Acrobat 2020 perpetual licence, seemingly is not perpetual

As you can see, I bought Acrobat 2020 in 2021 and paid a pretty handsome sum for it, as I needed it as a student of law.

As time goes on, I have replaced hardware and always uninstalled it and sanitised my drive before reinstalling the OS. Now, here lies a problem. The remaining laptop I had died, right in the middle of an exam! On that laptop, there were three accounts, all on the same machine. The problem is that every time you add Adobe to the account, it thinks it is a new machine. This is incorrect and is a serious flaw in the software development.

The manufacturer, ASUS (whom I will never recommend again), deleted the data I couldn't access due to a motherboard failure and the installation of a non-removable NVMe drive, which I didn't know until I came to remove it. So, three sets of software, one machine, all deleted.

Now, let's look at the correspondence I get from Adobe when I get an activation failure notice. The Adobe agent tells me to 'deactivate' other installations. If an installation is uninstalled, it is deactivated by default. However, the Adobe website lists your activated devices – well, it would, if it actually worked. As you can see, the Adobe website clearly does not list any active devices, and the initial support I contacted stated there was none listed that he could see, either!

Ok, let's look at the software. Is there a 'deactivation' function provided? Not according to the screenshot provided. So, this is escalated to Support back-end five days later. As you can see, Adobe Support delivers a clear statement: "We regret to inform you that support is no longer available for the product you are enquiring about." Yet their own website states they DO provide support for Acrobat 2020 until the end of November 2025. 

So, not only are they misleading purchasers, but they are also breaching their contractual obligation to resolve technical issues with the software product that the end-user had paid a lot of money for. 

Adobe, to put it simply, if you state you provide support for a product of your brand, you are legally obliged to honour that support, not merely state 'it is no longer available'; that is a blatant lie.