wrote:
Do I need to contact someone at Adobe?
Yes
BTW GOOD LUCK with your refund from Adobe!
I had an 5.0 copy of Photoshop in a drawer somewhere that I never use and attempted to upgrade to CS2, as it said it was an valid upgrade from Photoshop 7 or earlier.
When I tried to install the upgrade, it attempted to find a copy of 5.5 (WHY?), and of course did not, because I had 5.0.
I called support, and they said they wouldnt let me upgrade because the serial number was registered to someone else (turns out it was my Dad’s copy from work – oops!). That’s fine, I understood that.
So, then I got bounced to returns.
Returns took my information and told me to download the PDF of the ‘Letter of Destruction’, and that they could not refund my money until I filled this out and returned it.
Luckily, I was on line at the time and told them that the return page’s link to the Letter of Destruction was broken! HOW CONVENIENT FOR THEM! They have removed the one document from their site which is *required* in order to process a return!
I told the support rep, who seemed barely awake, and he had me *search* for it on the adobe saite (are you fucking kidding me?)
Considering how much software Adobe sells and returns, just how much do you beleive they were *unaware* of the fact that the link to the return document was broken??
Anyways, its a PDF which says it can be emailed or faxed back.
However, there is no way to fill out a the PDF form, its only printable – and requires a signature – uh, since you cant fill out the PDF electronically, let alone *sign* one electronically, obviously the fact that it can be emailed is completely deceptive and irrelevant. Since Adobe makes Acrobat, I’m sure they have no confusion about what can and cannot be done with that document.
So, the only choice is to print the document and FAX it back.
Thats fine if you are purchasing it from the office, but hardly anyone has a FAX machine in their home. Tough crap says Adobe. Go to Kinkos.
So, once again, Adobe has convoluted the simple process of a return so that people will have the most difficult time possible returning product while still retaining plausible deniability of being downright obstructive.
Meanwhile, the online *purchase* of the product took less then 1 min.
Luckily, when I downloaded the upgrade, I went back and selected the trial install, and found CS2 to be poorly named. I would call it Photoshop 4.7.
Photoshop continues to add very useful features to its product, but it never, ever addresses or updates it’s user interface, which is still pretty much the exact same interface which was in version 5.0.
When I was using it, I felt like I had to check my OS version to make sure I wasnt running Windows 3.1 for Workstations.
IMHO, the fact that they have had ANY major point release past 4-5 is laughable, and is really simply a marketing devise to force their absurdly priced and gratuitously frequent ‘upgrades’.
Anyone who has used Paint Shop Pro before it was purchased by Corel knows that for 99% of the basic hack and chop of day-to-day graphics editing, Paint Shop Pro was 100X easier because they actually re-thought their user interface and let it evolve rather then stew in its own mediocrity for 10 years.
Adobe is a really old-school overpriced software house that blows huge chunks.
