refunds
Jeff bought a copy of
Adobe Creative Suite 4 back in May during a sale promising a $200 discount. The final checkout price didn't reflect the discount, but he double-checked the terms and conditions and confirmed that he was eligible. Adobe agreed, and has repeatedly promised to issue a refund. Jeff has been waiting for the check for almost four months, and he's not alone. Another customer has been waiting on a similar refund for almost a year!
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adobe
Vlog It! looks like a nice piece of software if you're interested in video blogging. Now sold by Adobe, it makes putting video blog entries together about as easy as, well, iMovie.
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above and beyond
After an iBook-death forced her to migrate to another computer, Lisa found that she couldn't activate her legally-purchased copy of Macromedia StudioMX 2004.
Adobe insisted that the software was too old to be reactivated. Too old? It's software! It took several calls and emails before Lisa found an employee who was able to help, not by activating her old software, but by sending her a free new copy of Dreamweaver CS4.
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success stories
James almost got cheated out of CS4, the suite of graphics software sold by
Adobe, when he bought a new Macbook Pro recently. He kept pressing the issue though, and his persistence and level-headedness finally, after several near misses, convinced Apple to do the right thing and send him what he paid for. Congrats to James!
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followups
After we
posted about a reader's frustrated attempts to buy
Adobe's Dreamweaver, Adobe sent us an email, which we passed along to the reader. Over the weekend, she wrote in and said Adobe helped her solve her problems.
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fail
If you produced expensive, frequently pirated software, you'd probably want the process for buying it to be as easy on the customer as possible, right? If you're
Adobe, not so much. Yet another reader writes in to share her frustrations with trying to buy Adobe's Dreamweaver.
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adobe
Amy launched an
EECB to Adobe, after her $2600 worth of software failed to ship on time. Or at all. No one at Adobe customer service can tell her why it didn't ship, or if it ever will, but one CSR suggested it was her fault for ordering through the online store rather than through a sales rep. He says no one tracks the orders on the online store, which makes absolutely no sense. What's the point in having an online store if no one fills the orders? Why the tease, Adobe? Check out her EECB inside.
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pre-orders
Edwards tried to cancel his pre-order for Photoshop Elements 6 a month before the software shipped, but was told that he would need to accept the shipment, destroy the CD, and fill out an affidavit attesting to the destruction. Edward did as he was told, which is reflected in Adobe's notes, but they still rejected his request claiming that he "exceeded their 30 day money back trial guarantee."
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customer service
Jay wanted to update his copy of Adobe Creative Suite 2 to
CS3 and simultaneously switch the license over to the Mac platform. The first sales rep he spoke with did everything right and Jay was very happy. Then that sales rep disappeared forever, only to be replaced by a comically inept parade of CSRs who can't figure out Adobe's own systems, who make up their job titles, give out fax numbers to call, and who—in one case—claim to be on a phone system that doesn't connect to the outside world.
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drm
If you use Leopard on a Mac and plan on buying e-books, be very careful—according to the various complaints on this thread,
Adobe's Digital Editions still doesn't work on Leopard, and yet most places selling Digital Editions e-books won't warn you of this, leaving you with activated books you can't return but also can't read.
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error
In a stunning bout of honesty, Adobe's licensing subsystem would like you to know that it has managed to fail "catastrophically."
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drm
According to the BBC,
Adobe has added DRM to Flash. The DRM aims to prevent copying and ensure that viewers are unable to skip or remove embedded advertising. From the BBC:
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complaints
Our inaugural short-order rant roundup, christened in by one
Bill Green. He's a designer cum art director, so you know he
s got an exacto knife to grind.
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shopping
Poor Europe. Our friends in the Old Countries are constantly being squeezed by American technology companies, with prices for items like electronics and software at a huge premium to their American equivalents.
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Consumerist
Adobe has joined FotoFlexer, Rsizr, and Piknic to offer a free online image editor, Photoshop Express. ArsTechnica says it's pretty good for a cross-platform browser app, although it's got some limitations in this beta launch. (Currently US only.) [ArsTechnica]
