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Adobe

Adobe Inc., headquartered in San Jose, California, sells Creative Cloud, Acrobat and related subscriptions. This page quotes Adobe's own cancellation, early-termination-fee and refund terms, the BBB and Trustpilot figures as displayed on October 16, 2026, and the U.S. Justice Department case filed in 2024, which the court closed with an entered stipulated order and final judgment on April 10, 2026, and Adobe's settlement benefit. Complaints and lawsuits are allegations unless a court or regulator states a finding; the page gives no rating of its own.

COMPLAINTS33
VERIFIED PHONE—
LAST CHECKED2026-10-16
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CONSUMER ALLEGATION

Complaints & Reviews on USAComplaints

USAComplaints currently maintains 33 historical complaints about Adobe, published between 2005 and 2013. No approved complaints have been published on this site during the last three years. For a current reputation snapshot, see the independent sources below.

EDITORIAL

Complaint Themes

Refund, rebate or order-reversal problems described (keyword match)Customer support or service difficulty described (keyword match)Software defect, install or licensing problems described (keyword match)

Each tag reflects a complaint's single primary theme (not every angle it raised), and complaints outside any problem theme — a positive report, or one later retracted by its author — aren't tagged. Counts may total less than the full complaint count above.

EXTERNAL SOURCE

Independent Sources

Shown for context — not merged with USAComplaints' own numbers.

BBB: 193 reviews, 1024 complaints
Trustpilot: 7540 reviews,
VERIFIED

Contacts

VERIFIED

Locations

TypeAddress
Headquarters345 Park Ave San Jose CA 95110
EDITORIAL

Adobe: how to cancel, fees and refunds (checked October 16, 2026)

People search for Adobe complaints mostly about subscriptions: a charge after a trial, a fee when cancelling, or a plan that would not cancel. This section lists what Adobe's own help pages say today and the routes for escalating.

  • Cancel in the account. Adobe's cancellation article (last updated Jul 24, 2026) says you can cancel directly from your Adobe account if you purchased it from Adobe: "Sign in to your Adobe account", select "Manage plan", select "Cancel your plan", check the plan details and select "Continue to cancel", select a reason, then "Confirm cancellation". It adds that each plan must be cancelled separately and that access continues until the end of the current billing period. For plans bought through Apple, Google or Microsoft, the article says to follow those providers' cancellation process.
  • Early termination fee on the annual plan paid monthly. The terms page (last updated Jan 27, 2026) says: "After 14 days, a cancellation fee (early termination fee) of 50% of the remaining balance of the contract applies. For example, if you cancel in the ninth month, you pay 50% of the fee for the three remaining months." The same page says that for the annual prepaid plan "a refund is not possible if you cancel before the year ends".
  • 14-day refund. The cancellation article says "For most plans, you get a full refund if you cancel within 14 days of your initial purchase."
  • Still charged after cancelling. The same article notes that a charge after cancelling "is usually the final charge for your current billing period" and links to Adobe's billing-charges article. Check the plan list in your account because cancelling one plan does not cancel other active plans.
  • Contact. Adobe's contact page is https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html (its popular topics include "How do I cancel my plan?" and "Is there a cancellation fee?").
  • Settlement benefit. Adobe's settlement benefit FAQ (https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/adobe-settlement-benefit-faq.html) says eligible U.S. customers were emailed; former customers must redeem by December 31, 2027. Details are in the regulator section below.
  • Escalation. If a dispute is not resolved, you can dispute the charge with your card issuer, file a BBB complaint, report to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, or contact your state attorney general. For the U.S. government's case about Adobe's cancellation practices and its March 2026 settlement, see the regulator section below.

Older complaints on this site (2005 to 2013) also describe unrelated third-party websites that charged people who wanted to download Adobe software; those posts are not linked to this page.

EDITORIAL

Adobe: U.S. government case on the early termination fee and cancellation process

What was alleged. On June 17, 2024 the Department of Justice filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Case 5:24-cv-03630) against Adobe Inc. and two Adobe employees, David Wadhwani and Maninder Sawhney, after a referral from the FTC. Adobe's Form 10-Q describes the complaint as alleging that Adobe "failed to clearly and conspicuously disclose material terms, failed to obtain express informed consent and failed to provide a simple cancellation mechanism" in violation of the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA) and the FTC Act. The FTC's case page says the complaint alleges that Adobe pushed consumers toward the annual paid monthly plan without adequately disclosing that cancelling in the first year could cost hundreds of dollars. These are allegations.

Procedural steps. Per Adobe's 10-Q, Adobe filed a motion to dismiss on October 7, 2024, and "On May 2, 2025, the Court denied our motion to dismiss the complaint, and discovery then ensued."

March 2026 agreement and April 2026 order. A DOJ press release dated March 13, 2026 says the Justice Department "filed a proposed stipulated order that, if entered by the court, will resolve" the case against Adobe and the two employees. Adobe's 10-Q describes the March 13 filing in its own words: "On March 12, 2026, we reached an agreement to settle the action, and on March 13, 2026, we filed a stipulation of dismissal with the Court." The court record shows how the case ended: on April 10, 2026 U.S. District Judge Noël Wise entered the Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Civil Penalty Judgment, and Other Relief (ECF 126) and a final judgment (ECF 127), and the Clerk of Court was directed to close the file. The order states that the defendants "neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint"; it is a stipulated judgment, not a finding of liability.

What the entered order requires. Adobe must pay a $75,000,000 civil penalty to the United States within 14 days of entry and "offer consumers Seventy-Five Million Dollars ($75,000,000) in free services"; the order says "these free services are not compensation for actual pecuniary loss, if any." It requires clear and conspicuous disclosure, before billing information is obtained, of the automatic charges, the length of any subscription commitment, the existence of any early cancellation fee and how it is calculated. For free trials that last longer than 7 days it requires email notices when the consumer signs up and "two days prior to conversion of the Free Trial into a paid subscription". It requires express informed consent and "simple mechanisms" to cancel, and says the simple mechanism "may not be deactivated, removed, or rendered inaccessible or unusable for any consumers based on the timing of the cancellation attempt, issues with a consumer's payment or billing card or information", while "Defendants can ensure that a customer pays outstanding balances prior to cancelling." Adobe's cancellation article says a plan cannot be cancelled while a payment is being processed or has a problem (wait 24 hours and try again). The order "will remain in effect for 10 years after its entry". The FTC case page was last updated July 25, 2024 and still shows "Pending"; the court record shows the case closed on April 10, 2026.

Adobe's settlement benefit. Adobe's settlement benefit FAQ (last updated Apr 30, 2026) says: "You are eligible if you were a subscriber to a Creative Cloud app at any time between January 2019 and July 2025 and paid an early termination fee that, when combined with your monthly subscription fees, exceeded the cost of a month-to-month plan for the same period. This settlement is available only to U.S. customers." Adobe says eligible customers were emailed at the address on their Adobe account; customers with active subscriptions "will automatically receive two free months applied to each subscription" (shown under Billing and Payment in the Your Plan section of the Adobe account); eligible former customers redeem two months of free access to one of the listed apps through the link in the settlement email, with "no subscription commitment or credit card information required", and "must redeem your benefit by December 31, 2027". Customers who paid for an annual subscription upfront are credited two free months at the next renewal. For a lost account email, Adobe says to contact Adobe Support. Adobe's own statement of March 13, 2026 is at news.adobe.com/news/2026/03/adobe-statement. Under the order the benefit is free service time, not a cash refund.

EDITORIAL

Adobe: who operates it

Adobe Inc. is a Delaware corporation; its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended August 28, 2026 lists principal executive offices at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California 95110-2704, telephone (408) 536-6000, with common stock listed on Nasdaq under ADBE. BBB lists the headquarters profile as "Adobe Systems, Inc." at the same address, with alternate names including Macromedia, Fotolia, Omniture, Typekit, Business Catalyst, EchoSign and Adobe Creative Cloud. Per BBB's raw page data the business started on December 1, 1982, was incorporated on May 15, 1997, and BBB opened its file on September 26, 1997.

Adobe sells Creative Cloud, Acrobat and related subscriptions. Its help pages describe plan types (annual paid monthly, annual prepaid and month-to-month) with different cancellation terms, summarized in the first section.

EDITORIAL

Adobe complaint record: BBB, Trustpilot and this site

BBB (as displayed on 2026-10-16). The BBB profile for Adobe Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA shows BBB rating A+ and "NOT a BBB Accredited Business". The complaints tab shows "1,024 total complaints in the last 3 years" and "346 complaints filed in the last 12 months"; the reviews tab shows "1.06 /5 stars" with "Average of 193 Customer Reviews". The profile also shows "1 alert" under Government Action. BBB states it does not verify information provided by third parties.

Trustpilot (as displayed on 2026-10-16). Adobe's Trustpilot page shows a score of 1.1 from 7,540 reviews and a claimed profile (since Oct 2019). Trustpilot says it does not fact-check reviews.

This site. 28 archived complaints (2005 to 2013) are linked to this profile. They mostly concern software orders, rebate claims, refunds and customer-service contacts from the Adobe Systems era. They are consumer allegations and are not compared with or added to the BBB or Trustpilot figures above.

EDITORIAL

Adobe: other lawsuits consumers ask about

AI training copyright class action. A proposed class action, Tanzer v. Adobe Inc. (Case 3:26-cv-04712, N.D. Cal., Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley), was filed May 18, 2026. The complaint alleges that Adobe used pirated books to train its SlimLM and Nemotron language models; these are allegations in the complaint. On July 15, 2026 Adobe filed a motion to dismiss the complaint in part (docket entry 30); no ruling was identified in the Justia docket entries checked on October 16, 2026.

Subscription class action. Marquez et al. v. Adobe, Inc., No. 5:25-cv-06562 (N.D. Cal., Judge Nathanael M. Cousins), was filed August 4, 2025 by plaintiffs Vianca Marquez and Stephanie Wohlfiel (nature of suit on the docket: Other Fraud); the plaintiffs' claims are allegations. The Justia docket lists a motion to dismiss and to strike filed by Adobe, an administrative motion by Adobe to determine whether cases should be related (November 6, 2025) and a motion by the plaintiffs for corrective action under Rule 23(d); the latest entry shown is dated January 22, 2026. No ruling on the motion to dismiss was identified in the docket entries checked on October 16, 2026; Justia may not list every entry.

Securities litigation. Adobe's 10-Q reports that a securities class action in the Southern District of New York was dismissed on March 27, 2025, that leave to amend was denied on November 7, 2025, and that the plaintiff is appealing. This concerns shareholders, not subscribers.

EDITORIAL

Is Adobe Legitimate?

Adobe Inc. is an SEC-reporting company: its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended August 28, 2026 lists a Delaware corporation with offices in San Jose, California and stock traded on Nasdaq (ADBE). BBB shows an A+ rating and no accreditation, along with 1,024 complaints in the last three years as displayed on 2026-10-16. Trustpilot shows 1.1 from 7,540 reviews. On April 10, 2026 the court entered a stipulated order and final judgment in the Justice Department's case over Adobe's disclosure of its early termination fee and its cancellation process: a $75 million civil penalty plus $75 million in free services, with the defendants neither admitting nor denying the allegations. This page gives no rating of its own; read the first section for the company's own cancellation and refund terms.

PUBLIC RECORD

Court & Public Records

CaseAuthorityDatesTypeOutcomeSource
United States v. Adobe Inc., Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani (ROSCA; early termination fee and cancellation process)
Docket 5:24-cv-03630		U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
SettledSettled

The complaint (filed June 17, 2024) alleges violations of ROSCA and the FTC Act. Adobe's 10-Q reports that the court denied its motion to dismiss on May 2, 2025, and describes a March 12, 2026 agreement and a March 13, 2026 filing as a stipulation of dismissal. On April 10, 2026 U.S. District Judge Noël Wise entered the Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Civil Penalty Judgment, and Other Relief (ECF 126) and a final judgment (ECF 127), and the case was closed. The order requires a $75,000,000 civil penalty and $75,000,000 in free services, which "are not compensation for actual pecuniary loss, if any"; it runs 10 years from entry, and the defendants neither admit nor deny the allegations. It is a stipulated judgment, not a finding of liability.

Source
Tanzer v. Adobe Inc. (proposed class action; AI model training)
Docket 3:26-cv-04712		U.S. District Court for the Northern District of CaliforniaFiledFiled — no final outcome recorded

The complaint, filed May 18, 2026, alleges that Adobe used pirated books to develop its SlimLM and Nemotron language models. These are allegations. Per the Justia docket, Adobe filed a motion to dismiss the complaint in part on July 15, 2026 (docket entry 30); no ruling was identified as of October 16, 2026.

Source
EDITORIAL

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I cancel an Adobe subscription?

Adobe's cancellation article says to sign in to your Adobe account, select Manage plan, select Cancel your plan, continue through the plan details, give a reason and select Confirm cancellation. It says each plan must be cancelled separately and that you can't cancel while a payment is being processed or has a problem (wait 24 hours and try again). For plans bought through Apple, Google or Microsoft, use that provider's process.

What is Adobe's early termination fee?

Adobe's subscription terms page (last updated Jan 27, 2026) says that on the annual plan paid monthly, after 14 days, "a cancellation fee (early termination fee) of 50% of the remaining balance of the contract applies." Its example: cancelling in the ninth month means paying 50% of the fee for the three remaining months. For the annual prepaid plan the page says a refund is not possible if you cancel before the year ends.

Can I get a refund after cancelling Adobe?

Adobe's cancellation article says "For most plans, you get a full refund if you cancel within 14 days of your initial purchase" and that refund eligibility depends on when you cancel and the type of subscription. The terms page lists different cancellation terms for annual paid monthly, annual prepaid and month-to-month plans.

What did the Justice Department and FTC allege against Adobe?

A DOJ press release dated March 13, 2026 says the government alleged that Adobe violated ROSCA by using fine print and inconspicuous hyperlinks to hide information about a hefty Early Termination Fee, and by subjecting subscribers to convoluted and inefficient cancellation processes. The case was filed June 17, 2024 against Adobe, David Wadhwani and Maninder Sawhney. These are allegations; see the regulator section for the settlement terms.

What are the terms of the $150 million Adobe settlement?

On April 10, 2026 the court entered the Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Civil Penalty Judgment, and Other Relief (ECF 126) and a final judgment (ECF 127); the case was closed. The order requires a $75,000,000 civil penalty and $75,000,000 in free services that "are not compensation for actual pecuniary loss, if any"; clear disclosure of any early cancellation fee and how it is calculated before enrollment; email notices at sign-up and "two days prior to conversion" for free trials longer than 7 days; and simple cancellation mechanisms. It "will remain in effect for 10 years after its entry", and the defendants "neither admit nor deny" the allegations. Adobe's 10-Q describes its March 13, 2026 filing as a stipulation of dismissal; the docket shows the order and judgment above.

How do I get the free services from the Adobe settlement?

Adobe's settlement benefit FAQ (last updated Apr 30, 2026) says you are eligible if you "were a subscriber to a Creative Cloud app at any time between January 2019 and July 2025 and paid an early termination fee that, when combined with your monthly subscription fees, exceeded the cost of a month-to-month plan for the same period", and that the settlement "is available only to U.S. customers". Adobe says active subscribers "will automatically receive two free months applied to each subscription"; former customers redeem through the link in the settlement email and "must redeem your benefit by December 31, 2027", with no credit card required. If the account email is no longer accessible, Adobe says to contact Adobe Support. The court order describes the free services as "not compensation for actual pecuniary loss, if any".

What does BBB show for Adobe?

As displayed on 2026-10-16, the BBB profile for Adobe Systems, Inc. in San Jose shows an A+ rating, no BBB accreditation, 1,024 complaints in the last three years (346 in the last 12 months) and a customer-review average of 1.06 out of 5 from 193 reviews. BBB notes it does not verify information supplied by third parties.

How do I contact Adobe about a billing problem?

Adobe's contact page (helpx.adobe.com/contact.html) offers links to cancel a plan, change a plan and popular billing topics such as "How do I fix a failed or missed payment?". Adobe's SEC filing lists a corporate telephone number, (408) 536-6000, which is not described as a support line. BBB lists (408) 536-2800, (408) 536-6000 and (800) 833-6687 on its profile; these are BBB-listed numbers and are not confirmed as Adobe support lines.