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CHICAGO â Local freelance graphic designer Amanda Norman was forced to sell all of her belongings and move back in with her parents after forgetting to cancel her Adobe Creative Cloud subscription before it auto-renewed.
âAs a freelancer, Iâm essentially living gig to gig, so I managed to find a cheaper program, but forgot to cancel my Adobe subscription,â said Norman, after selling her couch on eBay. âNext thing I know Iâm out $600 and canât make rent. I thought I was doing a good job managing money! Hell, I even bought a paper planner, like some hipster. Thankfully I can stay with my parents, but I might need to start selling some organs if I want to cover my student loans. Oh well, at least I donât have to keep using Gimp for the next year.â
Norman is one of many clients of financial planner Bob Foster, who specializes in helping freelancers screwed over by Adobe.Â
âI see cases like Amandaâs all the time. Did you know that every ten minutes, at least 80 gig workers are financially crippled by wanting to edit their video with a feature that only works in Premiere?â said Foster. âMy job is to help these folks back on their feet. Subscriptions that you know about are bad enough, but a forgotten one? They can be a real kick in the independently-contracted balls. Yeah, I donât do it for free, and Iâm not inexpensive, but Iâm not â$33 a month just for fucking photoshopâ expensive. And you donât even need to beg a college kid for their email to get a discount for my services.â
Adobe spokesperson Greg Benson reaffirmed that the company was not responsible for their customerâs financial woes.
âItâs all there in the terms of use, right under the âcharge you on a random day of the monthâ clause,â Benson explained. âAdobe is not responsible for monetary problems caused by recurring payments. Thatâs corporate speak for âquit whining and enjoy your extra month of InDesign.â Besides, any good freelancer knows that you should be willing to pay at least $300 monthly for the programs necessary to make a living. You could also register as an LLC, like a bitch.â
âAnd if you wanna cancel, youâre welcome to at any time,â Benson added. âI get it. Our programs are expensive. Good fucking luck using literally anything else, though, fuckface. Youâre already addicted to our AI erasing all your backgrounds and shit.â
At press time, Adobe announced that it will randomly bill customers twice in one month âjust for fun.â