Basically, take the Californian setup, and apply it to the whole US. And pretty much every country in Europe.
Is 35 million and the potential for future punishment a sufficient deterrent?
Stripe? https://stripe.com/billing/subscriptions
Paypal? https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/manage...
My spouse got fucked by Shutterstock and we have to have a calendar reminder to cancel this when the year is up, since cancelation prior will result in us still paying out the year, but not getting the remainder of the service.
They're extremely scummy. I could certainly block the charges, but they'd just come after us and cause a headache.
A lot of people sign up for discounted annual commitments though then complain when they can't cancel before the year is up.
So yes, I complained about that.
They gave you a months notice of the price increase and you didn't cancel until after it went into effect?
is this a business relationship with trust and maturity?
It's not complex or dramatic.
Adobe software being a subscription service is nonsense too, but thats for another discussion.
I remember when it was like $600 for photoshop for a single version(like 25 years ago so what would that be today?). The subscription pricing is a steal.
Instead they killed it, they clearly do not want to cannibalize their subscription offing. It clearly makes them more money.
Your first point is valid, I was misunderstanding the yearly subscription pricing, they offer an upfront payment as well as a monthly (but with year commitment).
I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.
There are a number of subscriptions where I regularly want only a single month of service at a time.
Do you think that is fair? After all they gave you 30 days!
Where’s the theft?
It’s perfectly normal to have a fee for breaking a lease. And that’s what an annual subscription paid monthly is anyway. It’s a commitment for an extended period of time.
If you could just stop paying and retain the discounted rate, what is an annual subscription vs a monthly one?
It's not at 100% feature parity with PS but it's pretty darn close.
If you cancel in the first 14 days they terminate immediately and refund you. After the 14 days the subscription is cancelled and you keep access until the point you paid for. If you signed up for an annual contract you have a cancel fee of 50% of the remaining agreed amount.
This is exactly what Shutterstock does. What's maddening is that you can be getting a monthly charge, but are locked into a year contract. If you cancel, they'll continue to charge monthly but without being able to use the service. It's absurd.
Never give them your actual residential address (they don't need to know it), birth day, or SSN, or be tricked into giving them such. If they ask on any customer service chat or phone, the answer is they don't need to know it.
Without these things they can't exactly put it on your credit report, either. They may send it to collectors, but don't talk to them. Let them cry. They still won't serve you a court summons over $50.
Keep businesses in check from this money-grabbing behavior. Any kind of subscription should be easily cancellable.
This sounds like it should carry criminal penalties?
It took hours of online chat argument with the unfortunate real employee fielding such pissed customers, and threats of legal action, eventually citing their legal counsel by email address and full name (from the Conde Nast site), before they agreed to _not_ charge me whatever obscene yearly subscription would be.
They can burn in crooked hell after that nonsense. I wonder if the Reddit people are bothered by their owner, as I had a personally signed generally cheery note from maybe Alexis back when i first subscribed and bought a tshirt, going on 20 years ago i guess.
Quick note -- Reddit went public in 2024, so Condé Nast is no longer their owner.
But when Corporate does it, we just handwave it way.
Good luck reversing that and bringing back the "giant enterprises may be assumed harmful" standard (the one under which it was possible to win these cases more than once in a blue moon, without unreasonable costs) now that rich right-wingers just openly steer most news media.