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positive_Coral15A7
Participant
April 11, 2016
Question

Adobe has stolen back the software I have already bought from them. Help!

  • April 11, 2016
  • 4 replies
  • 1524 views

I am going round in endless circles trying to find the "official" statement about what has happened to Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional.

One minute it is working, then one day I get a message saying I must reactivate. I follow the provided instructions, but the online reactivation doesn't work. The phone number provided doesn't work.

I end up on a very unconvincing service desk call with someone on Skype. He even asks me for my Adobe password at one point. Pretty poor.

So having bought this software and used it happily for a few years, Adobe have the right to take it away from me? Surely that is not right.

If for some reason the product has had to be replaced, I am happy to pay a modest upgrade fee, but it is really hard to find out what the replacement product is, and how much it costs.

One of the help desk calls wanted to charge me $375 per annum!!!!!!

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
June 13, 2017

Let's suppose you keep your car in a garage. You decide to replace your garage and buy a nice new one. It looks good but it is narrower than the old garage, and your car does not fit. Will the car maker replace or modify the car?

In case you miss the analogy, the garage is Windows. If you change the garage (Windows) and the car (Acrobat) fails, whose fault is that? One little secret from Microsoft is that there will be a new version of Windows each year, with major changes, the update will be automatic, and the new Windows will also be called Windows 10. There was a huge update to Windows 10 (your garage) recently and Acrobat (your car) no longer fits.

R
robr61332237
Participant
June 13, 2017

One year later, and I am having exactly the same issues. I would love to get a straight response from Adobe as I was quite happy with using the old product - which incidentally has worked just fine with Windows 10 for over a year now.

Suddenly though, it needs to re-activate - WHY???? I am not looking for support on the old program, just for it to continue working as it always has.

I am not prepared to $30/month for their latest product, when I had a perfectly good product, bought and paid for. The analogy is not correct that you have had good usage out of the program - your car doesn't stop working after 10 years and require you to pay a re-activation fee.

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
June 13, 2017

Think about it like this: After your car's warranty time is over you have to pay for any parts that get broken in it yourself... The manufacturer doesn't take responsibility for their product working after X amount of time. You're on your own, basically.

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
April 11, 2016

The replacement product, by the way, is Acrobat DC Pro. Upgrade pricing is only available for Acrobat 10 and 11, you're too late for that. I believe subscriptions are $20/month though I may be out of date on that. Some Adobe staff can help with this, though Acrobat 8, 9 and 10 are out of support now.

kglad
Community Expert
kgladCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 11, 2016

the skype contact is a scam, not an offer from adobe.  no one from adobe will contact your via skype.

what problem do you see after entering your serial number and trying to activate?

P
positive_Coral15A7Author
Participant
April 11, 2016

Thanks for your response.

The Skype based support approached me via the Adobe support forum. Highlighting a typical challenge for vendors who want to use the open-source/crowd-source world.

This is the re-activate message ... Note the Phone Activation link opens, but the phone numbers don't work. I eventually found a recorded message that informed me that Adobe no longer provides phone support, and suggeste on-line reactivation.

On-line reactivation resulted in the following:

I can understand an older product becoming no longer supported, but I don't understand why Adobe should effectively take the product back off me.

Since the product was working fine up until recently, albeit on my older laptop (under Windows 8), this must be a recent event, and I am not aware of having received any notification.

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
April 11, 2016

I don't think Adobe took any action to stop it working. (They did with Acrobat 7, and provided a remedy).

You say it was working... on your older laptop. How did it get to the new system? Licensing is tied to a particular computer. Changing computer, or a number of unknown other things, is sure to need relicensing.  For which you may need to contact Adobe. Scammers aside, have you tried this?

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