Adobe is being sued by the US DOJ for 'deceiving' subscriptions that are hard to cancel

Adobe is facing a lawsuit from the Department of Justice for including hidden cancellation fees

(Credit: Adobe)

• 🧑‍⚖️ Adobe is being sued by the DOJ

• 🤔 The complaint alleges that Adobe is harming consumers

• 🗣️ The DOJ argues Adobe hasn’t been disclosing important plan terms

• ✋ Adobe has denied the allegation and will refute the claim in court

Adobe is in hot water with the US Department of Justice. The US government is suing Adobe for allegedly hiding cancellation fees and making its subscriptions too difficult to cancel.

In the complaint filed on Monday, the US DOJ said: “For years, Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms.”

The complaint against Adobe doesn’t mince its words. It says that Adobe “ambushes subscribers” by failing to adequately disclose that consumers can be hit with a hefty early termination fee and that it’s “trapping consumers in subscriptions they no longer want.”

Adobe released a short statement regarding the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint on its website and vowed to fight the FTC in court.

“Subscription services are convenient, flexible and cost effective to allow users to choose the plan that best fits their needs, timeline and budget. Our priority is to always ensure our customers have a positive experience,” said Dana Rao, Adobe’s general counsel and chief trust officer. “We are transparent with the terms and conditions of our subscription agreements and have a simple cancellation process. We will refute the FTC’s claims in court.”

It’s been a rough few weeks for Adobe. It recently faced a backlash after changing its terms & conditions that seemed to imply it owned all of its users’ work. The company released a statement to clarify this was not the case after users moved to cancel their subscriptions. Adobe said it will “never assume ownership of a customer’s work” and that it “does not train its Firefly Gen AI models on customer content.”

Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.