Pay Adobe by the month, and you may have signed up for a whole year. On its default plan, cancel after 14 days and Adobe's terms charge a lump sum: 50% of what's left on your contract. The Justice Department, on a referral from the FTC, sued in 2024, saying Adobe hid that fee and made cancelling hard. In March 2026, Adobe settled: a $75 million civil penalty plus $75 million in free services, with no admission of wrongdoing. The settlement made Adobe show the fee. It did not ban it. The full case file, from the public record: the plan, the fine print, the exit and the deal.
of what's left on the contract, if you cancel the annual, paid-monthly plan after 14 days. Adobe's own terms still say so.
ADOBE TERMS, EFFECTIVE 1 AUG 2026to quit after month one at $54.99 a month: 11 payments left, halved. Our arithmetic; Adobe does not publish its exact proration.
COMPLAINT, P. 8; ADOBE TERMScivil penalty, plus $75M in free services that the order says are not compensation. No refunds, and no admission.
STIPULATED ORDER, 10 APR 2026, PP. 2, 7What the record is. How Adobe disclosed the fee, and what its executives said, are the government's allegations; no court ruled on them, and Adobe and the two executives neither admit nor deny them. The settlement is court-entered. The 50% is Adobe's own term (effective 1 August 2026; in California, 30% of the annual commitment). The May 2023 prices come from a plan page shown in the complaint, and "about $300" is our arithmetic.
| Number | What it is | Where |
|---|---|---|
| $54.99 | A month on the annual, paid-monthly plan, May 2023, often pre-selected (no commitment: $82.49) | Complaint pp. 6, 8 |
| 3 | Screens it often took to sign up; leaving took many more (an allegation) | Complaint p. 15 |
| 96% | Subscriptions' share of Adobe's revenue, fiscal 2025 | 10-K FY2025 p. 35 |
| $75M + $75M | Civil penalty, plus free services the order says are not compensation | Order p. 7 |
| 0.3% | The $75M penalty against fiscal 2025 revenue of $23.8B, a little over one day's revenue (our arithmetic) | 10-K FY2025 p. 35 |
| 30% | The California fee: 30% of the annual commitment | Adobe terms, Aug 2026 |
Open the documents above. Every number in the video points to its page.
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