Unreasonable Cancellation Fee

[Dara30587910gme8]

Hi there,

 I wish to cancel my subscription to the Acrobat Online Service.

 I subscribed as I thought for a few months because I needed to edit some documents and although I did get some use out of it, I found the online version generally hard to use and not suitable for the purpose.

 Mostly I wanted to highlight text on some PDFs and though I did mostly manage to do this, I found it faster and easier in the end just to use a highlighter pen on hard copy.

 The most recent job I tried to do was to fill in a form online but for no apparent reason it kept saving the filled-in text at 2.5 pt which was illegible and in the end I used Apple's free Preview Markup Tool to do the same job.

 I have generally been a big fan of Acrobat over the years and have recommended it to many people so I was disappointed with its performance in this context.

 When I try to cancel this morning I find there is a cancellation fee of almost eu100 which I think is very unreasonable given the product has not served my purposes and this cancellation fee was not brought to my attention when I signed up.

 As far as I was aware, I was signing on from month-to-month and could cancel at any time without penalty. If I had known of this fee I would not have signed on because I only needed the produce for a few months for a specific project.

 I do not seem to be able to find a customer service portal or email to make these points to Adobe so perhaps someone will pass this on to them and I would like not to waste further time or money on a product which has been fit for purpose.

 I am very disappointed with the online product and with Adobe's cancellation policy which I think is greedy and excessive.

 Adobe has a dominant position in the electronic documents market and many public and private institutions send out documents in .pdf format so one has to engage with Acrobat as a product but I think this is very close to price gouging.

 Why should I have to pay eu100 for a product which did not work for me especially when such an onerous cancellation clause was not brought specifically to my attention as required in consumer laws?

I imagine many other loyal Acrobat users are feeling the same so perhaps Adobe will take this into account when considering my complaint.

 I have paid around eu75 so far for a product that hasn't worked for me and am now expected to pay even more to cancel and I can't evene seem to find the customer service portal.

 I will be looking for alternatives to Adobe's products in future if this is the way the company plans to treat its paying customers. 

 All the best,

Dara

[try67]

My guess is you subscribed for a year, and therefore had to pay less on a monthly basis than those who only subscribed on a month-by-month basis. The other side of the coin is that you agreed for a full year, so if you cancel if before that term ends, it involves a fee, as you were paying a discounted price all of that time based on your commitment.

Anyway, if you want to appeal to Adobe and ask them to forgive that fee you can try doing so here:

Chat support: https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html?rghtup=autoOpen
(make sure pop-ups are not blocked; type "Agent" to chat with a real person, or via phone)
There's no email support.

Beware of people contacting you via the forums' messaging system pretending to work for Adobe! Only those with an "Adobe Employee" tag under their name are legit. Also, Adobe will never offer to contact you via Skype, or use an email account that's not under the adobe.com domain...

[Dara30587910gme8]

Thanks for that - I only used it twice and it didn’t work satisfactorily either time. Subscribing was a very expensive mistake imho - I could have done the same work using paper or Preview…

Sent from my iPhone

[try67]

A monthly subscription would have been a much better idea, in your case, as it allows you to stop it at any time.

At any rate, contact Adobe and they might be able to help you out.

[Dara30587910gme8]

That's what I thought I was subscribing to - I only wanted it for a month or two and I wasn't made aware of the huge cancellation fee...

[Abambo]

The cancellation fee is part of the terms and conditions that have been e-mailed to you, when you took your subscription. In that e-mail was also the confirmation of your anual subscription.

In addition, you confirmed, before taking the subscription, that you had read the T&C. 

The early termination fee is half of the remaining due. 

Do as @try67 said and contact Adobe customer care and negotiate. 

[Dara30587910gme8]

Thanks, that's what I'm doing...

[Dara30587910gme8]

ps I think it's particularly unreasonable for early cancellers - those who try the product and find it doesn't work for them who are then hit with a large cancellation fee.
 They have had only a small amount of unsatisfactory use and are cancelling because the product isn't working for them.
 If it doesn't work, I don't see why there should be any cancellation fee regardless of what box you ticked...

[try67]

For those who just want to try the application and make sure it works for them there's a free trial version that allows you to use it for 7 days. If you cancel the subscription before that time you don't have to pay anything.

[Dara30587910gme8]

Yes, but a fault or failure of a particular function might not become apparent until after the 7-day period...

[try67]

True, but it's your responsibility to test it out thoroughly before the trial period ends. Anyway, I think this discussion ran its course. I hope you're able to get your money back, at least in part.

[Dara30587910gme8]

I'm not a software tester and I'm entitled to assume all features work when buying software - vendors can't put the onus on purchasers to verify their product works and then charge them extra when it doesn't.
 You seem excessively pro-vendor to be advising on this if you don't mind me saying and it is not for you to say when a discussion is or is not over.
 Have a great day...

[try67]

No, but surely you're aware software can have issues and bugs. That's one of the reasons there's a free trial version. If you want a specific feature, you can use that time to make sure it works for you.

The issue you mentioned hardly seems like a deal-breaker, and there are various ways to solve it. The font size is defined by the form's author, by the way, not the application. You can change it, though, by editing the properties of the form fields, either manually or using a script.

And I don't think I've been excessively "pro-vendor". I criticize Adobe's business policies regularly here (like the bundling of third-party AV applications with Reader, or the decommissioning of old activation servers for Acrobat), but this issue of people paying a lower subscription fee in exchange for a commitment to a longer subscription term and then complaining when they need to pay a fee when they terminate it pre-maturely is something that happens quite frequently, so I try to explain the logic behind it. You might disagree, of course.

[Dara30587910gme8]

You miss my point - I didn't set the font size at 2.5pt - (why would I?) - I set it at 10 but on saving it went to 2.5pt for no reason I could work out and I have been using Acrobat since its first release.
 That was not a fault that I encountered back in January when I first subscribed and not one I could have anticipated.
 In the event, I had to quit working on the online version, fire up Preview and re-type a 20-page form from scratch against a deadline, which was zero fun.
 You're assuming I will know what features I will need and should test them assuming they might fail. That's like saying before you buy a car it's my responsibility to check the hazard lights and the airbags to make sure they will work.
 When I first got the software back in January it was to use the highlighter function on scanned documents which worked on some documents but not on others for no reason I could determine or fix.
 In the past week, I used it to try and fill in a form which it did until I saved it and then a lot of the text went to 2.5pt which is a fault no one could anticipate and I was unable to fix.
 You're suggesting I got a good deal with a discount but what I am reporting is I got a product which let me down both times I tried to use it and again when I try to cancel it.
 You mightn't think you're being excessively pro-vendor but read your posts back again - you don't display any support for a disappointed user but instead insist on his/her responsibilities, not his/her rights.
 Anyway, good luck with all your endeavours and wishing you a great day...

[Abambo]

You are upset that there is an early termination fee, but in no way, you have subscribed to a product that is not working. There may be one or the other bug, and sometimes a new version of the software turns out to be more buggy than it should be. But in the very most of the cases, the product is working. If it wouldn't work, nobody would buy a subscription. 

Your initial post here has some false assertations. 

• Adobe is not the only company creating tools to work with PDF documents. The PDF format is an ISO standard, and no more controlled by Adobe.
• There is no need to use a paid product to interact wit PDF documents created by institutions or corporations.
• It is very clear from the beginning on, that you took an annual subscription paid monthly and not a monthly subscription. All documents, forms and communications from Adobe point to that fact. You can wrongly read the terms, when not reading them at the pace you should, but they are more than clear.

I suppose that more than that, other of your problems come more from a misunderstanding on how the product works, than from bugs in the software. However, as I do not know exactly what you did on what documents, so I can't be certain. 

I suggest again, you contact Adobe, sort out your troubles with them and be happy.

[Dara30587910gme8]

For someone who doesn't work for Adobe you seem extraordinarily energetic in their defence, even making your own false assertions while accusing others of doing so. 
No doubt this reply will result in further misrepresentations by you which I do not intend to reply to but just to keep the record straight for anyone in Adobe who might be reading this, this is not the kind of advocate you want in your corner.
1. I didn't assert Adobe was the only company making tools to work with PDFs - I explicitly said I used Preview to edit the document when Acrobat online failed. I said Adobe is in a dominant position in that space.
2. I didn't say there was any need to use a paid product to interact with PDF, only that I was attempting to do so and that in the business world, interaction with PDFs is unavoidable.
3. You're leaving out the most pertinent fact which is that the product did not work for me. As I said before, you are consistently minimising my complaint and taking a very legalistic approach to customer care which fortunately Adobe did not do when I contacted them.
Have a great day...

[Abambo]

ps I think it's particularly unreasonable for early cancellers - those who try the product and find it doesn't work for them who are then hit with a large cancellation fee.
 They have had only a small amount of unsatisfactory use and are cancelling because the product isn't working for them.
 If it doesn't work, I don't see why there should be any cancellation fee regardless of what box you ticked...

By @Dara30587910gme8

You have a 7 day free testing drive, and you can cancel without early termination fee during the first 14 days of your paid subscription, with a refund of the paid fee. After that, you have a one year subscription. For those who don't want to bind themselves for a year, you can subscribe on the month. That is more expensive. 

If you take an annual subscription (and many others take an annual subscription) Adobe can plan its resources. If everyone cancels after two months, Adobe still may have engaged resources and for paying that, you pay have of the remaining due. 

When taking a contract, and accepting the terms&conditions, you are bound by that contract. That's how business works. 

Understand me correctly: I do not defend early termination fees. I only give you the facts. I do not know what internal calculations Adobe did to come to a solution like the one you agreed upon. But as with all companies, the aim of Adobe is to be profitable. So somehow, the software prices are calculated to meet that goal. 

[try67]

> But as with all companies, the aim of Adobe is to be profitable.

Not quite. The aim of all companies in the current state of Capitalism is not just to be profitable, but to increase their profits each quarter and each year. A company that maintains the same level of profits year after year is considered to be stagnant, even if those profits are very high. </rant>

[Abambo]

A company that maintains the same level of profits year after year is considered to be stagnant, even if those profits are very high. </rant>

By @try67

That's for publicly traded companies. Private companies only need to be profitable. 🙂 

[try67]

True, but Adobe is in the former camp.

[Abambo]

Yes. And the CEO is paid by results, which means making more profits... I should have invested in Adobe some years ago… 🙄

[kathilm]

I understand, I just cancelled Adobe Pro because I got the use out of it I needed in two months and it was never made clear there would be a fee. It was for $100. Also, Adobe Pro crashed my comuter on occassion! Not fair!

[kathilm]

To be more specific, it was Adobe Acrobat Pro that I just cancelled and recieved the fee of $100! They offered a lesser plan when I cancelled which would have been perfect for my needs, but never offered that before I needed to cancel. And again, it crashed my computer on occassion!