Adobe Store Customer Service: A Monumental Waste Of Time

Buying direct from Adobe is my worst purchasing experience in years.
Failing spectacularly at point of purchase isn't a strategy for
recovery.

Hate to be scrooge, but it's 2008, we're all spoiled with one-click online shopping from even an online start-up, negating the need for telephone calls, and saving that store a ton of money by not having to run a massive customer service infrastructure.

Well, it turns out that one big name hasn't gotten the memo and is, at least to me, just one confused, undoubtedly expensive, massive mess of an operation: Adobe.

One might ask why I'd actually need to order a product directly from Adobe, and not some other online reseller, like Amazon perhaps, which would have unquestionably done an excellent job of taking the order, processing it, and fulfilling it, no calls, nor service emails from me. I have a valid answer: I was going for a cross platform upgrade from PC to MAC, which can only be done by dealing directly with Adobe. It was for Production Premium CS4.

These days, you might think that sales mattered right? After all, Adobe even blamed the lackluster adoption of CS4 as one of the reasons for recent layoffs (also covered by the San Francisco Chronicle) Maybe their CEO should look at it a little better. Is it pricing? Are your direct sales operations actually closing orders? Or are they just making a mess of things that orders aren't booked? Maybe you should stop running your own store and hand over full sales operations to resellers?

So what's going on? In painful bullet point fashion:

• Phone order placed with Adobe Sales on Dec. 2, 2008. It was pleasant, and the first utterance of "done in 7 to 10 business days" is spoken.
  
  
• Faxed the required LOD (for platform switching) same day. Acknowledged by Adobe.
  
  
• And today is the 23rd with no end in sight...did they lose all the engineering talent and counting is a lost art at Adobe?

What, that's it? Yep, I'll spare you the Groundhog Day details. But essentially, it's been in "processing" ever since, with one department not knowing what the other department is doing. It's approved in one place, blocked in another. "Blocked?" That's actually in their own words! WTF! Excuse my French but WTF??!! Who exactly is the customer here? Did you lose an understanding of buyer and seller in addition to counting days?!!

I had sarcastically joked about being hopeful that resolution was expected before Christmas, and if that was too soon, maybe before the New Year (2009)...well, it seems the joke's on me. It's the 23rd, a couple of days before Christmas and I'm screaming humbug because of Adobe! Sigh...

Oh, did I mention that no pro-active communication is ever generated by Adobe? 100% of the communication is started by the customer, me, asking that oh so 90's question, "What's the status of my order?".

Hey Adobe! I love your products, but you've got to stop being a joke of a sales (online/phone/whatever) operation. Save money and ditch this segment of your company, hand it over to online retailers who have a clue. This might sound like a joke, but it isn't: I've had better purchasing experience with a small shop running on Yahoo Stores than yours! Not as elaborate, not as pretty nor eye-catching as yours, but guess what? They know what matters: sales (in your bigger world it's called revenue).

Don't look at the excellent Product Management and Engineering personnel/talent you have for cuts and take a long hard look at the cost of running a service operation simply because you haven't yet learned how to sell the way it's done in this one-click shopping world.

Postmortem Update 12/31/08:

Finally. My Christmas-gift-now-a-New-Year-welcome-gift-to-myself is in my hands. I guess my last call to Adobe Sales last 12/23/08, actually discussing canceling the order, lit a fire in someone's you know what.

See, during the course of this ordeal, a friend of mine who's been a Mac user for eons, was kind enough to lend me his MacBook Pro loaded with Final Cut Studio after seeing the absolute crap I was going through trying to purchase a product Adobe should be desperately trying to sell. I've known about Final Cut, but I've never used it. I have however, been an Adobe user since Illustrator first came out with a PC version (yup, I just dated myself), so my choice to go with Adobe was based on familiarity.

After a few hours of getting used to the Final Cut interface, and with a little help from friends, I loved the experience - enough for me to complete a project I originally had in mind for CS4, and ergo, ending my ordeal and go Final Cut Studio.

How did Adobe dodge a bullet? I'm upgrading to CS4 while a Final Cut purchase would be my first and therefore a full version. Economics was the main reason I extended my patience. The other? FedEx. The promise provided to me by Adobe that shipment was actually already made didn't hold much credibility - for all the reasons I already gave. Their savior? FedEx - and that all important tracking number.