Adobe | December 5, 2006
Back in the good old days, when you paid money for a product or service, the people you bought said product of service from treated you with a certain amount of respect. After all, you were their customers and the people keeping them in business. These days, rather then being treated like valuable clients, customers are treated like thieves and pirates.
A classic case in point is when you go to a movie theatre these days and the finger of suspicion is immediately pointed towards you for being a pirate. You’re not allowed to take pictures of the screen, you are told, and if you do the police will be called and you’ll be ejected from the cinema. I remember the days when people were thought to be innocent until proven guilty, but sadly that right no longer exists.
I recently bought a copy of Photoshop for the office, but when I tried to install it on my laptop as well as my desktop (as sanctioned by the licence) it all went wrong. I was presented with an error screen saying that my copy of photoshop needed to be verified online. I followed the instructions and was told that there was an error and it needed to be verified by phone. Again I followed the instructions, but there was an error and I was told that I needed to speak to an operator.
The verification process was intended to prevent people from pirating Photoshop, but all it was doing was preventing as legitimate user from running the program. It basically locked you out of the software, pointed the finger of blame and forced you to prove that you had the right to run the product.
After filling the serial number and activation code online and on an automated phone service, I was forced to read it out to an operator. You would have hoped that this information would already have been passed to the operator but no such luck. The operator I spoke to tried to fix the problem, but had no luck. In the end he had the nerve to tell me that the problem was with my new MacBook and not the software. Now I’m sorry, but if your anti piracy software is preventing me running Photoshop on my laptop, them the problem is squarely on your shoulders.
Eventually I managed to get the software working, but it cost me a good 2 hours of my time and numerous angry phone calls.
This morning, when I tried to open up Photoshop on my desktop, exactly the same thing happened. I was essentially being told that I was a pirate and that I had to phone Adobe to prove that I wasn’t. Again I rang up, and this time complained about the shoddy customer service Adobe and Photoshop were providing. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of an apology, but I wasn’t expecting to be hung up on, which is exactly what happened. The bastards!
So I’d just like to take the opportunity to tell Adobe and other software vendors that if you start accusing your paying customers of being liars and thieves, you’ve already lost the battle and you don’t deserve our sympathy and support. Because frankly, if you treat your clients like thieves, where is the motivation not to act like one?
Posted at December 5, 2006 9:43 AM
Phil Sherry said on December 5, 2006 10:21 AM
They hung up on you!? How very rude and seriously unprofessional!