
Buying Adobe Photoshop CS6 - petercooper
http://patdryburgh.com/blog/buying-adobe-photoshop-cs6/
======
droithomme
Many years ago the number one page layout program was Quark Xpress. The
company decided to save money by firing all their employees who developed the
program and were familiar with the code base and save money by outsourcing all
development to a code team overseas who was not familiar with page layout
software or the Mac platform Quark ran on. This outsourcing team would appear
on development boards asking extremely simple questions about coding. An OS X
compatible version of the program was delayed for so many years that they lost
almost all their customer base to Adobe.

Adobe in the last 5 years has now let go many of the core developers of their
critical products and outsourced their key products to development teams
overseas who were not familiar with the product or the fields of graphic
design and illustration.

What we see now is the predictable result of getting rid of the people who are
familiar with the code base, under the theory that developers are
interchangeable so one should get the least expensive one.

What is the correct way to do this? The original designers that have the
product vision and have created the architecture that supports the market
winning product should have been mentoring the next generation of developers
at the company on site. This is a practice of apprenticeship which takes a few
years. This is what is needed to transfer the knowledge and philosophy of
design for which the company is known.

~~~
georgemcbay
"Adobe in the last 5 years has now let go many of the core developers of their
critical products and outsourced their key products to development teams
overseas who were not familiar with the product or the fields of graphic
design and illustration."

I don't know if that's true, but even if I take your word that it is, this
really has nothing to do with the OP's problem, which is order fulfillment and
not the actual Creative Suite software.

And as a user of quite a bit of Adobe's CS software (I have a full CS6
Creative Cloud license for a year due to attending Adobe Max last year and had
CS5.0 prior to that), I don't see too many signs of what occurred with Quark
when it comes to the quality of new releases. The Creative Suite software is
all pretty good year over year and generally improves more than regresses, and
this is true up to and including CS6, IMO. Granted, one could argue each new
release doesn't offer a ton more than the past release (especially considering
the premium upgrade pricing), but that's true of virtually any mature
commercial software product.

~~~
jcromartie
I can assure you that every person he talked to during the order process was
in an offshore call center somewhere. The order processing is probably
outsourced to a third party too. I see no other explanation for something that
should be:

    
    
        if (validatePayment()) {
          emailCustomer(generatedSerial);
        }

~~~
pasbesoin
I went through the process of helping someone attempt to get license codes for
the 32 bit, CS 4-ish versions of some programs that are included, for
compatibility with older systems, with the CS 5.5 Suite -- it says so right on
the tin that they are included, and the installation programs for them are
right there on the DVD's.

The process was atrocious. Each phone call essentially started from scratch.
One time, I actually got a U.S. representative, and while they were more
coherent, ultimately they were no more help, insisting I go back into the
other support "flow", which dumped my right back into an Indian (I'm assuming)
support center.

It took a _fucking month_. By which point, the person's original deadline and
need had passed.

At the end, I was explaining to the support staff what they needed to do. I
finally got someone with a bit of initiative, and after they went to their
manager once and received the wrong information, I convinced them to make a
second attempt, again with my clarification.

These "managers" have access to a system that generates keys. All the manager
had to do was look up and generate the right kind of key. Which they finally
found, after my strong insistence and detailed description.

This was one of many support center "managers" consulted by staff during
multiple calls, none of whom had a fucking clue about their own product.

If they had, and had demonstrated any motivation, let alone initiative, this
month of purgatory would have been reduced to one 10 minute support call.

You can see why they "need" to shift support overseas. It must be the only way
they can afford endless hours of utterly useless support staff time.

Fuck Adobe. I'm generally reserved on HN. But these bozos really deserve the
outrage.

P.S. I've nothing against overseas (for me) staff. The staff were consistently
polite and patient on the phone. They were just utterly untrained and
unempowered to solve the problem. (The "managers", OTOH, were _in front of the
fucking key generation system_. They merely had to actually identify the right
product and generate a key for it.)

~~~
jaylevitt
Even if you were able to talk directly to the manager, you'd have been stuck.
(I talked to a woman who claimed to be "manager of customer care and sales in
North America", and she didn't even know how to work their systems.)

There seems to be no support management team in any normal sense, and no
upper-management concern about the lack of support management.

Here's 59 ways they failed to deliver me a working product:

[http://consumerist.com/2008/03/adobe-needs-eight-
employees-t...](http://consumerist.com/2008/03/adobe-needs-eight-employees-to-
completely-screw-up-cs3-cross-grade.html)

~~~
pasbesoin
To clarify, I never did speak to a "manager". That quite apparently simply is
not allowed.

I did, finally and purely by chance, end up speaking with a front line support
representative who not only came to understand what I was describing but who
also demonstrated some initiative.

When they, after my lengthy -- starting "from the top", once again --
explanation, inevitably "went to their manager", they were given an incorrect
response. I explained this, and how I had encountered it before, and what was
actually needed. And this person actually went to the manager a second time
and "pushed back" enough to get the manager to look again. Lo and behold, they
found the right product in the licensing system (a special combo installer
created for the CS 5.5 32-bit support) and _finally_ supplied me with a
working key for that installer.

Unfortunately, my intuition is that that front line representative was
probably not long for that job.

P.S. Upon reflection, I now recall that I _may_ have spoken to such a manager,
once. Just long enough to get the brush off.

------
coenhyde
I've been trying to buy Creative Cloud for the last month. And frankly I've
given up. I've gone back to Pixelmator.

I own CS3 and was entitled to the one year discount. However my account at
adobe where my copy of CS3 is registered was created many years go and appears
to be incompatible with their current systems. My account information says I'm
from the USA, which is incorrect, I'm from Australia. So when I try to buy
Creative Cloud at the Australian Adobe store it redirects me to the American
store and when i try to buy it at the American store it say I'm not allowed
(because my ip is from Australia).

Right, so I just assumed I'd login and change my country to Australia. Wrong!
Their admin panel breaks when I login. JS errors, tried many browsers to no
avail. I assume this is because I am missing half the information it assumes I
should have.

OK, I'll just call Adobe and they can change my details manually. Wrong! I
spent 1hr and 20mins on the phone while they transfered me about. Eventually
someone tells me that someone else will fix my account shortly and then I will
be able to buy Creative Cloud. Well it's been 3 weeks now and my account still
isn't fixed and I can't bring myself to give money to such an incompetent
company.

~~~
AJ007
This reminds me of Microsoft's "cloud" offerings.

The last version of Office I bought, I bought online, its undownloadable.
There is no CD key in the account. A few years ago I used Office Live. Its
shut down and (may be) named 365 or you are supposed to use Office 365. I
don't know.

I once used "Microsoft Online" which was just a hosted Exchange server. The
goal was to use the web based email, along with Outlook on my desktop, and
synced to my phone. They told me to call support to get Outlook to work with
the hosted exchange account on my Windows machine. No thanks.

Nothing with Microsoft's "cloud" services make sense. There are a bunch of
different names that continually change. Multiple accounts access multiple
services. And in the end, most of it barely works.

Its surprising and disturbing to hear the same thing happening at Adobe.

The bones of these bloated bureaucracies are creaking very loudly. The
managers of these companies are begging for customer assisted suicide. That's
good for small start ups who have no trouble staying on message.

~~~
esbwhat
This is why I only buy software on CD, even if the option costs extra.

~~~
cledet
We're in a digital age. You shouldn't have to do this.

~~~
esbwhat
I agree completely. The last two pieces of software I bought were both for a
computer that doesn't even have a CD drive. But it still makes me feel better
to have the files, in a way that more or less guarantees there's no
prerequisite of having a functioning internet connection (implying their
server will also need to work in order for the software to)

~~~
phaus
Having your software come in a box doesn't always mean anything. Take a look
at Diablo III. Even though the particular software that you use may work if
you have the disk, there's a good chance that the next version won't even have
a physical option.

~~~
esbwhat
Unfortunately true. TBH The only two things I've needed/bought in the last
couple years were an adobe suite (wanted to get one while I was still a
student) and parallels, both for my macbook. I run linux on all of my other
PCs and use free (as in proprietary but at no cost) or open source software
pretty much exclusively so I'll be alright.

Buying software has just left a bad taste in my mouth most of the time in the
last couple of years. Good thing I'm not a gamer I suppose.

------
learc83
I'm about 90% sure that Adobe makes their software _very_ easy to pirate in
order to keep their monopoly. For CS4 and CS5 there were no cracks to install,
just map the sites it uses to call home to localhost and enter a fake serial
number. You could even run the updates. They could have very easily disabled
this in an update, but they never did.

Businesses will still pay for it, and there isn't much room for competition in
the individual/very small business/student market because it's hard to compete
with free.

No one's really clamoring for a reasonably priced alternative b/c it's
basically free.

~~~
recusancy
Pixelmator is a reasonably priced alternative that has been making some
headway.

------
joelrunyon
This seems like another arena that's incredibly practical, ripe for disruption
and one of those "hard ideas" that PG talks about that people naturally shy
away from, but has real market potential.

Forget the next SoLoMo craze - who wants to disrupt Adobe? They need it.

"Adobe is Lazy" - Steve Jobs ([http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-
dont-be-evil-...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-
mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/))

~~~
elithrar
> Forget the next SoLoMo craze - who wants to disrupt Adobe? They need it.

I agree. As a photographer, I use Lightroom and Photoshop for most of my post-
processing needs. Lightroom, when it hit, barely felt like an Adobe
application (it's great), but Photoshop has always been a nightmare of
crashes. CS5 on OS X is especially bad.

As an experiment, I tried to use (only) Lightroom and Pixelmator[1], which is
the closest "indie" alternative to Photoshop I could find/had experience with.
Note that GIMP was out as 2.8 wasn't released by then, and older versions were
horribly clunky. Pixelmator gets a lot of things right; it's fast, has a clean
UI and supports a raft of layer blending types. But it lacks a lot of useful
keyboard shortcuts-and I don't mean "Photoshop shortcuts", I mean shortcuts,
period.

This in itself slowed me down considerably; I have a small set of Actions in
PS that I use for some final tweaks on most images. Having to re-create those
layers manually, for each image, isn't that fun.

I would definitely say that for most users, Pixelmator (or Acorn, etc.) can
definitely replace Photoshop. But it's difficult to move away from PS when
there's such a large ecosystem attached to it (as unfortunate as that
realisation may be).

[1] <http://pixelmator.com/>

~~~
Aramgutang
I couldn't agree more with the sentiment that Lightroom doesn't feel like an
Adobe product because it just works so well (barring speed issues that crop up
on some machines). The purchase process for Lightroom 3 a year or two ago,
however, was a stark reminder of who I was dealing with.

I purchased an education license online, going through the convoluted student
status verification process (which was incredibly unintuitive at times, e.g. I
had to open a support ticket to request verification). After I put in the
payment details, I was told that the purchase was successful, and that I
should be expecting the license key in my e-mail shortly. Few weeks pass with
no e-mail, and no indication that anything had gone wrong, so I called them
up. Turns out they had never received the payment, and the representative on
the phone actually made me go through my bank transactions to verify that the
transfer didn't take place, rather than confirming it on their end. Finally, I
just gave up and used a pirate version until the version 4 beta became
available. I hope the process goes smoother when version 4 becomes available
for purchase.

~~~
JoshuaRedmond
Lightroom 4 is available to purchase now, but the buying process is still
unintuive (at least as far as the education verification process is
concerned). In a moment of madness I decided go for the physical copy, but
that just yielded a ridiculous level of nested packaging for what was just a
cd in a sleeve with a key stuck to the back.

------
digitalengineer
Oh, with Adobe there are different kinds of hell: "Adobe’s rep told me that
she’s very sorry, but I simply cannot buy CS 5.5 via the website. I must have
an American billing address, or else they can’t sell me the product. Can’t buy
it on the site, big deal. But wait, the plot thickens."
[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/adobe-actively-encouraging-
inte...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/adobe-actively-encouraging-
international-software-piracy-opinion/)

Or: Why are UK prices nearly double US prices? It's cheaper to fly the team up
to New York and buy the software there.
[https://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/why_are_uk_prices_n...](https://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/why_are_uk_prices_nearly_double_us_prices)

~~~
ticks
This happens in all sort of markets. You charge based on the cost of living. I
don't like it, but it happens. It is usually linked to a contractual
obligation in the locality, which means they have to charge higher to support
the costs of their local representatives.

~~~
sk1ppy
So photoshop is 2x the price in the UK (where I live) due to cost of living,
but my colleagues in the states earn 1.5x my salary also due to cost of
living? Does not compute.

~~~
smalltalk
It's not the cost of living nor the cost of technical support as one of the
responses discussed, but the fact that EU law places so many additional
constraints on businesses that the cost of doing business there is vastly
higher than doing business in the US; accordingly, US companies make up for
the difference by charging EU customers more for their products.

~~~
replax
The EU does certainly not place restrains on vendors which DOUBLE their costs.
Is Windows twice as expensive? Are apps on any appstore twice as expensive?

This is just Adobe trying to rake more cash in. They are betting that
companies are not going to switch from Adobe products to something else
because a licence is twice as expensive. So far, it seems to have worked.

------
michaelpinto
In my long gone youth one of the most exciting things in the world was an
upgrade to Photoshop -- each release brought out a new killer feature that you
couldn't even get from a Quantel Paintbox which would have cost you more than
you could have imagined.

Now in my old age I feel like I'm being held hostage to ever damn upgrade with
few killer features that blow me out of the water. In fact just seeing a
headline about an Adobe upgrade makes my blood boil because I know my credit
card will be involved. And I've got no choice because you can't really afford
to be behind one release if your work with other people.

So if any of you are looking for "that disruptive opportunity" just come up
with a CS killer that doesn't feature an extortion business model. I'm frankly
shocked that Apple hasn't done this yet, my guess is that it has something to
do with patents or perhaps even blackmail material (because I can't think of a
good reason why they haven't done it).

~~~
jaems33
In CS6, they finally corrected a lot of outstanding annoyances that pervaded
previous versions, like vector pixel snapping, changing multiple layers colors
at once, layer styles on groups, fixed 90 degree rotating... the rest of the
changes are here:

<http://bjango.com/articles/photoshopcs6/>

------
callmevlad
Not sure if it's just me, but I had absolutely no trouble going through the
checkout process and just finished installing several of the apps. I was never
asked for a serial number for Photoshop - it seems to be baked in if you
install through their installer and log in with your Adobe ID.

(Also, paying $30 per month vs $1900+ up front seems to be a hell of a deal.)

~~~
greggman
$1900 (which version?)

Are you buying new or upgrading? Checking their website the upgrade is only
$525. As they only come out with a new version about once every 2 years that.
$525 to upgrade vs $720 for a 2 year subscription.

Even if you were purchasing new it's still cheaper to pay outright.

6 years at $30 a month for the first year + $50 for the next 5 is $3360

1900 + 2 upgrades at 525 is $2950

~~~
callmevlad
Buying new. I needed Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects for a ~12 month
project. Buying each individually would have been more expensive than the
suite.

Even if I decide to keep the subscription after the project is over, paying
just $400 more over 6 years for the benefit of amortizing my business
expenses, not having to worry about being out of date, and not having to
predict ahead of time which tools I will need in the future (e.g. if I had
purchased the Web Suite a year ago, I wouldn't get After Effects) is totally
worth it (to me).

------
ben1040
Same thing happened to me a few years ago when I purchased CS4 via download. I
guess Adobe still hasn't cleaned up their fulfillment system.

I chose the download option just because I thought it would've been really
simple: I assumed I would pay, then their shopping cart system would
immediately give me a license key and a download URL. This assumption was
based on the fact that I was going to spend $800 on a piece of software and it
seemed like a reasonable expectation that there'd be a quick turnaround.

Noope. Someone apparently had to manually review the order, so that a license
key and download link would make it to my email at some indeterminate period
of time in the future. And of course, I bought it on the Saturday of a 3-day
holiday weekend, so it wasn't until that Tuesday afternoon that a human
punched the magical "fulfill order" button.

------
teilo
My company uses volume license keys. It takes at least 24 hours to get an
order filled, usually more.

Of course, if you are only adding extra licenses onto a key you already have,
no big deal.

In any case, it's inexcusable. But that's what you get with a monopoly.

------
dangrossman
I wonder if they have a payment fraud problem that necessitates manual review
of every order. Not that it would excuse the process or the support.

~~~
crazygringo
But this is software as a service -- if fraud is detected 48 hours later, it
seems like Adobe should just be able to disable the user's access at that
time. They didn't lose anything by letting the user use Photoshop for two
days.

~~~
dangrossman
> They didn't lose anything by letting the user use Photoshop for two days.

But they did. If they don't catch the fraud before capturing the funds, then
they'll find out about it when the real card holder charges back the
unauthorized payment. Now they:

1) Lose the $10-25 chargeback fee.

2) Risk their ability to accept Visa and MasterCard cards at all if their
chargeback rate exceeds 1% for multiple months.

The harm of payment fraud is not the lost product or service. Payment fraud is
a direct threat to the very existence of an eCommerce business; the ability to
accept payments from customers. If your merchant account is terminated for too
many chargebacks, your company and all its principles are added to the
MATCH/TMF (Terminated Merchant File) lists which all banks/issuers must
consult before opening an account. They're essentially banned from accepting
credit cards for life, for that business or any future venture.

Considering Adobe's software has historically been among the most pirated, I
wouldn't be surprised if they have a significant number of people trying to
buy it with stolen card numbers. Brand new phished CC#s can sell for just
$1-2, the software's worth $500-1000... I imagine if they didn't have some
serious mitigation effort in place they'd already be out of business.

~~~
djt
Then why can't Adobe send a key, wait to verify 24 hours and then if it's
fraudulent then take the money out 24-48 hours later. It means the user would
get to use the program for 24 hours if they ARE fraudulent but then they can
de-authorise the key. Seems like an easy way to provide a good service to the
customer and alleviates the problems with fraud to the same level they have
now.

Also keep in mind that this is a pretty expensive software package, so I would
think they should have a team that works on this.

------
kamechan
<http://www.gimp.org/>

~~~
fallenhitokiri
Sadly Gimp is no alternative for people who want to buy Photoshop and Creative
Cloud.

While I agree that most private users and to some point professionals can also
accomplish the same results in Gimp as in Photoshop stuff like Bridge, the
Creative Cloud and all those tools around the core applications makes the
suites so valuable for designers that just do not want to roll their own sync
/ management / foo solution with even more software.

~~~
kamechan
it's very possible that gimp might not be able to cut it for a lot of creative
professionals, especially if they already have a lot of process and money
invested in the adobe stack.

it's definitely my experience that a lot of more of my professional/creative
friends rely on photoshop than gimp.

with this latest push to 2.8, i'd say the gimp folks still have a bit of kick
in them and it's hard to argue with their licensing strategy. since the latter
is what the original article was addressing, offering up the gimp as a good
alternative seemed prudent. and, possibly, if facing a situation where i
couldn't get photoshop licenesed over the weekend, it seems gimp would do in a
pinch.

------
SoftwareMaven
My neighbor is an attorney that handles their licensing contracts (came in as
part of an acquisition). He is quite impressed with the licensing
process/infrastructure, but I wonder if that's the problem: the processes are
set up for major deals with huge licensees and, as a result, the individual
gets screwed.

I'll have to ask him about it.

~~~
mikehoward
Try to find out what the licensing is for Creative Cloud.

I spent a couple of hours on their help forum - which is manned (and womanned)
by frustrated users and some adobe employees (probably contractors) who don't
seem to understand the questions.

I finally succeeded in finding a pdf document containing all the terms and
conditions in N (where N is large) languages. No index, toc, or hyperlinks.
English language (actually attorney-eeze) was way down in the doc.

Ordering isn't the only thing Adobe has screwed up. Their CS6 documentation
has no index nor table of contents. I've wasted hours simply trying to find
answers to simple 'how do I . . .' questions.

This is a real startup opportunity - if you can negotiate the IP nightmare.

------
cientifico
Wait until a professional engineer review the version and publish it on
piratebay. Probably the process on downloading, and make it work on your
machine, is faster through piratebay than from the official webpage.

------
cpleppert
If he thinks buying Adobe software is a nightmare wait until he needs to
return it. Spent hours on the phone, eventually they had to call in a special
team to handle the request. kafka has nothing on adobe.

------
kalleboo
And if you happen to live outside of the U.S., you get to pay twice a much for
the exact same digital download.

Adobe make it really difficult to want to buy their products.

~~~
whatusername
So I saw this on /r/australia recently: <http://i.imgur.com/zhLJO.jpg>

[http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/tcx5s/i_unknowing...](http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/tcx5s/i_unknowingly_found_a_way_around_the_australia/)

Not quite legal -- but possibly close enough.

------
mopoke
Trying to get a trial account for Adobe Digital Publishing Suite was nigh-on
impossible. The stated time was "5 working days". Unfortunately the exact time
we needed it was over the long thanksgiving break in the States.

Even after 5 working days we never got access and have to resort to using the
Adobe reseller's account to actually try out the software.

------
TwoBit
The real reason your Photoshop experience sucks is that has a monopoly. The
problems would all go away if that changed.

------
mrinella
My Photoshop CS6 Beta had expired as well. I followed the purchase link,
signed up for the discounted $29.99 a month plan and followed the instructions
in the confirmation email I received within a few minutes. I ended up
downloading a new version of the Adobe Application Manager and then
downloading a new (non Beta) copy of Photoshop CS6. This version gave me the
option to sign in with my Adobe ID which immediately activated my copy. No
serial number required. I think Adobe could make this process more clear than
they have, but I can't fault them for delaying my activation.

------
herdcall
Actually, you can get started on Creative Cloud immediately (I did with
CS6...just an online signup and confirmation through email), and in any case
you can use the software for 30 days without a serial number.

Not saying Adobe support is great though. I had a nightmare experience some
years back: my CS3 had license issues after installing trial CS4, and the good
folks in India insisted I was ineligible to use my CS3! It was the single
worst customer support experience for me EVER. A subsequent follow-up call
resolved it easily though, so it's only a few bad apples IMO.

------
TwoBit
Why on earth EA was voted worst company is beyond me. Actually I'm under the
impression the Ballot boxes against EA were stuffed by religious groups
unhappy with EA morality.

~~~
learc83
>Actually I'm under the impression the Ballot boxes against EA were stuffed by
religious groups unhappy with EA morality.

From what I've read that didn't actually happen. EA spun it that way to make
it look like they were the victims, and it appears to have worked.

Here's a forbes blog article about it
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/05/ea-in-
full-d...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/05/ea-in-full-damage-
control-mode-points-to-anti-gay-hate-mail/)

Basically the only proof that EA has is some anti-gay hate mail they received
that has nothing to do with the poll. There are no indications that the people
voting in the consumerist poll were some kind of anti-gay mob.

------
Danieru
It pains me when css is used to make text less readable.

Yes #333333 and 0.875em thin text looks cool on a grey background, but it is
hard to read even with these young eyes.

~~~
patdryburgh
Feel free to bump the text size up. The site's layout will adjust accordingly
:)

And, for the record, the background is white, and #333333 meets the criteria
of both the W3C and the WCAG
([http://www.snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html?fg...](http://www.snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html?fg=333&bg=FFF))

Thanks for reading!

~~~
sxtxixtxcxh
the color contrast might meet the criteria, but the font weight and font face
certainly aren't helping.

~~~
patdryburgh
Again, feel free to bump up the text size if it doesn't work for you. The site
is designed to adjust its layout based on the font size, so the line length
will never change. One of the best features of the web is it gives users the
ability to adjust these types of things based on their own personal needs.

All of that said, I do intend to redesign the site with a larger font size.
But, in the meantime, a little CMD (or CRTL) + + will go a long way ;)

~~~
mattmanser
You're being a bit of an idiot telling people to bump the text size up. Just
say 'Yes, I mean to fix that at some point'.

------
AshleysBrain
We sell software online using PayPal. Occasionally PayPal will hold up the
sale for mysterious reasons for up to 5 days. Then we have to tell the user
that sorry, we know we just need to send them an email with a license key but
PayPal are holding it up. I guess payment systems are just slow, probably for
security/fraud prevention reasons.

~~~
franzus
We do sell software, too. But we send the key immediately. In case the payment
gets declined later by our processor we just lose one license which is no real
cost to us. But a good customer experience is important enough to us to
warrant this risk.

------
thenonsequitur
Contrast this with ordering something from Amazon with a Prime account -- you
can usually place an order, pay, and receive the _physical product_ within
24-48 hours.

It's absurd that Adobe can't even do this for a digital product.

------
nosse
The article is just a rant. I came to comments to see something thought
provoking. Like deep analysis on the corrupting factor of monopoly or the
problems of large corporations.

I'm disappointed.

------
patdryburgh
An update to my Creative Cloud confusion: <http://patdryburgh.com/blog/no-
serial-number-needed/>

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arihant
Maybe their support sucks or they don't really understand your issue - but you
do not need any serial number for Photoshop CS6 with monthly plan.

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kenneth_reitz
For what it's worth, I got my key within 10 minutes.

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Havoc
>within seconds, a serial number for the update was in my inbox.

Emailed serials? Surely that is not a good plan. Email isn't exactly secure.

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egorfine
I tried to buy CS6 subscription five times, each approach took me 10-15 tries.
Not the representative on the phone nor the web chat could help me: "we cannot
process your order".

The same card was successfully used to buy Lightroom4.

Noone at adobe could tell me why my payment doesn't go thru.

Screw 'em, I have pirated the photoshop CS6. :(

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idan
Adobe fucks another hostage^H^H^Hcustomer. News at eleven.

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batista
_> And then, the nightmare began. I asked the support person when I should
expect my serial number. Expecting an answer somewhere in the neighbourhood of
5-10 minutes, you can imagine my surprise when I was told “in the next 24–48
hours.”_

We really have trivialized words like "nightmare" to death in the first world.

~~~
kalininalex
LOL, yes we have.

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kerouakas
Same thing happened to me.

Bought latest Lightroom a month ago directly from their site, and it took 3
days for them to acknowledge the purchase and give me the license key.

Very odd.

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freshnote
The last two times I've reinstalled CS4 on my PC, I've had to call Adobe
support (I recall having to root around the website for a phone number). Both
times, the support person requested to remote log into my computer so they
could reinstate the serial number.

I allowed it, but wasn't happy about the invasion of privacy.

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wavephorm
Have they fixed the "won't install on case-sensitive filesystems" bug that has
been in every version of Photoshop for the Mac?

