In this article, we're going to discuss how to leave Adobe Stock without paying the cancellation fee. As we talked about in our previous article, when you enter an Adobe subscription, you are contractually obliged to pay for the period.
For example, if you get a one year subscription to Adobe Stock (which is very easy to renew into after a one month free trial as it costs only $29.00/month), you are obligated to pay for the year.
If you find yourself needing to cancel the plan, you're left with a predicament. Either pay a $52 cancellation fee (In addition to whatever you have paid into the subscription for the year), or ride it out for the year.
Instead, we're going to present an alternative that makes use of an Adobe loophole. This way, you can cancel your Adobe Stock plan for free, circumventing the cancellation fee. (If you didn't guess yet, we recently went through this process as we found ourselves with the same issue. That’s how we got the screenshots!)
First, initialize the cancellation process for your Adobe Stock subscription. This is done from https://account.Adobe.com/plans. Click on “manage plan” for the subscription, which will bring you to the dashboard for that specific product. In our case, we weren't able to find a “Cancel Plan” button (is that illegal?).
Instead, we scrolled all the way to the footer and clicked the contact Adobe button. This initializes a chat bot interface. Simply type “cancel plan”, and it will automatically pick up the plan from your current page, which should be your Adobe Stock dashboard. The chat bot will give you a cancellation link.
Click on it, and you will begin to initialize your cancellation process. At this point, if you went through the complete process, you would have to pay around $50 in early cancellation fees, seeing a screen like this →
Don't go through the full process. When presented with “offers”, choose the cheapest one.
In our case, we took a look at all of the offers and chose the cheapest one which was $14.99 per month for access to the Creative Cloud photography subscription. (Don't choose one that has to do with your current subscription.)
We ended up downgrading to that, and received a $14.00 refund for the unpaid portion of our current Adobe Stock plan.
By now, our Adobe Stock plan has been exited without paying the cancellation fee. However, we now find ourselves paying for a Creative Cloud photography plan ($14.00/month). This is better than the $29.00 per month for a plan that we won't be using, but still isn't a complete cancellation of the Adobe services.
Luckily, this is where we make use of the loophole. The first month of any Adobe subscription can be cancelled without paying any fees. See where we’re going with this?
You have now just created a new subscription with the cheapest offer out there, meaning that you're in the first month of it.
Now, when you initialize the cancellation process for this service, you won't be greeted with an early cancellation fee. You'll be able to cancel your plan entirely, get a refund for the first months payment, and be free have your initial Adobe Stock subscription without paying the cancellation fee.
Let's review this entire process. If you try to cancel your Adobe Stock subscription, You'll be greeted with an early cancellation fee of around $50. Instead of paying, downgrade to the cheapest offer that Adobe presents to you on the second screen of the cancellation Interface. In our case this was the $14.00 per month Creative Cloud photography plan.
Then, reinitialize the cancellation process for your new plan. Because you're in the first month, Adobe will not charge you a cancellation fee. you will also be refunded for the first months payment.
If you're looking to cancel any Adobe subscription without paying the cancellation fee, this method would work.
Hope this helped!
thank you thank you thank you thank you!
Super glad this helped you!
this saved me from paying $200 dollars! thank you so much!!!
So glad! That's why I wrote it!
Thanks!! That helped me to get out of Adobe Creative cloud contract without paying early termination fee.
Thanks so much!! I started a free trial for one of their products, missed my cancellation date by a day, and all of a sudden i owed them £205 to cancel!? This should be illegal. Thanks for saving me lots of trouble. I appreciate it.
Agree with you -- glad this helped! Feel free to share to spread the word ?
I just tried this but I was hit with "you'll be able to manage your plan shortly" when I tried to cancel the changed plan. Is this their new way of preventing the loophole?
Oh no, I hope not. Any other readers, are you having this same error?
Adobe, did you change your ways?
I got the same message when I tried to cancel my account this morning - I closed the tab, waited an hour, and I was able to manage the plan when I returned. The loophole still works! Thanks so much James!
I also got the same message, but I had to wait all night and only next day it showed me cancellation option. But it still worked!
Thank you very much 😊 🖕adobe
Thank you so much for this advice, saved £75!!
True heroes don't wear capes!
Man you probably saved thousand of dollars with this simple article!!!
I am not the guy who would write a thanks but you deserve everything.
Thank you so much for this
Haha! Glad I could help -- thank you for the kind words 😁
So grateful for this - Adobe are experts at getting money out of you and I feel likes its a small victory to have gotten out of the contract only £40 down rather than £120! Thank you so much!
BOMB!!! thank youu
Thank you so much! Really helpful!
Thank you so much!! I hope more people see this article, so they don't get scammed by a big corporation like Adobe. I saved $50! It's still working:)
Hi thanks, for the info. I too could not find anyway to cancel my subscription (surely illegal!) & was unaware I was tied into a year. So I stopped my payments on PayPal. I have had 3 emails now saying there is a problem with my payment. When I go to manage my plan there is no cancel option & if I scroll to the bottom there is no Contact Adobe. - I guess I will see what happens?
Works! Exactly what I was looking for. Followed your exact steps and saved $60 cancellation fee.
thank you :))) saved me 170 euro
It worked for me today, thank you! Saved a $60 cancellation fee and I also got an $8 refund for the remainder of the previous subscription!!
Dude thank you so much, this saved me $100. Also for anyone having the problem once you change your plan and it says “you’ll be able to manage your plan soon” just come back to it like a day later and you should be able to cancel it!
you are a F-ING LIVE SAVIOR MA DUDE
Cheers Mate, I wonder how legal it is to sign you up for a year bloody sharks. Saved me over $100.
Thanks loads for this!! Saved me £75, which is loads for a subscription I don't need!
Working! Clever thing, thanks James.
People please help, I've been trying to change my plan from Lightroom plan to InCopy to avoid paying a fee when cancelling and when i press confirm it says: "Sorry we couldn't change your plan. Please retry."
So I opened a chat with adobe support and told them I want to change my plan. The agent sent me the link that leads me to submit my card details on my account in order for him to update my payment informations. Did anyone had similar problem?
Thank you James, this worked for me !! I tried one of their products on a free trial basis, and completely forgot about it, until they charged me for it. When I went to cancel my plan, was surprised to have to pay cancellation fee, feels like I got scammed. I saved money thanks to you but again, the real winner are these schmucks, free money from all those free trials who forget cancelling before their trial ends. Thanks for the help James, cheers.
This was genius! %100 worked. Thanks. 🙂
The only thing that all need to pay attention to is, they don't enable the option to cancel the plan after the downgrade. Don't forget to check out in a few days.
Thank you so much, it worked!
LIFESAVER!!!! WHAT A LEGEND!! THANK YOU!! Saved me $109!!
This was INCREDIBLY helpful. Thank you so much!
Does this work in reverse?
e.g- if you're locked into the cheapest plan but need to cancel? I can't afford this shit, can barely make rent!
If I *upgraded* to the next plan and cancelled within a month would I only have to pay that one month of a new plan?
Thank you! You're a lifesaver!
thanks!! <3
11th of april 2021 and it's still working like a charm. Thank you so so so much !
Omgosh thank you so much!! 🙌🏻
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! Life savers
Cannot thank you enough for this. Was facing a £107 cancellation fee after two £24 payments. SAVIOUR!
I FRIGGIN LOVE YOU!!!! THANK YOU!! I got a temp subscription for a project for a course, but they ended up signing me up for a yearly plan and I noticed too late. It would have been $50 dollars to cancel that's too much for a poor student!! You're a lifesaver.
Also, I also had the "you'll be able to manage this plan shortly" issue, but I was able to cancel my plan in the next couple hours.
Just tried this and it worked. Thanks for being pro-consumer!
Just tried on 2/5/21 and it worked! For those asking it worked in reverse for me too (had premiere pro account, upgraded to CC)
Was able to cancel straight away, had the “you’ll be able to manage your plan soon” but just refreshed the page and cancelled within minutes... Also got an £8 refund for the remainder of the month 😀
Thanks, just saved me an £80 cancellation fee! Still works as of 05/05/21
Just did it now and it still works. Saved me at least 100+ Euroes... thank you