DOJ alleges that Adobe buries crucial details about the plan’s terms in hard-to-find fine print.
Specifically, the company allegedly fails to make it clear that the APM is a full year-long commitment – cancel early, and you’ll be slapped with a steep early termination fee equal to 50% of the remaining contract value.
According to the complaint, Adobe has gone to great lengths to keep consumers locked into these APM subscriptions against their will. Important disclosures about the termination fees are allegedly “designed to go unnoticed” and hidden away in optional text boxes and hyperlink disclaimers.
Even if customers do discover the fees and attempt to cancel, Adobe is accused of obstructing the process through dropped customer service calls, unhelpful chat representatives, and forcing users to repeatedly re-explain their cancellation requests.
The DOJ paints a picture of a company determined to profit from consumer confusion at all costs. Despite years of complaints to the Better Business Bureau and directly from angry customers, Adobe has allegedly carried on with its opaque subscription presentations and convoluted cancellation barriers. Two top Adobe executives, David Wadhwani and Maninder Sawhney, are even named as defendants in the suit for their alleged roles in perpetuating these “illegal business practices.”
Of course, Adobe insists it has done nothing wrong, claiming full transparency around its terms of service and touting a “simple cancellation process.” The company has vowed to fight the government’s claims in court. However, Adobe may want to brace itself; the litigation is part of a broader crackdown by U.S. regulators against tricky subscription tactics employed by major corporations.
Just last year, the Federal Trade Commission sued e-commerce behemoth Amazon over similar allegations of obstructing consumers from canceling their Prime memberships. Clearly, the days of businesses profiting from subscription fine print and Byzantine cancellation flows could be numbered as irate customers say, “I’m trapped, and I can’t get out!”
