Firstly, thank you for taking the time to read this forum post.
I make no apologies for the "dramatic" forum post title, but whence you read my story, you will hopefully heed it's notice. The fact also that it has took a long time to find the Forum of which to actually tell my story, reinforces Adobe's "shambles" of a service, as everything is confusingly named.
Even typing "customer service" into the search field yielded no results, which is just laughable, considering the amount of negative comments that Adobe recieves about it and having seen such posts myself, know for a fact that such posts exist.
I would like to add that I am a university student whom was buying Adobe software for use at home and because of it's use at my university for work on my Journalism and Media course.
On February 27th, 2013, I bought Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design Standard and Teacher Edition (Mac,English) for the price of £329.64. So far, all is simple.
THIS IS WHERE THE NIGHTMARE BEGAN, so hold on tight.
The next step was to provide student verification (as of course, the proffession that the software is aimed at is in the title, so absolutely I shall and I can fully understand the reasoning behind this process). For this I provided my University Student ID and uploaded it using the uploading page that Adobe provided.
I then recieved an email shortly after reading "Thank you for sending your proof of academic status. We will review the documents you have sent and will notify you shortly of your approval status. Thank you, Adobe Customer Care.". So far so good.
This is where it now all starts to go disastrously wrong and many stressful days and nights began.
Adobe should then have sent me an email, informing my of my approval status, yes or no. No such email arrived. In fact I recieved no email AT ALL AT ANY TIME. Feeling I had been left in limbo, I decided to visit Adobe's online chat service to enquire as to the approval status. After around 5-10 minutes of answering "canned, mispelt" questions, the chat advisor informed me that my evidence was not sufficient, not enough, and that I needed to provide additional information, such as course start and end date. Fair enough.
At this point I decided that I would cancel my order and wait until I had time to gather additional information together. I informed the chat advisor that I wished to cancel my order and the advisor informed me that they would do so whilst we were in chat. I then asked whether there would be a charge for this, in terms of whether the order would be charged. I WAS TOLD NO!
(The reason for the use of block capitals is that on their order confirmation email that was sent to me, it specifically states under IMPORTANT INFORMATION at point 2 that and i quote "To complete your order, you need to verify your academic status online using our Customer Support Portal. Only after receipt and validation of your identification will your product will be made available to you. For more information and instructions about valid forms of identification and how to submit, see our Proof of Academic ID page. Your credit card will not be charged until your order is processed.
The defintition (at least I believed this), was that processed meant until all information (additional information), was provided and approved, NO CHARGE SHOULD BE MADE TO MY CREDIT CARD BY ADOBE.
To put it bluntly, THERE WAS. All £329.64 was taken from my card by Adobe Systems (I know this to be true because my bank showed me this on their computer system in block capitals ADOBE SYSTEMS £329.64.
Now, since I cancelled the order, I naturally thought that it would take a few days for the money to be returned to my account and so I waited, understanding that financial procedures needed to be worked through.
Around 3-4 days, I found that the money had still not returned to my account and so I visited the bank to enquire about this and it was at this point I came into contact with Adobe Telephone Customer Service.
GOD HELP ANYBODY WHO HAS TO RING THIS SHAMBLES OF A SERVICE. IF YOU DO, LIKE I DID, I FEEL FOR YOU, TRULY.
From the word go, it was a total nightmare, the first call, we were waiting for over 20 minutes, which in terms of waiting and doing else but waiting, feels like an absolute lifetime. Eventually, we got through and was told by a advisor (who's english left much to be desired, so bad that my information had to be repeated and repeated multiple times), that the money would be returned within 24-48 hours. Ok, fair enough.
So I waited 48 hours (in fact, I may have waited longer than this) and went to check my bank account again, still NOTHING. So I visited Adobe Online Chat once again and was told the money would now take 5-7 business days.
So, so far I have been told conflicting information. Once again, I accepted this and continued with my life.
I then checked again and was told by an advisor that the order had been cancelled but got no word about money being put back into my bank account as it should have been AS IT WAS CANCELLED AND AS A RESULT, ADOBE WOULD NO LONGER HAVE NEEDED THE MONEY. It was now that I began to lose patience. I had given them the benefit of the doubt and trusted that the money would be returned, but NO. I was then told that no money would be refunded, despite the fact that Adobe had taken the money from my account and whats more WAS NOT TOLD OF THIS in any emails, which by law they have to do.
Now, I wish to write about the farce that is Adobe Online Live Chat.
Purely as a test, I spoke to a member of the team (with names literally as long as your arm and other parts of the body) and told them my problem, which I have already written a reponse. So the chat was ended. Around 2-3 seconds later, I logged back into the chat again, same name, same issue. Waited for varying times, sometimes 5-10 minutes and at one point ONE HOUR AND 15 MINUTES, and when I got through to someone, it was like I had never visited the chat before. I have never had this expierience ever. It was most strange and very annoying as time went on, as it meant having to repeat yourself each and every time.
After a while, I exploded. I decided that I would visit the bank in order to get the money back as by this point, it seemed that Adobe were wanting to keep the money and would go to any lengths to do so. The bank called them again and was told that THERE WERE NO RECORDS OF ME OR MY ORDER ON THE SYSTEM, EITHER THROUGH ORDER NUMBER (which they were able to find on a previous phone call), EMAIL ADDRESS (ditto) or BILLING ADDRESS (ditto). The bank rung a few days later and all this information seemingly reappeared again.
UNBELIEVABLE!
Anyway, long story short, after constant pressures each time by Adobe to "push us off the line" as it were, we managed to get Adobe to put down in writing that the order was cancelled (WHICH IT WAS, I HAVE PROOF OF THIS THROUGH THE MANY CHATS I TOOK PART IN AS WELL AS THE CONSTANT CLARIFIYING QUESTIONS FROM MYSELF, each time telling me the order WAS cancelled, along with the amount and that it would be refunded as they were no longer in need of it, WHICH THEY WERE NOT. IF THE ORDER IS CANCELLED, WHY WOULD ADOBE NEED TO KEEP THE MONEY?
All this took a very, very long time to get to the point of and it was a tiring and very stressful expierience, because whatever your background or profession, £329.64 IS A LOT OF MONEY NOT TO HAVE.
I am an Apple user and used to be sceptical of people when they spoke of Apple's fantastic customer service and their efforts to please the user. I always thought that they were just fanboys and drinking the "kool-aid" as it were.
Through the expierience with Adobe however, and through present chat sessions with Apple in regards to other matters, I can now fully appreciate how excellent APPLE's customer service is and now will always buy, where possible, software with this company. The simplicity and the ease of which Apple functions retail wise, I can now fully appreciate. It took a trainwreck called Adobe to tell me this!
My hatred and disgust of Adobe has led me to remove all traces of Adobe from my system, such is the expierience I suffered. This is the extent of which I am appaled by the company.
Of course, should I need to use Adobe software in the future, I will have no choice, but I personally will NEVER BUY ANY SOFTWARE OR INSTALL ANY PLUGINS WITH ADOBE IN THE TITLE EVER AGAIN!
I hope that in reading my story, you will take head and run as far away from this company as you possibly can.
YOU AS WELL AS YOUR BANK BALANCE, WILL THANK ME FOR IT.
Thank you for taking time to read my story and god bless you all!
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