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.

Our reader’s email:

I got in touch with the Adobe contact you forwarded, and a representative from Adobe Customer Care headquarters took over my case. Their explanation for the problem was:
“Your recent order was an Upsell, unfortunately the only qualifying product that would apply for this type of purchase is GoLive 9. With an Upgrade purchase a customer is able to upgrade from GoLive 5/6/7/8 – Version 8 is also labeled as CS2, with this information I am able to see where anyone would have thought that they would have been able to “Upgrade” from CS2 premium to Dreamweaver CS3. With all the different products and availability I can see where anyone can get confused, I know I do.”
Now, I don’t see how this can be, as the only two upgrade options available for purchase on the Adobe site are upgrade from Go Live 6/CS/CS2, or upgrade from Dreamweaver MX, MX 2004 or 8. Also, the screen that was giving me grief was asking me to choose which of Go Live 6/CS/CS2 I was upgrading from…
But anyway, they issued me a new serial number (via email) which allowed me to bypass the upgrade screen altogether, and activate the product properly. So I now have a working copy of the software I paid for, and I have thanked the representative for resolving the issue.
As a matter of record, I noticed in the comments to the story you ran that some people had mentioned that the Help menu on Adobe products rarely displays the full serial number. Although I forgot to mention it specifically in my original notes to the Consumerist, I had worked that out at some point, and gone back to my original disks for the full serial number. That hadn’t worked either.

A good tactic for discouraging people from illegally downloading your expensive software is to make sure that those who want to pay money for it are able to. Good work, Adobe.

PREVIOUSLY: Adobe: “It Would Have Been A Pleasure To Assist You With This Issue. [Unfortunately, We’re Totally Incompetent.]”

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