I have been reading up on Adobe's Q&A page, here is a comment a CC subscriber left. Hardly fills you with confidence.
"I purchased the Creative Cloud subscription, was very excited about it, and loved it…for the first month. Then I started seeing “You have 90 days left on your free trial, you have 89 days left….” etc. I checked my subscription and Adobe was taking money every month, so I was paid in full.
I tried to find out what was going on by filing a support ticket and found–surprise!–that I needed to also buy a support subscription to get an answer. No support. I was supposed to post to the Adobe forums and hope someone answered. The responses I got were along the lines of “obviously you’re doing something wrong,” which wasn’t helpful.
So…I was paying $30/month for cloud software that comes with zero support, apparently. (issue #1) And when my 90 days was up, the software stopped working and I was invited to buy ANOTHER subscription if I wanted to use it…while still being charged for the first subscription (issue #2).
It failed, btw, on a weekend when I absolutely, positively had to finish a project by Monday morning, and couldn’t. Thanks a lot, Adobe.
In desperation, I tweeted and resorted to Facebook for help, was told to uninstall and reinstall everything, that this was a known bug. I did and it worked…the first month. Then up pops the same “you have XX days left on your trial…” and it dies again.
After a LOT of complaining, and two more reinstallations, I finally reached an Adobe employee who told me the problem was that at some point I’d been offline when the system had decided to charge me, it triggered a flag somewhere, and I was on some kind of Adobe blacklist. The best thing to do was start over. They were working to correct the bug, and until then I could apply a rather involved correction…but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
I tried to cancel my subscription entirely and was told–despite the fact that at that point I’d been unable to use the software for longer than I’d had the use of it, while Adobe regularly charged me anyway–I couldn’t unsubscribe. I was on a year-long plan and that was that. (issue #3)
After a LOT of complaining and letter-writing I finally got Adobe to cancel my subscription. I uninstalled all that nasty non-functioning CC stuff and went back to Creative Suite 5.
It doesn’t have some features that I’d like, but at this point I’m so disgusted that it’s probably my last Adobe upgrade for a very long time. Since I’m an Adobe user who’s literally upgraded every Adobe/Macromedia/Aldus product from the very first–at home AND at work–that’s pretty significant.
So…I appreciate that you’re evolving your model. I thought $30/month was a lot–the $50 I was going to have to pay after the first year was ridiculous, especially since that price doesn’t include support (carefully not mentioned on your site).
I’m not saying I’ll never do business with Adobe again…but I’m sure going to look hard for alternatives. And even if I do buy Adobe products again, it’ll be standalone software I can control, not some glitch-ridden cloud subscription that strands me in the middle of a project.
And that’s just my home software. After seeing my experience, we’re even leerier of your cloud solution at work.
Just sayin’"