An inconvenient truth...

Apparently, at Adobe, the customer counts for nada. Bear with me here... this will only take a moment. I won't tell you how much money I have thrown their way over the past year... suffice it to say that as of yesterday, I have upgraded to Design Premium CS3.3 (now with Fireworks and Acrobat 9 Pro!). It's even legal... and registered!

Following my registration, I was sent an email that said "Your registration benefit is waiting." I was waiting for it. I eagerly anticipated my chance to have a one-month free trial at lynda.com.

Alas, it landed in my spam folder. The untouchable folder, the one where I have to send a request to the sender to have the email resent. But, in the "reason it got rejected as spam" field it said, "Level 2: anywhere in message Match: PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE".

So... rather than replying to the message, I called Adobe's support line. That's an international/really long distance call from Paris to California. First, I had to press my way through the voicemail map and listen to all the options. Then I got Roger. Roger was very friendly as he put me on hold until he "located my records". He came back after a few minutes and told me that while he sees all my purchases, because I had DOWNLOADED the upgrade, I was not eligible for a registration benefit. WHAT??

I'm sorry, but in this day and age of global warming and trying to save the planet, me accepting to purchase my software via a download and not have a CD/DVD (not to mention the accompanying manual) pressed, packaged, processed and mailed should be incentive enough for EVERYONE to be downloading their programs AND getting their registration benefit. Honestly! All I want is my free one-month trial at lynda.com... street value, $25. I'm not asking for the moon here, folks!

Bottom line, I need the programs and Adobe has me by the you-know-whats (if I had them)... If any nice people over at lynda.com are reading this... I sure wish you'd rethink your incentive package policy with Adobe. And to Roger at Adobe, it doesn't take much to please your customers. Bend a little.

Thank you for letting me rant.

Have a nice day...