Adobe: Give your sales and Support teams proper guidance on handling Contract Cancellations

On Monday 6th November, I went into my Adobe Account with the intention of upgrading my existing Single App InDesign Membership to a full Creative Cloud Membership and cancelling my current Creative Cloud Photography Plan, as Photoshop was obviously already included in the Creative Cloud Membership and there's no point paying for it twice, right?

So, first off I went to cancel my CC Photography Plan and was presented with an option to get 30 days free or to pay 50% of the contract price remaining (£43.60) in order to cancel the plan, so I did what any sane person would do, jumped into Adobe's Customer Support chat to talk to a rep and find out if there was any way to achieve what I wanted to do which, just to clarify, was essentially merge my 2 current CC Memberships, totalling £25.17 / month, into a single Creative Cloud Membership for £25.28 / month.

So into Support Chat I went and, after a short wait, was greeted by a Customer Support Rep, who told me he couldn't deal with my request directly, but would instead pass me over to the sales team who would be able to get it sorted out for me (he erased the chat transcript before transferring me to the sales team so I unfortunately don't have a record of this chat).

After a short wait, I'd been transferred to Alfred in the sales team, who I then had to re-explain everything to.

Around half way through the chat, Alfred informed me that I could simply purchase Creative Cloud and cancel my Photography plan, after which I should contact Customer Services again and they would waive the cancellation fee.

I wanted to make sure this was the case, so specifically asked him "If I cancel the Photography plan, will I be charged the cancellation fee straight away?", to which he outright replied "You will not".

So of course, I followed his advice. I mean, he'd just reassured me twice that I wouldn't be charged a cancellation fee. That's got to be good enough, right? So I went ahead and followed his advice, cancelled my Photography membership and upgraded my InDesign Membership to Creative Cloud and let him know that I'd done as he advised, at which point he asked for the reference number for my purchase and then very hastily asked if there was anything else I needed.

Still being a little sceptical, despite Alfreds numerous bold reassurances, I asked for a reference number for our conversation, to which Alfred responded that there was none, before adding that I could simply have a copy of the transcript emailed to me (little did Alfred know, I had already spotted the button to have the chat emailed to me, so I was a step ahead of him).

You can see the full details of the chat I had with Alfred in the transcript below:

Following Alfreds advice, I contacted Customer Support in order to sort out the issue of the cancellation fee.

After a couple of minutes reviewing my case, my new Customer Services rep, Vinita was appeared to have a fairly comprehensive grasp of the situation. However, her inital response was that she would escalate the case for my Cancellation Fee refund...

So I asked Vinita the same question I had previously asked Alfred, "will the cancellation fee have been charged immediately?" to which she replied that she would double check for me.

After a couple more minutes, Vinita returned, stating that I had not been charged a cancellation fee and suggested that I contact Customer Services again "once the cancellation fee is processed" and that the cancellation fee would be £41.60 instead of the originally stated £43.60.

So I let Vinita know that the sales team had assured me there would be no cancellation fee. Was this not the case? To which Vinita informed me that I would indeed not be charged a cancellation fee, as I had placed a new order but, in the case that I was charged the fee, I should contact Customer Service again and they would provide me with a refund.

Again, here's the transcript of the conversation I had with Vinita:

I took this to mean that the cancellation fee would not be processed considering I had purchased an upgraded license, and happily thanked Vinita for her assistance.

It was 2 days later, on the morning of Wednesday 8th November 2017, that I received an email from Adobe with the subject "Please check your account".

A billing issue had occured for a payment of £41.60 for the cancellation of my Creative Cloud Photography plan alongside the threat of the suspension of my Adobe Services.

Rajat, after some digging into my account, informed me that I was indeed being charged a cancellation fee for my Photography plan and that I would have to pay this fee and then Adobe would reimburse me the money.

I told Rajat that I didn't find that acceptable and that I had been assured by their sales team that I would absolutely not be charged a cancelation fee, to which Rajat told me that, had I gone to customer services before cancelling my previous contract they would have done it for me without incurring any additional fees.

Despit my protests and proof that I had in fact gone to customer support before cancelling my contract and that at no point was I advised by either a Customer Support or Sales rep that they could cancel the contract for me, Rajat informed me that there was nothing they could do as it was myself that had cancelled the contract and not a member of their team.

I was told that I had no choice but to pay the cancellation fees and wait for a refund from Adobe and that, for my inconvenience they would give me 2 weeks free on my new contract.

When I pointed out that Adobe's sales team should never have told me to cancel my contract as, as Rajat himself has staed in the transcript below, customer services do not have the ability to remove cancellation fees as they are processed automatically.

I then had to spend 30 minutes informing Rajat that I did not have the ability to pay the cancellation fee to which his response was that their best solution was that I "pay the cancellation fee and we'll refund you", before finally informing me that he could escalate the case to his next level team, who could cancel the automated fee.

My next request was for Rajat to provide me with contact details for someone I could talk to about the issues I'd had trying to perform something that, according to Rajat, should have been easily accomplished on my first visit to Customer Support, as they have the ability to cancel the contract without incurring any fees.

Rajat gave me a link to adobe's bug reporting form.

I then told him I didn't want to report a bug, I wanted to speak to someone regarding the legal issue in terms of being provided false information from their sales team in order to push sales.

Rajat encouraged me to fill out a feedback form.

Finally, after multiple requests, Rajat provided me with a phone number for Adobe's support team. I have no idea if that will get me any further, which is why I'm documenting this whole process on Adobe's forums.

For reference, here's the transcript of my conversation with Rajat (it's 2 hours and 29 minutes so might be a bit of a long read):

As you can see, Rajat made every effort to not provide me with the information I requested and it was only after I asked him to clarify that he was refusing to provide this information that he reluctantly did so.

This whole process has been completely ridiculous and unneccesary and I have been repeatedly told by one of your representatives that it was my fault for cancelling the contract, completely ignoring the fact that it was a member of your own sales team whole advised me to do just that.

Adobe, I would hope that a member of your team actually has the sense to contact me regarding this.

I'll post any updates as I receive them.