Thanks everyone for your suggestions. @Jochem, I had no idea about that escalation address. Thanks for that. @Dave Watts, as always a thoughtful and considered response. I have actually done all those things, with some success, as you'll see if you read on. @Russ, I took your approach with the next guy I had on the live chat - I imagine he has some eloquent names for me now. @Mac, I am now looking at alternatives to the Creative Cloud. It's clear that if anything goes wrong with my relationship with Adobe, or anything happens to Adobe, I'm screwed. (Based on the state of the Australian Adobe, it's not far-fetched to consider them disappearing entirely from the landscape).
And thanks to @Ray Camden for offering to step up and go to bat on my behalf. It's not his role there and not a problem of his causing, but he volunteered to try to fix it for me. First of all, I cannot talk to ANYONE at Adobe on the phone. Australians cant call US 1800 numbers they dont work. and anyway I can't call internationally on my mobile phone. I dont have a big enough mortgage. I have been trying to call someone in the Australian end of Adobe for almost a month, and you can never get through to anyone. They dont answer the phone. All you get is a message bank, and then they don't call back. Secondly, I have already gone up the support tree several times to what the person on the live chat window says was "the appropriate team". (when i ask what the name of that team is, I dont get an answer.) I have had a bucket full of promises and assurances that came to nothing. "It will all be fine within 24 hours" I've been repeatedly assured, only to see nothing happens - 3 days later I'm still getting the "you have xx days before your subscription lapses." message. Thirdly, I never store my files on the cloud exclusively. I will do my own backups and have control of what happens to them, and have a backup on the cloud as double indemnity. I'm talking about being able to start Photoshop, Fireworks, Edge, Dreamweaver, Audition etc. With no Creative Cloud subscription valid, they will stop or be crippled. Fourthly, the situation is now resolved. I got pretty aggressive in yet another online chat (the only way I can interact with Adobe - they dont have any email addresses published so I can't send emails and can't phone them), because if I can't run Audition before my radio show starts I'm in deep trouble preparing it. Radio has very inflexible deadlines. I felt a bit sorry for the poor support guy on the end of the chat because he copped it all. It wasn't his fault but where else could I apply any pressure to get this resolved since I couldn't talk to anyone on the phone and until Jochem gave me the email address, I had no way to communicate by email either? To his credit, he remained calm although I am sure he was swearing at me behind the keyboard, and he told me someone from "the appropriate team" would call me. I demanded that the call be NOW while I am here and that he remain on the chat until its resolved. To my surprise, someone did indeed call me right then and we got the matter resolved. My credit card is processed and my Creative Cloud subscription is once again current. And they've given me 2 months free as compensation. I feel its pretty small compensation given the amount of billable time I've wasted extracting empty promises and assurances from Adobe, but it's something so I'll live with that. The base problem is this: [A] if my credit card payment didnt go through the first time, I should have had an email informing me, and they should have attempted the charge again a few days later. That's what everyone else in the world does. [B] I shouldn't have had to update my account details in order to prompt a re-billing. The details were correct. It's an account I keep a very small balance in, so if i get my details stolen, I can't lose too much. [C] When i DID try to update my details (change them to what they already were), I sometimes got error messages saying the update was invalid. Nothing about whether it was my fault or theirs. So should I go back and try to update again or not? A bit of usability testing required there, I think. [D] once the problem had emerged, it shouldnt have required me to spend 7.5 hours of billable time getting it resolved. It's a simple matter (or at least it ought to be) and I shouldnt have been given assurances and promises that didnt happen. [E] The Australian subsidiary should have a phone number that people actually answer. If they dont talk to anyone on the phone it's no wonder the Australian company is a basket case. Most of the time when I called them, I didnt say WHY i wanted to talk - for all they knew i could have been wanting to buy a thousand copies of Photoshop or something This is not advanced customer relationship management - its basic stuff that trainees know before they even start work for petes sake. Anyway, it's all resolved now, and I really can't justify spending any more time on something that shouldn't have occupied my attention more than 5-10 minutes. And I'm still outraged that it took them over a MONTH to tell me my credit card details and passwords had been compromised. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion Enterprise, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 2:35 AM, Dave Watts <dwa...@figleaf.com> wrote: > > > Apart from going to the NSW Department of Fair Trading and complaining, > or > > taking Adobe to the small claims court, or exploring the possibility of > > pirate copies, what the hell else can I do? I NEED those > applications. > > Here are things that I would try. Note that they're just suggestions, > as I have no direct experience with this problem. > > First, I'd try to go up the support tree. I'd immediately ask for a > supervisor. Then, when you get that guy on the phone, ask for his > supervisor. > > Second, you might try contacting sales instead of support. > > Third, if you have anything stored only within the Adobe cloud, I'd > export it to other storage in case it takes more than five days more > to resolve this stuff. If it does, you might be able to just start > from scratch, and that might make the process easier. > > Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software > http://www.figleaf.com/ > http://training.figleaf.com/ > > Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on > GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized > instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:357256 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
