As most of you probably know by now, I’m not a fan of Adobe. In fact, some would say I’m staunchly opposed to anything and everything Adobe. I’m going to share one of the many reasons why in this post.

Part of what our business is about is helping clients maximize the use of the Apple/Macintosh platform. We work with a number of different types of businesses including some Graphic Design firms and Graphic Design departments. So, back on October 3, 2008, we helped a Graphic Design client get a new iMac setup for a new employee. As part of this new setup, the client purchased a copy of Adobe CS3 Design Standard. The client was fully aware that CS4 would be shipping in the very near future but we needed to get the new employee productive as quickly as possible. Once CS4 was released Adobe made an announcement regarding eligibility rules for receiving a free CS4 upgrade. Before you ask, yes, we followed their eligibility rules and request guidelines to the letter of the “law according to Adobe”.

On November 8, 2008, we received a letter confirming eligibility and indicating that we needed to call their customer service telephone number to confirm all the details of delivering the CS4 Upgrade. We placed the call, they took all the pertinent information such as the shipping address and told us to look for the upgrade within the next 7 to 10 business days.

Fast forward 6 months. Today was call number 4 to Adobe’s “lack of” customer service department. I must be honest folks, I said some bad words. I probably made the lady on the other end of the line feel about an inch tall. Here is their excuse for not shipping the upgrade after the previous 3 calls:

I’m sorry sir, but apparently the order was rejected because we do not have a shipping address on file.

No joke! Not only did they ask for it and confirm it during the last 3 telephone conversations, I double checked it online with our customer profile. Could they not at least auto-generate an email indicating that further information was needed to ship the Upgrade? Anyway, once again, I have yet another “order number” and am assured that they will use expedited shipping to get this delivered to our client.

Look for an update on this post sometime Monday because she said that we should receive a confirmation with the shipping information by then.