I don't know, I opened their page and the drop down was clearly labeled as an annual subscription to me. It also told me the exact date by which I should cancel not to infer any costs. The drop down offered me to pay the full year upfront, or a monthly plan which is cancellable at any time.

I don't think this stuff is illegal at all. What they effectively did here is put the email address and personal information form in front of the product details instead of below them, change the buttons that normally say "next" to "start your free trial, but the information was all in plain view. Complain to your browser vendor about the lack of scroll bars if that's what's gotten you.

The big scam here is the fact this program requires a monthly fee at all. All subscription services I know either have a minimum duration with similar cancellation fees (or you'd be on the hook for the full remainder of the fees instead of half) or they're advertised explicitly as being cancellable at any time.

I don't think anyone was getting tricked, but I do believe people were entering a subscription without looking at the details.

The author of this tweet thread even acknowledges it states the terms in the workflow.

> But what does "Annual plan, paid monthly" actually mean?

I don't understand how "Annual plan, paid monthly" could be taken as something confusing or requires some additional context to make any sense out of it. How are other people reading "Annual plan, paid monthly" any other way than that it is an annual plan broken out into monthly installments?

Every single button said "Start Free Trial", not "Start Annual Plan" and the cancellation terms were hidden and hostile.

I was actually considering trying out the Adobe line for my own work, but I'm going to be sticking with Affinity and Procreate now. Bad enough that they went to a subscription model, worse still that they run it like mobsters. I have too many kids, too little sleep, and not enough amphetamine salts to remember to cancel the membership in 7-14 days.

For me it is more that the overall presentation is not clear. That wording on it's own is clear, but at every other stage in the process the implication is that it's a month to month commitment and not a full year you're signing up for. The fact that if you cancel they take half the year of payments and then only provide you with service for the remainder of the month is another nice little "fuck you" too.

The thing is, that kind of fine line between deception while still presenting just enough detail to claim the customer should have looked at the details might wash in an American court, but it wouldn’t in the EU. In the EU the rules state that the responsibility is on the company to ensure the individual is aware of what they’re signing. And you cannot reasonably say that is what is happening here.

Also I wouldn’t be so sure that a class action suit of this nature wouldn’t be successful. Large companies have lost flimsier cases.

> or a monthly plan which is cancellable at any time.

At any time, sure. But it’s the $300 dollar cancellation fee thats the issue.

> Complain to your browser vendor about the lack of scroll bars if that's what's gotten you.

This whole “dont hate the players blame the game” meme is pretty tedious. If an organisation is abusing a feature for their own gain then they should be responsible for abusing a feature for their own gain.

> I don't think anyone was getting tricked, but I do believe people were entering a subscription without looking at the details.

“Tricked” is a loaded term. I think the real question is whether Adobe intentionally made it easy for people to misunderstand the details.

Given what I’d seen I’d argue that was the case. This might not be an issue in the US but it is in the EU, where larger organisations have had to pay out because of less.

> any future revenue this dark otters generates

...I'm sorry; I know this is a typo/autocucumber, but now I can't help picturing these nefarious Adobe otters coming up with ways to scam us. Adorable yet evil!

> Which would not just cost them in damages but also in bad publicity

Unfortunately I think Adobe is beyond the point where few months of bad publicity would harm their core business. Amateurs would vote with their feet but professionals have really nowhere to go. There just are no alternatives to some of their programs.

Which products do you feel truly have no alternatives, and which features define that for you?

The only one I can think of is After Effects, which appears to do a broader set of things than any other single package (but I could be wrong).

The rest, well I am not convinced, though there are some edge features in each package that undeniably would sell them to a few people, and that is, I guess, in the right way of things.

GIMP has no CMYK support; that isn't an edge feature, it's a core need for working with print.

Indeed -- a problem. I think Bloom did but they seem to have disappeared?