Just like Boeing, things keep getting worse for Adobe.
In a complaint filed in the San Jose, California, Federal court, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Adobe of burying fees to cancel its “annual paid monthly” (APM) plan.
The lawsuit is a result of an investigation by the FTC that was started last year, focusing on cancellation policies.
When customers signed up for Adobe products, Adobe pre-selected the option for its “annual paid monthly” plan – essentially trapping them in for a year-long contract, paid in monthly installments, all the while being wholly unforthcoming with said information.
The official complaint accuses Adobe of hiding “material terms of its APM plan in fine print and behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks, providing disclosures that are designed to go unnoticed and that most consumers never see.”
The lawsuit also accuses Adobe of using similar tactics when users on a free trial failed to cancel it, and were then locked into a year-long “annual paid monthly” plan, again without their knowledge.
When customers tried to cancel their unwanted contracts before the year was up, they were forced to pay a hefty early cancellation fee – sometimes up to the hundreds – which was also hidden during the sign-up process.
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And then there’s the cancellation process itself.
“Adobe then deters cancellations by employing an onerous and complicated cancellation process,” says the complaint.
The FTC says that, when contacting customer services, some people believed that they had successfully canceled their subscriptions – until they were charged again. Representatives of Adobe terminated calls, and passed customers around, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint is seeking: “Permanent injunction, monetary judgement, civil penalty judgement, and other relief.”
This comes just over a week after photographers, videographers and content creators were up in arms after Adobe updated its Terms of Use to give the software company access to any form of media uploaded to its many programs.
Disgruntled employees also leaked their criticisms of Adobe with its customers.
The lawsuit also comes a year after a similar suit was filed by the FTC against Amazon, in which the government accused the e-commerce magnate of making it hard for customers to cancel their Prime memberships.
While there is nothing new about rich people wanting to be richer, what is sinister is that through its actions, Adobe has shown that it actively wants us confused, vulnerable and paying.
One of the few things Adobe hasn’t tried to hide is that it thinks we’re stupid, and it's going to be hard to come back from this. We can only hope that other dubious companies are furiously re-writing their own ill-advised Ts and Cs, and that this may lead to harsher legislation in the future.
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