It's been roughly 8 years since I last paid for an Adobe subscription. The subscription period was over and yet they renewed it unilaterally. A whole year nonetheless.I called my bank, explained the situation, alleged scam and asked for a refund and to forever block any attempt from Adobe to charge my credit card. No only they agreed right away (which actually surprised me). They said that they have received a lot of similar request from other customers, all coming from Adobe.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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AssholeDesign
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Wow, I had no idea Acrobat Reader still exists. They charge €15,72 per month now apparently.
Reader has always been free. This is for Pro which allows you to do manipulation of PDFs, not just viewing them.
I vaguely remember (but can't find it right now) that the PDF format became open source at some point and free alternatives came out for PDF editing. And that was already back in the 2000s when people still printed documents (which is what PDF was originally meant for).
In modern times, every browser/OS can read PDF, every text editor can export to PDF, nobody prints physical documents and there are free alternatives – so why do they still exist and who is paying?
If you have a business like a law firm where it is VERY IMPORTANT that a PDF has certain qualities, free tools for PDF creation can be a big gamble, especially if you have to open a PDF that someone else has created and do changes to it. And the cost is pretty trivial compared to the cost of messing up.
I just open pdfs in the (firefox) browser. Does most of what I need.
My company pays for it so we can edit pdf forms.
Sadly not many capable tools for that exist. Open for suggestions (Windows) though
For a professional, what Acrobat pro can do is not available in any other program and (don't tell Adobe!) only 50 cents a day is an incredible deal
For example you can scan a sheet of paper, it does OCR on it and creates a font that matches exactly the one on page, then you can change words and sentences without changing the look of it.
Trim pages, remove elements, edit embedded images and vectors with other programs (doesn't need to be made by Adobe but it works better if it is). Change margins, fonts, colors, flow text differently, change the line spacing. Have a preview how color will change when printed, see if spot colors are used and change them in different ways. Edit transparencies, use plugins for extended repetitive work. Convert the fonts to outlines if the font has some kind of DRM and doesn't allow embedding, resulting in visual difference between other computers.
The nerfed standard edition at 10 euro per month instead isn't worth anything
This is why I use Privacy.com. Never use your credit card to go bareback on stuff like memberships or subscriptions. You can still cancel ahead of time, but if they put up any fight, you can walk away at any time.
Nintendo, patreon, bluehost, linkedin premium, adobe and Spectrum. Fuck all of y'all. Your dark patterns hose people.
Can I use Privacy.com outside the US?
Their support article says no, unfortunately https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050917053-Can-I-use-Privacy-if-I-live-outside-the-US
I don't think so. Canada does have similar services through some banks, IIRC.
Does it hit your credit if an bill or fee goes unpaid because the virtual card no longer exists?
I don't believe so, because it never reaches your credit card. You spoof your credit card with a fake number. It can make the payments to privacy. Privacy hands the money to the sketchy client.
It's basically a self-imposed Man-in-the-middle attack.
Ehen you destroy the man in the middle, your bank and the sketchy client have no means of communicating or can even "see" each other. Your money goes to privacy first.
Not victim blaming nor defending Adobe because fuck them, but... It's not a cancellation fee and they're actually nice to let you cancel earlier.
I explain: when you sign up, you can choose between monthly commitment or yearly commitment. Yearly commitment has a much lower monthly fee because they want to discourage occasional usage, but many individuals wouldn't like to pay the huge yearly sum in a single payment, and in this case they offer a yearly plan with monthly installments. (For a big company instead is the opposite, they prefer paying the huge sum and get a single invoice instead of 12 invoices - less work for the accounting dept). Yearly plan with monthly installments isn't the same of a monthly plan.
So, technically, the user agreed to a 1-year contract and they're even nice to let you go out earlier by just paying back the discount that you got in the meantime, like if you subscribed monthly. If you think about it, it's almost unheard. With most yearly contracts, there's no possibility of early cancellation. Even Amazon, that label themselves "the most consumer friendly company" doesn't easily give partial refunds to unused Prime subscriptions.
Regarding the chargeback, in my country all the banks except American express would reject it as you got the service as stated in the contract
Now that I almost defended Adobe, fuck them and always try to find an alternative to their products before giving a single penny to them
Defacto is, and that's everything that matters after all.
The top comment on the imgur “community” is absolute idiocy. Reads like the adobe ceo posted it.