I'd say especially when it's not costing Adobe anything to cancel your subscription, it's just a money grab.
There are some exceptions where a fee is ok like when it's actually putting the business out financially, like Garmin & Iridium satellite service agreements, Garmin has little choice...but clearly not the case for Adobe
The whole idea of offering annual pricing is that the income stream is more consistent, so the price can be lower. It does hurt Adobe (not much relative to their income, but still some) to have that income not materialize.
If you're not happy with a cancellation fee, that's what the monthly pricing is for—you pay more month to month but can cancel any time. It's a very normal trade-off. The only real alternatives Adobe has to a cancellation fee are to only offer monthly pricing or forbid cancelling an annual contact at all.
The problem is not the pricing break for a longer contract, but that the yearly contract was promoted as a monthly price (with no minimum fee clearly shown). I'm sure the A/B testing showed higher takeup if they wrote it that way -- it seems cheaper!
It isn't true that this is the only option. Instead of onerous lock-in like a gym membership they could have a sliding scale -- the longer you pay for it, the cheaper it gets. Their decision to go for annual lock-in is short term thinking.
A fee is acceptable, if the consumer agrees to it, adobe wants people to pay their agreed on contract, but offer people a discount of 50% of their remaining obligation.
This seems pretty fair to me, when you signed up for the contract, those purchases figure into their operations.
Reverse the paradigm, if they cancelled providing you these services, would you expect a refund, or would it be a money grab to expect to get your money back when they violated the terms of the agreement?
If a user signs up for a year contract, the business has certainty of future income. The business gives a discount for assurance of that future revenue.
If the user cancels early, the cost is the lose of that future revenue on the balance sheet - and this does influence the business.
The cost is the users money. If the company got a customer at 53 dollars for 10 months that they would never have acquired at the higher $80 monthly rate and the user cancels they didn't lose the 270 they would have hypothetically received in the imaginary world where the user subscribed because maybe money isn't real. They profited the $530 they received less the cost of providing the service to the customer which is liable to be slight.
You can't lose other people's money you never received.
If I promise to pay you $100 for a job (and sign a contract saying so), you spend $50 of your own money in preparation for that job, and then I back out saying "that money was imaginary since I never actually paid you", are you not entitled to some compensation?
There are some exceptions where a fee is ok like when it's actually putting the business out financially, like Garmin & Iridium satellite service agreements, Garmin has little choice...but clearly not the case for Adobe