Will ten years see adobe standing on a street corner, in the pouring rain with a sign?
Probably not, but changes have been big at Adobe in the past year and even before, and not for the better. Adobe support is in the toilet, prices are up, and the competition, though not yet shining bright, is growing.
All we can say for the competition is “Come on in” Adobe is out of touch, and it’s getting worse. We need some good old fashioned product wars to balance out the scales.
Since Adobe purchased Macromedia nearly two years ago things have taken a rapid decline, and it seems that Adobe must be kidding themselves into thinking it won’t catch up with them.
Aside from customer service problems, like long hold times, sending support overseas to people we can barley communicate with, and that have a general lack of interest in our problems Adobe has also introduced heavy DRM (digital rights management) into their products. They just don’t get it do they? You can go online and download an illegal version of any Adobe software you want that will work just fine. Or you can be honest and support Adobe by spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on their products.
So what does adobe do? Adobe in their latest software introduces a more restricting DRM that protects you from using the software in any way you shouldn’t. The problem with this is not that we want to use it illegally, but that sometimes (or should we say often) it simply does not work, and you are stuck fooling around with Adobe’s so called support (sometimes for hours) to get it working.
All we can say to Adobe is Duh!!!! Maybe the people that are buying your software legally want to support you and use it legally! I get email almost daily from places where I can buy pirated versions of Adobe products for around sixty bucks. I don’t do this. and never have because I believe in doing the right thing and supporting developers rather than using some half bakes illegal copy. So in turn Adobe takes me thru the ringer as if I’m a criminal.
In a recent experience I had an upgrade for an Adobe product, and when the serials were entered it did not accept them. After spending my afternoon on the phone they helped me get the product working. I was assured by the oh so knowledgeable support guy who could barely speak my language that if I had to install it again it would work. Lo and behold I went to install it again and the same problem! After spending an hour on the phone. Fifty minutes of which time was spent on hold, my problem has still not been resolved, and one of my machines is still contains unactivated software which I paid good money for.
Adobe used to be a good company, and though they still have some great products, they have grown some serious problems, that if not fixed could bring them down in time no matter how great of an empire they think they’ve built. Quality, service, and overall satisfaction are still kings, and their are lots of other companies making graphics software who would like to ride to the top, and become the new Adobe. Am I just a disgruntled customer who had a single bad experiance, No in fact I’ve always been a big fan of Adobe in the past, and most experiences we have latly are bad. Here’s another article over at creative bits regarding an adobe support experience, and here’s yet another, and still another… The list goes on.
Let’s hope Adobe wakes up soon so we can stop wasting our time with hassles we should not have to bother with, and lets root for the competition so we can keep a balance in the industry.
Gavin Seim
[tags]photography, photoshop, adobe, support, service, software[/tags]
Gavin,
Though I agree with you on several points, I will take this from another point of view. When I’m not holding a camera, I work as a Software License Analyst for a Fortune 50 company. I hear and understand your complaints as someone who has to deal with such 5 days a week. The reason that Adobe will not change is that there will never be a groundswell large enough to force them to change. You have to remember that they are a wealthy company only partly because of their software sales. Almost as important is their stock price which is supported by an overwhelming majority of non Adobe software users. Until their actions affect their stock price, change is unlikely. The addition of Macromedia to the Adobe coffers made their service worse but dramatically increased their stock value. It will not be an impetus for change. Companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Adobe have relative monopolies in their field and even the best competition will only amount to a few percentages of the market. I’m not saying that you are spitting into the wind, but your face is looking a little wet. 😕
Look the only solution that will affect them is for you to not buy the product, and uninstall older versions and not do business with people who use the product. Unfortunately, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, and all the other big software companies know that you can’t do this so they don’t care. To support my notion I offer this. You gave several threads showing people having issues with adobe support. How many of those people said they were going to give up and not use the application. NONE. If those same people got horrible service in a restaurant, or at a store they would probably never return.
Those are my thoughts.
Hennessey Green
Sorry to hear you’ve had such problems, Gavin! 🙁
I’m dealt with Adobe and Macromedia for well over 10 years now and have never had any issues even remotely like these. My worst experiance (and that’s a relative categorization) was having two hard drives die within a day or so of each other. Not having the ability to do the de-authorization on either I was stuck with the message that my crative suite was already on two computers. I called Adobe (this was very late on a Saturday night) and got a person within ten minutes. I explained what happened, verified who I was and received an activation code. This took all of 25 minutes.
No complaints from me! 🙂
I understand your point of view as well, and I’m not saying people should stop using the products, or that Adobe is on the way as we speak. But history usually shows that the long arm of consumer anger will catch up in the end. For now I think people’s best course of action is to complain and make their life a little miserable.
Gene sometimes you might happen to get a good experience. It was not long ago that good service was the norm. Sadly it’s declines rapidly, and does not seem to be getting better