Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The price of honesty

9:26 PM / Technology / Comments9 Comments

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This evening, my copy of Adobe Photoshop (CS5 Extended student edition, which I bought last year for a fraction of the price of the non-student version) abruptly decided to stop working. No, scratch that, it decided that the software had been installed on two different computers and that it wouldn't work on my main rig until I deactivated it on the rogue machine... which is utter bollocks, of course, as it's only ever been installed on a single machine.

Nevertheless, I decided to persevere, eventually contacting Adobe's online chat support once I'd exhausted all the possibilities (restarting Windows, reinstalling the software, standing on my head and counting backwards from 10,000). What follows is a conversation that took place over the better part of an excruciating hour, with the representative's name changed. Please mentally add a pause of up to five minutes before each of "Deepak's" reponses.

You are now chatting with Deepak.

Deepak: Hello. Welcome to Adobe Customer Service.

Deepak: May I please have your email address registered with Adobe while I review your request?

Deepak: Hi Michael

Me: Sure: [email address removed]

Deepak: As I understand that you have issue with the Activation of Photoshop CS5 Extended on your computer, Is that correct?

Me: Yes

Me: It has been working fine until today, when it suddenly told me that I had reached my activation limit.

Deepak: Thank you for the information.

Deepak: May I know the serial number of the product please?

Me: [serial number removed]

Deepak: Thank you for the information.

Deepak: I checked with my resource and found Activated on 2 computers please Deactivate the software.

Me: I only have it installed on one computer, so that isn't possible.

Deepak: Sorry for the wait. Please do stay online.

Me: OK

Deepak: I'll be right with you.

Deepak: Thank you for the information.

Deepak: Since you are unable to deactivate,as an exception, I'll go ahead and make changes to your license key so that you are able to activate your software.Please stay online while I do changes.

Deepak: Steps to Activate the product

Deepak: If you have not activated the product during the install, please launch the product and under the 'Help' menu you will find the Activation option from where you can activate it.

Me: There is no activation option in the help menu, just a greyed out Deactivate button.

Deepak: Place the cursor for 2-3 minutes to Activate the software on your computer.

Me: Where do I place the cursor?

Deepak: If you have not activated the product during the install, please launch the product and under the 'Help' menu you will find the Activation option from where you can activate it.

Me: As I already said, there is no Activation option from the Help menu, just a greyed out Deactivate button.

Deepak: You will find Activation option before Deactivation option.

Me: No, what comes before the Deactivation option is "Complete/Update Adobe ID Profile".

Deepak: Thank you for the information.

Deepak: Since you are unable to deactivate,as an exception, I'll go ahead and make changes to your license key so that you are able to activate your software.Please stay online while I do changes.

Deepak: Steps to Activate the product

Deepak: If you have not activated the product during the install, please launch the product and under the 'Help' menu you will find the Activation option from where you can activate it.

Me: As I already said, there is no Activation option from the Help menu, just a greyed out Deactivate button.

Deepak: Thank you for the information.

Deepak: Sorry for the wait. Please do stay online.

Deepak: I'll be right with you.

Deepak: Please reinstall the software to Activate the software on your computer.

Me: OK, I'll do this now. Please stay on the line.

Deepak: Please reinstall and Activate the software on your computer. If any error please contact us back on Live chat.

Deepak: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: Can you wait while I reinstall it in case I continue to have issues?

Deepak: Thank you for waiting. One moment please.

Deepak: Sorry for the wait. Please do stay online.

Deepak: I'll be right with you.

By this stage, I had managed to locate the install CD and was in the process of reinstalling Photoshop. At around the 60% mark, the saga continued...

Deepak: Please reinstall the software to Activate the software on your computer.

Me: I'm doing it.

Deepak: If any error please contact us back on Live chat.

Me: I still don't know if it will work yet.

Deepak: Thank you for the information.

Deepak: Sorry for the wait. Please do stay online.

Deepak: I'll be right with you.

Me: OK, I've reinstalled the software, but it's still saying my activation limit has been exceeded and the option to deactivate it is still greyed out.

Deepak: If you have not activated the product during the install, please launch the product and under the 'Help' menu you will find the Activation option from where you can activate it.

And so on and so forth.

Eventually, some considerable time after I'd stopped copying and pasting a record of this conversation into Word, the problem was finally resolved and the feckless Deepak sent me on my way with a "good day". Looking back at the above log, I'm actually quite impressed with myself for managing to remain so calm and resisting a burning desire to call Deepak a fucking useless stupid twat. It's all sorted now, but if it happened once it can (and I'm sure will) happen again, and I'm not particularly looking forward to another bout of this farce.

In the software world, Photoshop is among the most pirated applications out there (after Windows itself, of course), and I'm proud to say I'm not one of those shameless leeches. (Seriously, if you're not willing to pay for your image editing software, why not give the freeware Gimp or Paint.net a go?) Experiences like mine, however, aren't exactly a ringing endorsement for becoming a paying customer. The sad fact is that I could probably have downloaded a crack that solved my problem in a fraction of the amount of time it took Deepak to pull his finger out. But, good boy that I am, I chose to go down the legit route - more fool me.

 
9 Comments

1. Miles said:

Sorry to be a "shameless leech" in this case, but to be honest thankful for it if I don't have to go through experiences like that (not too far removed from what I went through when I was recently unable to "confirm" my phone number on my 12 year old eBay account). Of course, if Photoshop was affordable for someone like me then just maybe I would be prepared to hand over a few bucks to Adobe to avoid the hassle of trying to find serial numbers that will open the software on the odd occasions that I need it. These companies really are their own worst enemies at times.

(Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 2:33 AM)

2. bosque said:

I've convinced myself that these so-called on-line chat services are actually voice-activated automated "help-line" programmes which respond to key words from the customer by providing default text paragraphs from a manual, if that's the case there is probably very little human intervention involved during the chat (apart from the input from the customer).

(Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 8:47 AM)

3. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Miles:

Hope you don't take the "shameless leech" comment personally - it was at least partly tongue in cheek. I agree, the cost of Photoshop is prohibitive for most people. I count myself lucky I qualify for the student edition.


Bosque:

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. The responses were clearly being selected from a list of pre-arranged statements.

(Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 9:23 AM)

4. MCP said:

Same old story, really. DRM and copy protection schemes have become so complicated that they just give troubles to legitimate users.

Many antivirus show the same problems: licenses get deactivated, false "doubles", etcetera. It's the burden of (unnecessary) complexity. Or a way to remind customers that they will only get temporary and increasingly feeble "rights" over what they paid for.

(Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:31 PM)

5. ChuckZ said:

I qualify for the student edition and yet I'm a shameless leech as well. I'm not plunking down $300+ for CS5 Master Collection until they sort out the activation issues. They've had problems since CS4, if I recall correctly.

(Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:34 PM)

6. Anonymous said:

Consider yourself lucky you didn't have to do that over the phone with someone with a thick accent you can barely understand.

(Posted on Friday, February 18, 2011 at 12:15 AM)

7. Anonymous said:

No offence taken, Michael. Sadly(?), I also download a lot of films these days. After a decade-and-a-half of spending obscene amounts of money on thousands of LD's and DVD's I got into downloading partly as a response to certain store exclusive DVD releases and especially the Warner Archive DVD-R's which were very difficult and very very expensive to buy for anyone outside of the US. As I'm still spending most of what little spare cash I have on Blurays and having frittered away a small fortune on films/discs in the past, I'm not really sure if I should feel guilty about it.

(Posted on Friday, February 18, 2011 at 12:27 PM)

8. Miles said:

Sorry, I forgot to put my name to the above message.

(Posted on Friday, February 18, 2011 at 12:28 PM)

9. LGans316 said:

I am sure this guy Deepak is from my country. Most of the first level support guys have no clue about what they are talking although they are fluent verbally and in written. That's the only reason why these people cling onto these jobs. The salary of these guys might be in the range of the amount that is spent on buying 20 Blu-rays. So, you can imagine what kind of support you would get.

Just try the automated eBay.co.uk chat line or try calling Royal Mail customer services. I am sure you would lose your cool or break your keyboard.

(Posted on Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 1:26 AM)

 
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