Frustrating support experience with Acrobat/Livecycle/Reader

I've been trying to ascertain why a client using Adobe Reader has been unable to save a PDF with form fields that I generated with Livecycle Designer.

I've spent several circuitous hours reading unhelpful Adobe help posts (which I marked as such), the most frustrating of which advised me to select a nonexistent option from a drop down menu -- note that this was not an option that was unavailable to select (grayed out), but rather, it was not an option.

I finally found a post on a third party site indicating that I'd need to upgrade my software in order to allow a Reader user to save their data.

I need to pay more for more features -- that's fine. What has me incised is the amount of time I've wasted reading inexplicably irrelevant Adobe help files only to discover that I need to download something else entirely.

To add insult to injury, after downloading the Free Trial of the version I need, I am prompted for a serial number and am unable to open the software. What happened to the free trial?