It is only on subsequent screens that the bait and switch becomes visible. A customer should not have to pay attention at each screen to ensure such a bait and switch does not occur.
Phone plans for instance will have monthly with "minimum amount owed" underneath so even phone plans advertised for $20/mo will say something like "minimum owed $720" because people kept advertising shady 3-year contract plans with steep cancellation fees.
That's why this pricing feels dishonest, even if it's technically true. Other companies handle it much more fairly. If you want to subscribe to World of Warcraft, Blizzard makes it clear that it's $15 per month. With discounts offered if you pay for 6 months at a time. That type of pricing feels honest, with a reward for paying for multiple months. Makes the customer feel better than Adobe's presentation, even though it's essentially the same type of pricing scheme as Adobe.
In my experience, typical apartment leases are offered on a 12 month basis. Month to month is usually substantially more expensive.
If you break a 12 month lease early, you're legally on the hook for whatever the contract specifies (typically the entire year in my experience). Most landlords will "generously" agree to let you out of the lease for the equivalent of a couple monthly installments though (again, just my personal experience).
At the time I bought a house so I broke the lease to move in. Fortunately, the apartment rented within the month so I didn't owe additional fees.
Out of curiosity I googled "rent acceleration" and see it is a hot topic now - mostly with commercial real estate and businesses break their leases due to the impact of covid on them. See https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/what-landlords-need-to-kno... for a summary. Also interesting is some US states make residential leases exempt from rent acceleration.
Several of my past leases specified that if broken I would be responsible for monthly rent on a prorated basis until a new tenant moved in.
For rent specifically, you can arrange to have a mutual agreement with the landlord if you for example find a new tenant, but by law the landlord does not have to accept anything.
Some contract also have punitive clauses in it, saying that you can break the contract at any point with 1 months notice, but you have to pay 3 months' worth of rent.
And even more so, I bet if you asked, they would give you a further discount for upfront payment (since it removes non-payment and early cancellation risk that’s priced in)
I guess I’m just unclear what you’re on about?
Not a lawyer, but come from a family of bankruptcy lawyers. If your landlord went bankrupt after you pre-paid, it could get dicey. It's a risk, and probably a low probability of downside, but I encourage people to do more research if interested.
And this is understandable for renting an apartment. The landlord might not be able to find a suitable replacement immediately. The same logic doesn’t apply to Adobe.
Where I live it it is illegal to display this without also including the total amount over the entire contract period.
That's scummy, and trying to apologize for such behaviour is scummy too.
If they want to honestly advertise that price then it needs to say “billed monthly with annual contract.”
But if those ways weren't good enough for Adobe and they wanted to have it both ways, advertise "cancel any time" and but still have "(you can do that, but then you have to pay in advance for the remainder of the year to do so)" or something like that in the fine print then they deserve all the hatred. And maybe even lawsuits for deliberately misleading labeling, but they probably have a legal team tweaking that communication in each jurisdiction to the exact shade of dark grey containing enough white for discouraging lawsuits.
And I suspect that the pattern/scheme doesn't pay for itself at all, that it's just the unfortunate outcome of a bad compromise between one group in the company advocating for honest monthly and another group advocating for honest annual.
IMO A less deceptive label would be $624, billed in monthly installments.
It's "clear enough" in the other. That is on the Buy Now page. The price is listed as annualized and the REAL monthly price is hidden from view under a drop-down. This is an acceptably deceptive UX practice for pricing. I can give some room for shitty tactics, this is it.
However - it's not clear at all in the first picture I shared. This is the first page and the main page people will see when deciding which product to purchase. This is the main one I have a problem with. If they said it was an annual price, that would be acceptable. But they don't.
They lie.
The customer has already been paying more than they'd have paid if they went for a long duration contract.
Only explaining that in fine print once you get further along in the sign up process is the convoluted/dark pattern bit here.
If it looks dishonest it probably is. On this page https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html I see an entry for all apps. The description is like so.
All Apps
US$52.99/mo
It has a big old buy now option that you are obviously supposed to click in place of the small text that says see plan and pricing details.
When you click buy now you are taken to what ought to be familiar to most people as a shopping cart pattern. On the entire left side is just a spot to put your email and a button designed to draw your attention below it that says continue to payment. Most people are going to read it from top down and not glance much at the item they have put in their cart.
If they do they may notice a drop down in the description of the item in their cart with black on grey text that says annual plan, paid monthly in the description of the item you are already buying where people are much less likely to attend to this detail.
If they click the drop down they may note the options but more likely we are already passed this screen and onto the next one.
If you put a nonsense email in and click proceed to payment you will notice, you know or not, text in 6 point font at the bottom.
In light text that on a 24" 1080p screen is 9 pixels high or about 0.098 inches tall
> By clicking "Agree and subscribe," you agree
In bold same size it says
> You will be charged US$52.99 (plus tax) monthly and at the end of your one-year term, your subscription will automatically renew monthly until you cancel (price subject to change). No annual commitment required after the first year. Cancel anytime via Adobe Account or Customer Support.
Now again in light text it says
> Cancel before Apr 26, 2021 to get a full refund and avoid a fee
If you had no economic interest and your job was to be as informative as possible you would allow the user to click the product which would take you to a product page wherein it would list 3 options with separate descriptions where you would add the desired item to the cart. This means that you would affirmatively choose that option instead of having the default in a drop down positioned so many wouldn't attend to it at all and you wouldn't mention the fee in tiny font on the payment screen. It would be fully specified in body text with a check box saying something to the effect. I acknowledge that if I cancel before the one year term I will be charged a fee of up to n dollars. If you check it you would be able to add the item to your cart and pay for it secure in that everyone knew what they are buying.
It doesn't work like this because deceiving people is good for business.
I think it is a bit more nuanced than that. Business isn’t purely about making money, it is about exchange of value.
It doesn’t work like that because people don’t think Adobe products provide the value Adobe wants to charge for.
If adobe credibly believed that their annual plan for their products was worth what they’re charging, they would not hide the pricing.
So “it doesn’t work like this because deceiving people is good for” _accumulating capital_.
This is happening a lot.
The Burning Man organization used a dark pattern to attempt to withhold ticket refunds last year.
The burning man org made refunds something you had to request, then sign in, and opt out again in or lose all of it.
They increased the minimum amount you could donate during the refund period and said the money was to “save” the event.
Then they turned around and applied for the max PPP loans. [1] https://www.burn.life/blog/interview-with-the-ceo-of-burning...
WinRed, a political organization in support of the former president, used a series of increasingly deceptive interface patterns that have provably awful publicly disclosed refund rates. They also used increasingly deceptive interface methods and emotional statements to sell the idea. [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/politics/trump-donatio...
If anything Adobe should be regarded for only using deceptive financial practices and not trying to sell some sad story if we don’t give it to them.
I am sure you can agree they didn't do their best in making the nature of the contract as clear as possible here.
It should be clearly stated next to that, and not in fine print or faded text or buried in a ToS.
False advertising at best.
1. No contract, pay monthly
2. Annual contract, pay monthly (cheaper than 1)
3. Annual contract, pay in one go (cheaper than 1 & 2)
You pick one of the three options and check out. Where exactly is the confusion?