On Monday, June 17, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Adobe, accusing the company of deliberately hiding expensive fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions. This was reported by The Verge.
One of the elements of the lawsuit is that Adobe customers must go through a "burdensome and confusing" process to cancel their subscriptions, which users of the company's services have complained about for years and which may ultimately stop them from actually canceling their subscriptions despite their intention to do so.
The Ministry of Justice claims that in order to cancel a subscription, users must navigate through several pages and pop-ups, only to see the early termination fee.
The lawsuit also claims that Adobe hides the terms of its annual plan "in the fine print and behind additional text boxes and hyperlinks." By doing so, the company fails to adequately disclose early termination fees, "which can run into the hundreds of dollars."
In addition, some users who tried to cancel their subscription by contacting customer service had their calls interrupted or disconnected, and then had to explain everything all over again. Others were stuck in an endless loop of information being passed through various Adobe representatives.
The lawsuit also targets two Adobe executives, Maninder Soni, senior vice president of digital go-to-market and sales, and David Wadhwani, president of the company's digital media business. The lawsuit claims that both executives controlled and influenced the subscription cancellation processes.