I don’t mean to complain but Adobe can be a major pain in the ass. I’m an Adobe Creative Cloud member and rely on Lightroom and Photoshop a lot. I also use Audition and Premiere when I’m not using Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro. To be truthful I like the Adobe audio and video products but find Apple’s to be more conducive to creative flow. Logic works very well with my PreSonus control surface and I’ve never been able to get Audition to do the same.
I do create short teasers for both possible film projects and writing projects. I post them to YouTube and add them to my different websites. As for photography I’m pretty much married to Lightroom and Photoshop but also use a range of additional products like On1 Photo 10, the DxO Pro X suite, several Alien Skins filters and so on as ways to shorten my editing time. I spend on average two hours editing per photo that I post to my Adobe professional portfolio site now at http://wood.myportfolio.com/projects.
Now on to the issues, recently my Creative Cloud App stopped working. I could no longer download the software or the updates! I tried all the usual uninstall/install stuff Adobe says to do along with some special software that is supposed to fix these problems. Nothing worked. So, once again I’m paying for a service that I can no longer use. I called Adobe tech support and spent an hour on the phone with a woman from India that I could barley understand. It was obvious she was just a help desk kind of person and had no idea how to think beyond the instruction manuals she was reading from. Neither would she vary from the “Adobe Protocol” for support phone calls. After an hour she just gave up. Gave me a case number and said someone would call me within 24 hours.
Needless to say that didn’t happen but after a few days I did get a call from someone. They left messages and after several days and multiple misses I was able to be available for their phone call. You’d think they’d give me a number to call so I could make contact when I was available (not working) but no.
Another hour on the phone without a solution but at least I could understand this fellow and he did seem to know the systems and software much better. Another call back later and another hour on the phone I finally got the problem fixed BUT I had to download and reinstall all my Adobe software. That was an all day project.
While on these calls Adobe ran a program so they could control my computer remotely. The first woman I worked with was very poor at using this software and kept moving the pointer around putting my computer to sleep or ending the programs she was trying to run. I got to where I’d jump in to “save” her from the time consuming mistakes.
Upside. I did write a letter to Adobe corporate office after my first support call complaining about all this. demanded a year of Creative Cloud for free. I got the obviously stipulated 3 months of free service which I guess is better than none. Remember this. Demand free service when you have a failure of this nature. Really, it isn’t so free since I couldn’t install updates for about two months. It’s the very least they can do and really three months isn’t enough in my book.
Adobe could do a few things to improve on their service. First, have the people who I will talk to trained and ready to speak clear and understandable English. It’s just a common courtesy and nothing against any ethnic group. Put on your best public face I say and remove all barriers to customer satisfaction. Second, don’t make me demand free service, offer it up front again as a common courtesy to professionals using your product.
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To remind you Adobe’s Vision and Mission are below. I used this company in a lecture I gave on corporate ethics last year.
Vision Statement: To revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information.
Mission Statement:
Adobe’s mission is to be the premier provider of products and services in the information age for professional publishing solutions, business publishing solutions, document solutions, and digital imaging solutions in the company’s addressed market segments while: achieving and maintaining an above-average return on investment for shareholders measured in terms of return on equity, earnings per share, revenue growth, and operating profit; maintaining or achieving the number one or two position in addressed market segments in terms of market share, customer satisfaction, revenue generation, product margin, product functionality, and technological leadership; treating all employees with respect and rewarding both group and individual performance that exceeds commitments and expectations; being a good corporate citizen in the local and national locations where the company produces, sells, and services its products.
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