OT Another Reason To Avoid Monthly Subscriptions.
IceDragonArt
Posts: 12,909
So I finally broke down about 6 months ago and went with Photoshop monthly plan. Everything was fine until my debit card got hacked. The bank shut the card down and mistakenly put Adobe on the list of fraudulent charges. I immediately called the fraud people back and said, no, Adobe is a valid debit and not fraudulant. They said the would take them off the list, return the two months they took back blah blah blah. I immediately contacted adobe to let them know what happened, changed my billing information immediately etc. They said no problem you should befine. Yesterday, (the day after my conversation with adobe) I got an email saying they cancelled my account as I requested. This time I made a phone call, letting them know that I did NOT cancel the account and to please fix it. Explained the whole thing again. Got the floor manager, he says oh, just go in and repurchase. So I try to go in an repurchase, nope, no go, it tells me they can't accept my card (all three of them which are all perfectly valid credit cards. I use the one in place of my debit card now because its obvious the bank can't keep it secure and at least with a credit card, I get my money back no questions. I just pay it off every week and pretend its really coming out of my checking account when I use it.) I start a chat, and explain the whold d*** thing again, and the guy finally says, what does the error message say. So I read it to him and at the end of the error message, it says call customer support. So he says, oh, just call them they will take the payment on the phone and it will be fine. Its going on midnight at this point, so obviously, I am not calling then. I call today, and explain it AGAIN to the billing people. She tries to take my card and get it started again and guess what. It won't go through. She says call your bank they blocked it. I say, no, you don't understand, its not the same card or bank its a totally different one. I say its blocked on your end. Gave her a different card, different bank and oh look, it won't go through. I say again, its on your end can you please move me up to the next level. She says she is moving it up to the billing team (and here I thought I was talking to billing all along) and please wait 24 hours and try again. If it doesn't work call back. I say are you open on Saturday? She says no. So, no access to my photoshop account for 5 days at least if the payment doesn't go through tomorrow. And thats if they even manage to get it fixed. A couple of them were really struggling to understand what I was saying. They were all super nice but guess what. My problem is not fixed. I can't possibly be the only person who has ever had a card hacked and had this happen.
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Comments
I've been milling over picking up photoshop (just because a lot of employers in my line of work are wanting experience with it) and no, I don't want subscription. I want to be able to pay once and not have to worry anymore. So I'm going to look around for an older copy, before the stupid creative cloud crap.
I have elements 11 and 13 and it will do most of what I need but there are some things in the monthly one that are very useful. But I am now reconsidering and thinking of just going back to elements. But part of the problem is that some of Ron's brushes do not work in elements, which means I would be out the money for those.
Maybe there's a way to convert the ones that don't work, like maybe loading them in gimp and re-exporting them or something (just a wild guess as I've not ever used or installed any brushes)
Maybe. I think all but the last set or so should be fine. Plus, I have a ton of free brushes (go to Deviant Art, there are plenty to pick from lol, and its not hard to put them into the program at all) so if one set doesn't work its not the end of the world. Most of his brushes are fine in Gimp as well as far as I know.
I've never had a problem (knock on wood) but I use PayPal for everything. No credit cards here.
It was a debit card. I only have a couple of credit cards because I no longer trust my bank to keep my info safe. This ist the third time in 6 months. And I barely used it anymore after the second time. They can't explain how it keeps happening. If I don't use it how can they get the info? And the bank doesn't gaurantee you get your money back. So switched to a credit card with cash rewards, I pay for EVERYTHING with it, write in my check book like I was using my debit card and pay it off every week. No interest and I am now making money paying my bills etc. And that card has never been hacked.
If you need a back up program, you can try Krita - https://krita.org/en/
Its free and open source. There are some good videos for it on Youtube.
Yeah, I've decided that my Debit Card is really only safe for use at the bank's ATMs on weekends to get emergency unbudgeted cash from my checking account and I've disabled the feature that lets me use the ATM to transfer cash to/from my savings account.
I tried using my Debit Card for daily needs but panicked when I heard that banks don't guarantee to refund money stolen from a Debit Card. 
Now I mostly use cash (a finite budgeted amount for each month) and sometimes my Credit Card for some weekly expenses like a budgeted amount of cash, restaurants, clothes, groceries, prescriptions. And ALWAYS pay it down to zero balance at least once a month. So, it sort of acts like a slow motion checking account. I keep a complex spreadsheet that I enter all my expenses into and it automatically keeps a running total of my Cash on Hand, Current Checking and Savings balances, and most importantly, what the checking balance would be if I paid off the Credit Cards.
(note to self, never let that number go red!) Most of my monthly income deposit goes immediately to savings, then rent, then pay off of credit cards, then buy gasoline and groceries. What's left is pretty small and is only pocket money so it wouldn't be a complete catastrophe if it got hacked. The savings account is supposedly safe. And once the savings account gets big enough I move a good chunk of it into some sort of liquidable investment. I'm poor as a church mouse but if when I was making lots of money I had kept track of my money like I do now, then I wouldn't have to keep track of my money now! 
And I change my on-line bank account name and password frequently.
...I have it Krita and it is a very good substitute.
..good advice.
I don't use either Uber or Lyft, even though they are cheaper than a regular taxi, as they require you to leave your card number on their database.
I use Paypal for most online buying simply because it keeps all the information in one place and I don't hae to track down where something got hacked. I also NEVER use a debit card online. I use it to withdraw money at my bank. You know, the fancy green pieces of paper...
I use PSE14 and haven't had any problems with any of Rons brushes that I have... I have quite a few of them as well...
maybe upgrade your version to the latest will solve the problem.
Do PayPal with your own online purchases. You will reduce the risk your card is hacked
Greetings,
Most of the brushes work fine, if slightly fewer features in various places. The brush format is a well-known format, and not particularly tied to Photoshop's way of doing things.
The same cannot be said of Adobe Style Layers, or ASL files. Many of Ron's new stuff includes ASL's and they're powerful and awesome and I can't use them at all because I don't use Photoshop itself. :-/ This is also the case for their Actions (.atn) and Custom Shapes (.csh), both of which I believe Ron has released in some of his newer packs. I own nearly everything Ron's released on DAZ (99 of 104), but I can't use the ASL/ATN/CSH parts of them, unfortunately. (I use Pixelmator on the Mac, which is incredibly powerful and runs $15-$30, depending on sales.)
For example, Ron's Steam has 90 brushes, which are useable everywhere, but the 2 layer styles that make fire are only useful in Photoshop. I bought it because the steam looked great and I'm okay with it just being that, but I have to admit, I'm itching to try Photoshop to try out the styles too...
-- Morgan
I have a 'sacrificial' debit account for online purposes, and keep most of my money in another account at another bank entirely. I never do online anything with that other account, and withdraw money manually to take it to the other bank. It's a credit union to boot, so I get better interest rates, and have a 0 balance in checking (keeping money in savings, etc.).
Kind of a pain, but at least it keeps the bulk of my money a tiny bit safer...
I've never went the PayPal route, but that might be worth looking into in your case. There are also prepaid credit cards at Walgreens, etc. that might be worth looking into.
But back to your point, it is stories like these that keep reminding me of all the reasons why I don't like subscription models in general. When you are spending most of your day arguing with customer service, etc. over bank cards, yeah that's a sterling example of customer service in action (not)!
Greetings,
This is incorrect; Uber and Lyft use a 3rd party service who specializes in holding CC information and is subject to extremely high standards. Uber does it the same way DAZ does it. In fact, I believe Uber uses Braintree, which is owned by...wait for it...Paypal. Your credit card information is not exposed to Uber, it's stored on Braintree's systems, and very securely. They give Uber a code that allows them to do individual charges against the card, again...exactly the same as the way DAZ does it. This means that if someone compromised Uber's network, they would have no access to the actual credit card information.
This is why I dislike how some online stores have a raw form to enter your credit card information; it's exposed to hacking EVERY time you do that...and some HAVE been hacked. Yearly. Credit card information being saved on a secure payment processor's site like Braintree, Stripe or Authorize.net is vastly more secure.
-- Morgan
Since the subscription stuff has gotten into full swing Adobe support just sucks. You can try to point them in the right direction and they will fully ignore notes from your previous issues and wall you through an hour or more full of steps you KNOW won't work. I'm consdering moving back to my last purchased suite at CS3. Sincerely, I am considering it.
I kep meaning to learn it but i have little use for it atm. i do keep downloading the updates however
I have over 40 of Ron's brushes which all work in PSE14 as do the styles
I don't have any sets with Actions which would be the ones that fall over in PSE, but they are not brushes so it doesn't worry me.
Affinity Photo is for you if you don't have the money !
I was gone all day but while I was gone a fradulent criminal organization called and left a message (message was nonsense and from an American - obviously someone is paying these criminals or they wouldn't waste their time at such low probability targets - government dollars at work there?) what the number is since it's an 888 number and it's a criminal organization pretending to by your credit card company's fraud prevention department and calling people to try and trick the credit card holders into giving out their credit card information. The criminals even post phoney information in those 'who is calling from number XXX' and claiming calls from that number XXX is credit card fraud prevention for company XYZ.
So, even after you get credit cards, debit cards, and the like changed they still have all the personal information about you that they had before except now the credit/debit card number is different. Changing telephone numbers is probably the next best thing to do after the credit/debit card number is changed; however that costs money ($25 one-time fee plus another $5 - $6 to make it an unlisted number at many phone companies).
I feel your pain. Internet security is a joke. I'm about ready to tear the internet connection out of the wall. Only I can't.
..based on the OP, they make Comcast's CS sound good.
Rentware is only great if it's on the company account, otherwise Gimp, Affinity Photo/Designer, Krita are perfect replacements...Adobe can go chew on a stick of dynamite...
Does Photoshop actually stop working?
Affinity Photo's commercial looks amazing. It might be a good substitute for Photoshop
Yes. I have no access to it at all.I can load it but I can't use it. THIS is why I held out for over a year before trying it. I am re downloading Elements 13 and I actually think I have Krita, I didn't realize it could work like photoshop the last time I used it I used it for painting. And I know that Gimp is also a fairly good substitude but the photoshop interface was more intuitive to me. But I will suck it up and learn if I have to lol. I am so angry and frustrated at this point its just not even worth it. I contacted them on Facebook, the guy said he would have someone call before the end of the day on Friday and guess what. No phone call, and no response when I mentioned no phone call.
Does anyone know if the NIK filters work with Elements? And Filter Forge?
I have been using photoshop elements 11 because it is not subscription. This thread is making me think Gimp or Krita or both. Thanks.
Sonja, sorry for your troubles.