Canceling Adobe Stock subscription will remove your image licenses!?

[BFishY]

I was basically forced onto Adobe Stock by using Dollar Photo Club. They were closed or bought by Adobe so my subscription of $10/m automatically transferred to Adobe. I was excited because now I still pay $10/m for 10 photos but now I have the Adobe brand on my side.

Today I noticed my Adobe payments are not $10/m they are now $32/m. Okay no biggie I'll talk to the support agent tell him it's too expensive and I wish to cancel.

Oh ho ho! Not so easy!

Turns out if I cancel now I will:

1. Lose my previously purchased image licenses (What the actual **** is this? I paid for those licenses why would I lose them!?)

2. Incur the cancellation fee of all my remaining months in my annual contract which is 50% of the remaining month's payments. (Roughly $112)

3. Lose access to my previously purchased images in Adobe Library.

My advice:

DO NOT get involved with Adobe Stock what-so-ever. There are many alternatives out there, sure the images will not be linked to your Adobe Library but it's a minor inconvenience to have a local library of images which you can still import into libraries. Or if you insist on Adobe Stock make sure for the love of God to cancel after the $10/m price is up.

My question:

How do I back up my 150+ Adobe Stock images from my Adobe Library? There is no download function in the library or in Adobe Assets. The only way I can think of is to find each image individually on Adobe Stock and download to desktop. This way when I cancel my account I still have my 150+ images.

Deeply disappointed and hurt that my beloved Adobe would screw me like this... I'm an idiot for not realizing Adobe has annual commitments. Really sucks that it does.

Adobe Support Chat:

Thank you for contacting Adobe membership services. You will be attended to shortly.

You are now chatting with 'Jhilik'

Thank you for contacting Adobe Membership Services. My name is Jhilik.Please provide me with your phone number for account verification.

******

Adobe Stock price went up from $10/m to $32/m I wish to cancel my plan.

Please stay on the line while I check your membership status and savings that you are entitled to. While these details load, I’d love to know why you first chose Adobe?

If I cancel my plan what happens to my 74+ images that I have bought? Can I continue using them?

You are now in standard prices for Adobe stock you have completed 1 year and now you are in 2nd year.

That's too expensive, I wish to cancel. If I cancel my plan do I keep the 74 or so images I have already purchased?

If you cancel the subscription, you will loose the access to the subscription and 74 credits available in your subscription, however I can offer you 1 free month offer to your subscription.

Why would I lose the 74 images I already paid for them...

If you cancel the subscription, it will not work again as it will be deactivated.

We'd hate to see you go and as a valuable customer we would like to extend the same offer to two months. This means that Adobe will not charge you for the next two months.

Okay for now please do the 2 free months

I will do my best to use up the remaining images

Are there any fees for canceling a subscription?

Sure, I will credit 2 month free offer to your account and you can cancel your subscription on 12th month between 15thFebruary 2018 to 13th March 2018.

Yes, as you are in annual commitment you will be charge with the cancellation fees if you cancel the subscription now.

LOL

are you kidding me!?

I signed up for $10/m

I would suggest you to have 2 month free offer to use the subscription and can cancel it in 12th month 12th month between 15thFebruary 2018 to 13th March 2018.

NOT $32/m I was not informed of the price change, the annual commitment OR the cancellation fees...

We send out auto renewal emails in the 11th month to the email address registered with Adobe. It’s possible that the email might have gone to your Junk or Spam folder, or your email security policy deleted the email considering it to be spam as it comes from an automated email address. If you cancel the subscription within the commitment period, there is an Early Termination Fee which amounts to 50% of the remaining months. This fee is as per the contract you agreed to at the time of purchase and was mentioned in the terms and conditions as well. You may refer to the link https://www.adobe.com/at/misc/subscription_terms.html for terms and conditions.. It's highly recommended to complete the tenure before cancellation and if you wish to continue I can offer you 3 months of free offer, you will save $89.97

One moment please

May, June and July will be your free months.

Adobe will not charge you for complete 3 months.

Sure.

I don't have an email in my inbox or junk folder... and now I have to pay extra for this

great

Goddamn Adobe...

any chance for 4 free months?

I am sorry sir, 4 months offer is not available right now.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

I would suggest you to have 3 months free offer.

if I cancel my account do I keep the images I have previously purchased in my Adobe Library?

or lose them as well?

I would suggest you to download within 30 days after cancellation as you may lose then from Adobe library.

Ah good idea

ok

let's do 3 free months, I will use up all my images and download everything and cancel next year.

Sure sir, please wait for the important dates and informations.

Your case Id_0221791011 and next billing date is 14th August 2017.

You can cancel on 12th month between 15thFebruary 2018 to 13th March 2018.

Is there anything else I can help you with?

Please visit https://www.adobe.com/at/misc/subscription_terms.html for terms and conditions.

No that will be all. Thank you.

Welcome.

You may receive an email that will contain a link to complete an optional survey to provide your feedback on our conversation today.  The survey takes less than 2 minutes to complete and I would really appreciate your feedback.

Thank you for contacting Adobe.  We are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Goodbye!

Message was edited by: Eugene D - Spelling.

[Brad Lawryk · Accepted solution]

You lose the credits because you aren't buying credits ... you were paying a subscription (amount of time) that allowed you credits. You weren't actually buying the credits. Similar to a cell phone plan perhaps where you pay a monthly fee and get 500 minutes a month for example. If you cancel the cell plan you don't get to keep using unused minutes.

You can easily get to the images you have licensed by going to your 'License History'. You don't need to search for them individually.

[CodeMonk]

I do not think the cell phone analogy holds up at all, and we should not be defending this business model. You are buying credits for stock images on a monthly bases. You should not lose immediate access to those images the second you stop paying the monthly fee. There is no reason for it beside trying to gouge the users of the site.

I also got "tricked" into the annual commitment. I signed up for the "free" trial a year ago thinking the free images will be great to tryout and I can cancel later. I was a few days late in cancelling after the first month, and then was told there would be a very high termination fee for the annual commitment I had apparently agreed to by forgetting to cancel immediately.

So I thought ok, I the service is still pretty good I will use as much as I can over the year and cancel then. Then after that I will have a year or so use up the remaining credits (just like most other stock image sites handle image credits) and renew the service again later when needed.

But now I am cancelling after a year, and am greeted with the message that I will lose access to all the credits in my account as soon as the subscription ends, or I can commit to ANOTHER YEAR of service...

If you think comparing Adobe to the cell phone industry (which is one of the most hated, mis-trusted, and despised group of companies in the country) is a good thing then you need to think again. I trusted Adobe to not screw me over, and to have a fair and useful pricing model. Now they have burnt me for that trust, and I will not give it back easily.

Now I am even looking at dumping my Creative Cloud subscription, and it's horrifying to me that there are basically no other options out there that are close to the functionality. Adobe has bought, or killed every competing product and now they are turning the screws on us. At least that's how it feels.

[BFishY]

I am with you in hating this shady practice, sure you get more money, but in the end you are hurting your own bread & butter (ie. artist community who uses your products heavily).

What I started doing is downloading ALL the images I have ever purchased into my stock photo folder and naming them appropriately. It's a slow process when you bought hundreds of images but I will complete it before my plan renews and then cancel.

[elainec43233206]

I can see that something like a cell phone is a service with a monthly usage/subscription, however a photo is a product...a tangible thing.  If you paid for 10 images, then you should get to keep those 10 images. 

[BFishY]

That's how I am going to download them, through the license history. But I still have to go into each one and download them one at a time (will be some effort at 150+ images). Thought maybe there was a faster process for this. Thanks!

[Brad Lawryk]

Yeah, unfortunately that is the only way. Would be nice to be able to download a compressed file of all images as one download.

[Guest]

Just to clarify, Brad, when my Adobe subscription ends can I continue using the images that I downloaded using my allotted downloads on my website?

[WendellaBee]

The answer to this question is yes. If you have licensed assets you will not lose access to them if you cancel your subscription. You can view your license history through the link in the profile menu on the Adobe Stock website.

[cheryllt4346846]

I just went through this exact issue!  They did not send out an email telling me the one year renewal would be increasing etc.  Completely unacceptable.  In Canadian $ it was over $40 a month when I saw my bills.  NO F'N way am I paying that!!  So I had a long chat with the adobe person via live chat and they tried to offer me 1 month, then 2 month, then 3 month and threatened to charge me for the 10 months left on the contract that I still never received a notice of change on. 

They changed their tune real quick when I asked to speak to a supervisor that is in the United States or Canada where English is their first language.  I was suddenly offered free cancellation with no further fees.

[brentl91014481]

I had exactly the same issue and finally got the same response. The cancellation fee was waived. I had to be very forceful and persistent to get that far though.

It's indecent business practice IMO. How can an auto renewal at nearly three times the original price also constitue a new 12 month contract? I don't believe it is strictly legal.

Meanwhile - I'm making every effort to live without Adobe CC too. I am willing to use software that is a little less popular in order to avoid subscription fees - fees that rise significantly without warning. Adobe has lost all my trust. I am switching to Affinity Designer for Illustrator, DaVinci Resolve for Premiere, HitFilm Pro for After Effects style compositing, ACDSee studio for resource management and raw development instead of lightroom and Photoshop. Brackets instead of Dream weaver.

I will suffer what little disadvantages may be incurred in order to take my stand against greedy companies who think they can lock in their faithful customers through a subscription system that has no pricing limits and that we will just roll over and take it. NO! We won't. Many many people will be sorely tempted to use CC hacks and, though I can't condone that, I can understand it. Meanwhile, I will legally save a lot of money by simply moving to other products.

All the alternatives I mentioned are one-time purchases and some offer lifetime updates FOC. I sincerely hope that others will make the effort to move away from Adobe to give some volume to our voice. Only consumers have the power to punish corporate greed.

By the way, I and my team are looking forward to eliminating the frustration of Premiere's update rollouts that seem to break our workflow, costing us precious time and that have no legacy saving options. I don't know why I've tolerated this crap for so long. But I am off topic now. Sorry. Once a frustration is triggered, all related frustrations suddenly seem relevant.

[BFishY]

UPDATE: So my subscription has been canceled. Basically I had to change credit cards and figured now would be an excellent time to cancel my adobe sub as well. I closed my credit card but did not cancel or edit my subscription. It stayed open for a month or two (free month or two) and then I got an email that first my adobe account was closed and then my adobe stock account was closed due to none payment. I can still log into my account and access ALL my stock images that I have ever purchased.

So I'm not sure if the agent was misinformed or if officially you're supposed to lose the licensed images and I just didn't due to my none payment or what. Point is looks like you keep your stock images. I have maybe 17 pages worth of images that I can still download any time.

[Sheena Kaul]

Hi Eugene,

I apologize or the poor support experience that you've been through and I will be sharing the feedback for the same with the concerned team.

Apologize for the trouble.

Regards,

Sheena

[Cpointcc]

I too lost many images (60+) because of this licensing nightmare from DPC to Adobe.  Basically Adobe stole my images right out from under my feet.  They gave me 10 back as a courtesy.  A Big FU!

[EASYPAY GROUP]

Hi,

I guess they are just using their name and software to leverage this.

I have Adobe stock too and mostly keep using it because of "easy integration" in Creative Cloud software.

If you think about it, it's pretty genius, in an evil kind of way. Adobe screws the customer AND the artist:

• Takes the customer money for the subscription + takes cancellation fee. Customer can't use credits anymore because you payed for the subscription, not the credits... Silly customer.
• Since these customers can't buy pictures anymore, Adobe doesn't need to pay the pictures' artist a commission =  Full profit.
• Instead of making a valuable service that people want to keep using more than two times, the whole platform hasn't changed visibly in the last few years. Making it less than optimal:
  Example 1: No filter on language --> Adobe stock type in "consultancy" = German results in between english ones.
  Example 2: "Inapropriate" content: IMO this doesn't belong on Adobe stock:
  

If you would ask me to search for a picture of Adobe vs clients, it would be this:

Adobe Stock

Just my two cents though.

I like using it, i just wish they would put some more effort into it.

[Sheena Kaul]

Hi Kristof,

I apologize for the experience that you've been through with our services.

I've noted all the feedback as provided by you and will be sharing with the product team.

Regards,

Sheena

[Abambo]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/EASYPAY+GROUP  wrote

If you think about it, it's pretty genius, in an evil kind of way. Adobe screws the customer AND the artist:

• Takes the customer money for the subscription + takes cancellation fee. Customer can't use credits anymore because you payed for the subscription, not the credits... Silly customer.
• Since these customers can't buy pictures anymore, Adobe doesn't need to pay the pictures' artist a commission =  Full profit.

Let's say that are the rules of the game... The customer knows that when he cancels early he has to pay the early termination fees. If he does not know, he has not read the terms. He also knows, because of the same reason, that he will loose his credits. May be there is a warning of that when cancelling. I do not know, I never cancelled.

Before cancelling, the customer can use up all his credits on pictures that he might need.

Some people are cancelling because they have a lot of rolled over images and just think that now they are done. From an Adobe point of view, they paid Adobe for offering a service and Adobe's costs continue to run... You could however argue also that the rolled over credits would fade out as they do normally. That would be a very fair solution.

As for your example 2: I don't see the problem. I may search exactly for such images...

[aschoe2]

Might want to check this on Adobe Support Page.  Looks like some confusion between credits and images you have already licensed.

[José María SE]

So UNFAIR! Im in the same situation!