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Lost my cool with Adobe today.
#1
So over the years I’ve bought Photoshop 5, 7 and CS3 - all edu. Not a photographer or power user, but I often use a subset of it to clean up certain enormous files in an odd (but necessary) format that only PS seems to do. But now my job is no longer at the U and so I thought I should do the right thing and get a non-edu copy. Imagine my delight when a few months ago, Adobe said I could upgrade to CS5/6 full version for $200. But I had to choose, Mac vs PC.

I’m long-time Mac, but have to use a PC at work, so after a couple of months I finally decided I’d go for the PC, and if I wanted to run CS6 on my MacBook, I’d run Boot Camp. So I called Adobe today, and talked to the nice (American) saleslady- sure! you can still get that price. And then she said (or at least I _heard_) that the serial number would be in the emailed receipt, so I could start using it this afternoon at my work PC. Yay!

Receipt shows up- no serial number. Did on on-line chat (verrry slowwly) with “Amar” at the Adobe website, who after 15 minutes of back-and-forth, decided it would “take a few hours for order to go through”.

At work, called Adobe sales again. After explaining to American guy, he says “Oh, you want _customer support_” and connected me to India. Took a while for that guy to understand what I was saying. He says the serial number would be there soon, sir- 7 to 10 days, with the DVD. I can’t wait that long, I have to get this job out, I don’t need physical media. But sir, it’s ordered that way, and we can’t change the order placed an hour earlier.

So I called sales _again_, and explained to another American. Sure! we can cancel that, and reorder it as electronic delivery. That’ll be $949.

Say what?? It was $199 this morning!
That was then, this is now. Our policies are in a process of change. Do you want it?

No. After today, I’d rather never see an Adobe product again. Gah.
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#2
torrents.
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#3
decay wrote:
torrents.

Seriously thinking about that. Or just getting another edu version. It shouldn't be this difficult to get their product at a non-outrageous price.
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#4
Very unfortunate. Cuss-tomer service
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#5
30 day trial? Or did you use that up already?
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#6
In their defense, so long as you don't need technical or sales support, those Indian call center workers can be very helpful. The biggest problem with them seems to be that they have no authority to do anything except read from a script or look up info on their computers.

I spent an hour with one of those guys getting our serial numbers and upgrade plan products straight.

He was very helpful and patient.

Especially when I made him repeat long strings of serial numbers over and over again because I couldn't understand his accent.

It was easier when we started using Indian words for letters. For example, instead of "T as in Tommy" we switched to "T as in Taj Mahal." (Not joking.)
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#7
The only way to get a serial number on the fly is to get a volume license. The retail boxed copy, as you now know, has the serial number with the product. The upgrade price you have is for the retail box, purchased through the retail channel. Volume licensing is an entire different department, with their own pricing, sales reps, and customer support. It isn't surprising that call center employees aren't trained in both.

Other than the initial sales person possibly saying that you should have gotten an email with the serial number, everything is exactly as would be expected/should be done.

You might want it to play out some other way, but that isn't the way it works.
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#8
Gareth wrote:
30 day trial? Or did you use that up already?

That's what I'd do.
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#9
Don't get me started on Adobe customer disservice..

We've had CS3 throughout the school for years. A grant came through last year and we were able to upgrade to CS6 and did so. At least until it was discovered the grant did not allow the software to be used on any computer other than ones teaching Web Design for certification (we have a vocation class that does that, I teach photography in the Visual Arts program).

So off comes CS6, we'll just reinstall CS3 until I can find $7000 to upgrade again. I'm annoyed but that's life under the license police.

Except CS3 will no longer recognize the old site license. We tried everything, even re-imaged on computer to a clean slate and it still won't allow the license.

Called Adobe - their answer? "We no longer support CS3 and cannot answer any questions regarding it. Please upgrade to a current product." End of story and they won't even revisit the question. So we have valid licenses for the product that won't install and the company won't support us because it isn't the newest version.

I don't have the funds to upgrade 25 computers at $225 each ($5600, but we can get a 250 unit site license for $7000 or 500 unit + 250 take home licenses for $8000). I scrounged the school and the middle school, found 20 computers with working CS3 and will finish the year and then beg for funding if I don't find another grant.

Thanks for the help Adobe.
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#10
Adobe is strictly about the money. Saw this today at Macintouch:

"Can Adobe hit us any lower? They're now resorting to feature differentiation to force people to adopt their "Cloud" version of CS Suite... aka. their ridiculous software rental scheme.

A huge shortfall of Illustrator was its inability to extract images once placed. I just received this email that a new extract feature has been added, but only for Cloud subscribers!

From Adobe Email....

Exclusive new Illustrator features.
Easily hand off Adobe Illustrator files to production with new package files and quickly unembed images in Illustrator files for quick edits. Available exclusively to Creative Cloud members.


Love that last line. Dumps on us CS Suite purchasers."
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