Home > News

U.S. FTC Suing Adobe Over Hidden Fees and Subscription Model

By Laura Tucker
Ftc Sues Adobe Fees Subscriptions Featured 2

It’s easy to get fed up when you’re surprised with unannounced fees, as well as when you struggle to cancel a subscription to an app or service you no longer enjoy. This can even happen with major players: the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has brought a lawsuit against Adobe for its hidden fees and subscription model.

Adobe Receives Heat for Fees and Subscriptions

The (FTC) has taken legal action against software giant Adobe, accusing the company of deceptive practices related to hidden fees and its subscription model. The lawsuit alleges that Adobe misled customers by failing to adequately disclose certain charges and locking them into long-term subscriptions without their informed consent.

According to the FTC’s complaint, Adobe didn’t clearly disclose important information regarding the pricing structure of its Creative Cloud subscription service. The FTC charges that the company misled customers by not disclosing that cancelling a subscription early would result in hefty cancellation fees. Additionally, Adobe is accused of automatically renewing annual subscriptions without providing customers with clear and timely cancellation options.

Ftc Sues Adobe Fees Subscriptions Photoshop
Image source: Unsplash

The lawsuit also highlights Adobe’s alleged failure to obtain proper consent from consumers before charging them for additional services or products. The FTC claims that Adobe engaged in deceptive practices by adding unauthorized charges to customers’ accounts and making it difficult for them to cancel or obtain refunds.

The subscription model employed by Adobe has faced criticism in recent years, with many customers expressing frustration over unexpected charges and difficulties in canceling. The company has also faced backlash for its customer service practices, including long wait times and unhelpful support.

FYI: check out this review of Recovery Toolbox to learn how to repair Adobe Illustrator files.

What Subscription Plan Has the FTC Fired Up?

In a separate blog post, the FTC called out the specific practices. It states that Adobe “steers” its customers toward the annual paid-monthly plan, making it a preselected default, while only showing the monthly cost. It doesn’t bother to explain that there is an “Early Termination Fee” in the first year. Customers will be charged 50 percent of the remaining payments.

The FTC also explains that when users try to cancel, they are put through a web of screens and clicks. When they resort to contacting a customer service rep, there are dropped calls, interruptions, and transfers. Anyone who has ever contacted ANY customer service understands that.

Ftc Sues Adobe Fees Subscriptions Lightroom
Image source: Unsplash

The first count in the complaint alleges that Adobe executives Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani violated the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act and the FTC Act by failing to disclose the terms of the subscription before collecting billing information.

Adobe’s Response to Lawsuit

In response to the FTC lawsuit, Adobe has expressed its commitment to resolving the issue and ensuring transparency for its customers. The company has stated that it will work closely with the FTC to address the concerns raised in the lawsuit and make necessary changes to improve its subscription practices.

The outcome of the lawsuit will have implications for Adobe, and possibly for the broader software industry as well. It should serve as a reminder for companies that even a company like Adobe can get dinged for deceptive subscription models.

There are many other software options than Adobe. Check out these Adobe Acrobat alternatives and Adobe Photoshop alternatives.

Image credit: Unsplash

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

Read next

In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
When Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky pointed a rotating antenna at the sky in 1932 looking for sources of transatlantic radio static, he kept picking up a faint hiss that peaked every 23 hours and 56 minutes, and he eventually realized he had become the first human to hear the center of the Milky Way.
A contemplative scene with two scientists in a vintage laboratory setting.
When Harvard astronomer Cecilia Payne submitted her 1925 doctoral thesis arguing that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen, the field’s senior figure Henry Norris Russell talked her into adding a line calling the result ‘almost certainly not real,’ and then published the same conclusion himself four years later to widespread acclaim.
When seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact reached what is now North Dakota roughly ten minutes after the asteroid struck, they appear to have triggered a ten-metre standing wave in an inland river that flung fish onto the bank and buried them under glass beads still falling from the sky.
When survivors near Lake Nyos woke on the morning of 22 August 1986, the cattle were dead in the fields, the birds had fallen out of the trees, and 1,746 of their neighbours were lying where they had stood the night before, with no fire, no flood, and no wound to explain it.
In October 2002, a Russian scientist named Dimitri Malashenkov stood up at a space conference in Houston and quietly explained that the dog Laika, whom the Soviet Union had publicly mourned as a heroic week-long orbiter in 1957, had actually died of heat and panic within about five hours of launch.