Adobe deactivates all the accounts in Venezuela., thanks to the recent sanctions by the US Government

Adobe has pulled out of Venezuela and the company is cancelling all the accounts due to the latest Executive Order issued by the US Government. The order tightens the sanctions on Venezuela and was passed by the government back in August of 2019.

According to Executive Order 13884, all the US-based companies are supposed to cease business transactions with any individual or entity operating out of Venezuela. Moreover, the companies are not responsible to provide support or refunds to customers who have purchased the software. This applies to Adobe as well and the company has refused to provide any refunds to the customers.

More ripple effects from US deadly sanctions. Adobe customers in Venezuela have been informed that they can no longer access their accounts and Adobe software pic.twitter.com/G21BeWgWxI

— Venezuelanalysis (@venanalysis) October 7, 2019

In a support article published by Adobe, the company noted that they are not allowed to process refunds to the existing customers and they will be deactivating all the Venezuela based accounts. The silver lining, however, is that the customers have time until 28th October to download any ongoing projects or other data.

We are unable to issue refunds. Executive order 13884, orders the cessation of all activity with the entities including no sales, service, support, refunds, credits, etc.

You have until October 28, 2019 to download any content that you have stored in your Adobe account. After this date your account will be deactivated.

– Adobe

Adobe also noted that the sanctions have no expiration date so the company can’t say if the services will be available in the country soon. To make matters worse, Adobe’s current subscription model and the dependence on Adobe Cloud won’t help the customers in any way. Adobe is advising users to check their details if they are wrongly flagged as being in Venezuela.

Executive Order 13884 was issued with no expiration date – the decision to rescind it rests solely with the U.S. Government. We will continue to monitor developments closely and will make every effort to restore services to Venezuela as soon as it is legally permissible to do so.

– Adobe

While there’s an obvious solution to circumvent the ban by using VPN, several customers might resort to pirated versions of the software.