Very odd request from Cust. Serv. regarding activation of old CS 5.5

[oldenough]

I am moving/have moved my old CS 5.5 from my old PC to a new one.  I had no problem installing and  updating the software, but when it came to deactivating the license on the old computer and activating it on the new computer, nothing worked.  Not terribly surprising, this process is no longer automated for something so old, sooo after much poking around on the web I found a link to customer service on-line chat. 

The conversation started out quite well with "Ravi".   He understood the problem, and said that he had sucessfully deactivated the software on the old computer, but we couldn't get me successfully connected on the new computer.  Attempts to log-in and activate failed with an error message about not being able to start my Adobe CS Live subscription. Try  again later.  Ravi also had me use the Adobe Limited Access Repair Tool.

So, he gave me the link to download the legacy softare (I had been working from my orignal files) and sked me to uninstall and reiinstall from the newly downloaded package.

By the time I had down that Ravi was gone and the chat continued with someone name "Ashima" who claimed that she had access to the long conversation up to that point.  I told her that I had done as asked but that nothing had changed.  She then asked for for all of the information  she should have already had from the conversation up to that point, which left me thinking that she either didn't have access to the old conversation or could not be bothered to read it.  Eventually she was gone for a long time, and when she came back shet told me that I needed to ask for help here first and that if the community couldn't help methen I should come back to customer service.  I obviouslywas not happy about this,  since I had already spent over an hour talking to them about it.  When she (I assume based on the name) insisted,I asked her which forum I should post my question in, she told me to use the Design Premium Forum, which does not appear to exist.  All of this leaves me feeling that she didn't have a clue.

At this point, I don't know if the softare is still activated on the old computer, or how to activate it on  the  new computer, of if I even  need to activate it since it is so old.  I am getting no warnings or error messages on either computer and they both let me check for updates without complaints.  Does anyone have any suggestions about what to do?  I'm even willing to pay for customer support.

I should mention that I don't want to spend the money on upgrading since the software (Acrobat, Photoshop, InDesign and illustrator are what I use regularly) all provide me with the functionality I need.

[AxelMatt]

This is a public forum, not the link to Adobe support. 

Sorry, but we're normal users and we can't help with account and/or payment problems. 

Please click the link below to contact Adobe staff to help. 

  

Be sure to remain signed in with your Adobe ID before accessing the link below. 

You have to allow 'cookies' in your web browser for this to work 

https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html 

Click the chat icon in the lower right and type "agent" to get a human and not the chat bot. 

[oldenough]

Hi Axel,
I completely agree, that is why I titled this as "a very odd request".  There is nothing a community like this can do to help with the supplier's back-end systems.  Meanwhile, I have 4 mails from Adobe asking me to get back in touch with them if they haven't solved my problem. 

I need an eyeroll emoji.

[Test Screen Name]

Support are not supposed to talk to you about software that is past end of support, so it was nice of them to try. I guess. They seem to send people to the forum rather than actually tell them they are not going to support them.

The software? If it works, leave it alone. Don't expect it to keep working forever, Microsoft or Apple will see to that...

[oldenough]

I've been reduced to tears of anger before by Adobe's customer support, so I'll count this as a win; major irritation but no tears. 🙂

So far everything is still working on both the new and the old computer.  I'm inclined to just leave things along and see what happens with time.  Then it will be a race to see if I or the software dies first :-D.

Thank you for the calming comments and sound advice.

[Peru Bob]

If you need to deactivate on the old computer:

Please go to Adobe Customer Service (make sure to sign into your Adobe account first) and only ask to have your activations reset:
https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html?rghtup=autoOpen will automatically open the chat window.
Type "Agent" in the chat box to bypass the chatbot and be connected to a person.

You may also be able to contact Adobe by phone:
https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/phone.html

[oldenough]

Hi Bob,

That is certainly what I should have done the first time, it might have simplified some things, but it still would have left the question of how to activate it on the new machine, since the server the software connects to seems to only know about cloud software.

I am, on the one hand, inclined to just leave them alone since the software is working without asking me to activate or complaining about too many active machines.  On the other hand, who knows what might happen 30 days in the future and I have 4 mails from Adobe right now asking me to get in touch if they haven't solved my problem... <eyeroll>