Thursday, November 15, 2007

Frankly, Adobe doesn't give a damn

I promised an update on my current woes with Adobe, and here it is: They told me to go jump in a lake. They don’t need my business. At this point, I’m inclined to give them what they wish for and advise everyone else to join me.

I feel like a jilted lover. For a couple of decades, I’ve talked up their applications, defending them in public venues from unwarranted prejudice against their products. I’ve spent many hours providing free assistance on the Internet to Pagemaker users and Acrobat users. At one point I diagnosed a long-standing critical bug in Pagemaker and gave Adobe the information they needed to finally fix it in the final release of Pagemaker.

And in return for my loyalty? Nothing. A thank you? No. A postcard? No. A freebie? Don’t make me laugh.

When I had my recent disastrous experience with an upgrade and requested some consideration, after many more phone calls, I finally discovered that Adobe had agreed to give me a font package. They offered me three choices, and I picked one, a font family worth $149. Seemed fair to me. But this would have to be escalated and I should call back in a few days. I called back yesterday, and Customer Service had no record of it. So I hung up and called headquarters in San Jose. I was finally connected to Erik S. in the Adobe Customer Care department (you can’t call him directly; don’t even try).

Erik reviewed the case notes and told me he’d email me the font within four hours.

Here is the email.
Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Service.

In regard to the font that was offered, Below is the zip file of Stone® Serif.

Attached Fonts:
Stone® Serif

Customer ID number:  XXXXXXXXX

Customer Service Case: XXXXXXXXX

For more information on Adobe® products or services please visit us at:  http://www.adobe.com or contact Adobe customer services at 1 (800) 833-6687. Customer Service Representatives are available 6:00am-8:00pm PT, 7 days a week.

Best Regards,

Erik S.
Adobe Customer Care
Attached was a single font, a a single twenty-nine dollar font, the medium roman. Not the font package with all weights and both roman and italic, which might actually be a useful thing to own.

Well, perhaps there was a misunderstanding, right? Okay. Could be. So I wrote back:
Wait a minute. My understanding was that I was to receive the $149 Stone Serif package, not a single weight worth $29. Tell me this was a mistake.
This morning I got my response:
Hello Dick,

Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Service.

For your records, your customer ID number is XXXXXXXXX. The customer ID number is the easiest way for us to access your account in our database. In the future, please provide this number when you contact Adobe.

Dick, I understand that you have received Stone Serif worth $29 while you were suppose to receive the software worth $149.

With regards to your query, I need to inform you that this issue cannot be resolved via e-mail. Our Customer Service department will be able to provide you with the best solution on this particular issue. Please contact an Adobe Customer Service representative at the number listed below.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

The Web Support Portal Representatives are available from Monday to Friday. For your convenience, on weekends we have a dedicated phone support for Customer Service related queries. Please feel free to contact our phone support at 1 (800) 833-6687 from 6:00am-8:00pm PST, 7 days a week.

Best Regards,

Micheal P.
Adobe Customer Service
I’m done.

I will not spend another hour working through the Adobe phone tree to get back to “Customer Care” for the simple reason that Adobe doesn’t care about customers.

They’ve turned a friend into an enemy. They’ve moved from my not-too-bad-to-do-business-with list to my top-three-worst-companies-to-deal-with list (along with Microsoft and Symantec).

Your mileage may vary.

Will I ever buy from them again? Too soon to tell.

Tomorrow is another day.

3 comments:

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf said...

My sympathies, Rhett—er ... um ... Dick.

Dick Margulis said...

I'm not looking for sympathy, really. I just think Adobe is headed down the wrong road with their total focus on short-term bottom-line results and total disregard for the customers who buy their products. This can't be a good direction for them to be going.

Gordon said...

Yeah, this and a thread on TechWR fills me with less than confidence for the future.

The odd thing is that, in the past few years, the market has really opened up a lot, FM customers have other options these days, you'd think Adobe would be smarter about this.