Adobe ID customer service: fail
Adobe. You may have heard of them. They’re one of the biggest software companies on earth, with some pretty great products—particualry since they bought Macromedia—and what seems to be almost a ubiquitous brand. I’ve not had a great deal to do with them besides use their products, and I have to admit I assumed they would have a respectable customer service ethic (similar to Apple whose reputation for product usability tends to imply they would do customer service equally well).
However, I’ve recently had a glimpse of some pretty poor customer experience. “Adobe ID” is the customer account you use to interact with Adobe on their website, be it for downloading product trials/updates, online purchasing or contacting customer service. When I first signed up for the Adobe ID which I currently use, I lived in the UK. As such my address and country and set to the UK. Since then I have moved back to Australia, and I think I’m well within the bounds of reason to expect to be able to update my details to reflect this change.
But no. I can update my phone number and address but not my country, which means the phone number and address aren’t valid. When I first moved back to Australia I tried to do this and had no luck. I contacted customer service and was told it wasn’t possible, I would have to close my account and open a new one in Australia. That’s pretty stupid for a “global” company, but I accepted the situation and tried to close my UK account. This proved far too difficult (I asked them how I do this and never received a reply) so I gave up. Not a big deal since I rarely use my Adobe ID and having the incorrect country and address didn’t bother me too much.
Just this week I logged into the Adobe website and noticed the UK address, so I thought I would investigate changing it again; maybe they had changed the ‘rules’? I tried updating my account details. I can change some details but not the country, because it’s just text not a form field. Then I noticed the “United Kingdom (change)” link in the very top navigation. Ah-huh! This looked promising! I clicked that and it gave me a choice of countries, I selected Australia and hit submit. The link now said “Australia (change)” and so I went back to the account details form to see if it had any effect. None. It still lists my country as United Kingdom and won’t let me change it.
Frustrated I thought I would contact customer service again. I filled in the form and complained about the situation, asking “How do I change the country for my account?”. Then I went back to whatever I was doing.
Eleven days later I receive an email from Adobe (at Thursday, 16 October 2008 20:07:03 EST):
Subject: Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Care; your case has been closed.
Dear Patrick Kennedy
Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Care. Our records indicate your service request 201300597 has been closed. If this request has not been completed to your satisfaction, or should you need to contact us on the particular issue again, please reference this transaction number. You can contact Adobe Customer Care at http://www.adobe.com/go/uk_supportportal/ or by calling 01 71 23 01 96 from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (CET).
In an effort to constantly improve service to our customers, we would be very interested in hearing from you regarding our performance. Would you be so kind to take a few minutes to complete our survey? If so, please click here:
[URL removed]Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Care.
What do you mean it’s closed? Nothing has been done about it yet! I logged into the customer support site to see what I could find out. I found this note attached to the case:
Thursday, 16 October 2008 11:07:13 o’clock BST
Dear Patrick Kennedy ,
What are the changes , your’re looking into changing ??
Yours Sincerely,
Adobe Customer Service
Tel: (UK) 02073650733
Tel: (Eire) 012421552
Fax: 0031 20 5820800http://www.adobe.co.uk/support/main.html
Firstly, what a crap reply from customer service?! I said specifically what details I wanted to change, so why ask me? Then there is the poor spelling and grammar, which really makes me think Adobe have outsourced their customer service to a third-world nation.
Secondly, they don’t even email you when they update the case, so I knew nothing about this reply from their customer service staff. Thirdly, the ‘closed’ email was sent was only a few hours after the note was added to the case. How is that long enough for me to reply to their reply?
It seems to me that the deadline for their response to a complaint was looming, so they put in a quick and useless response and then closed the case. Someone’s “customer care” quota was one notch closer to being met. But “customer care” is not what resulted.
Naturally I complained about this, pointing out the flaws in their customer service. I doubt anything valuable will come out of it, but it’s worth a try. Ironically, this is the message I was presented with after my latest contribution:
A customer service representative will review your issue and get back to you within 24 business hours. Read more about case turnaround times. Once you receive a response from a customer service representative, you will have 5 days to respond before the case closes. After a case has been closed, if you still feel the matter has not been resolved, you may reopen the case.
Hmmmm. Last time they didn’t get back to me within 24 hours, and even if they did I wouldn’t have known unless I logged into their customer service website. And I sure wasn’t given 5 days to respond before they closed the case.
What a joke, get your act together Adobe. That’s a poor excuse for customer and user experience. I’m not asking for much (not asking them to fix a bug in a product) just to update the country attached to my Adobe ID account. If they want to encourage customers to use Adobe ID for greater interaction with customers, particularly as the main channel for complaints, you think they would ensure it works faultlessly.
About the author
Patrick Kennedy is a user experience strategist and design researcher based in Sydney Australia. He leads research activities that improve the user experience of cross-channel products and services; helping both designers and business decision makers in bringing those products and services to fruition. Read more.
Comments
UPDATE: I received a reply to my latest enquiry (read complaint) and it confirmed the situation. Once again the email simply told me that the case was closed (again) with no other information or indication that there was another note attached to the case. The note from Adobe was:
Awesome, thanks for that.
UPDATE: In a truly ironic turn of events, Adobe customer service closed and deleted my account within a few hours of me requesting it. That’s quite bizarre; they takes ages to assist a customer who wishes to rectify a problem, but if you want to pull the plug they jump straight to it!
Patrick, I feel your pain. This is just a classic example of how automating service processes via “self-service” can so easily fail, if sufficient checks and balances are not built in to the service flows. So, today’s companies are global — wake up, corporate service providers, so are the customers.
I guess another enduring example of these problems is: accessibility. Just *try* even signing up to any number of popular web 2.0 providers through their vaunted “alternate” sign-up routes, and you quickly discover how poor (or non-existent) they are.
An experience well worth sharing – thanks.
You are not alone!
I’ve started a thread here to discuss Adobe Customer Service Hell.
http://creativebits.org/adobe_customer_service_sucks#comment-49050
Thanks for the read.
Dear Sir,
I had difficulties to get an ordrer registered by phone ( apparently new employee ) for ONE product. ; The order was registered TWICE ( at two different prices … ) and BILLED TWICE though after my immediate claim, Adobe confirmed that one of the two orders had been cancelled. As a mater of fact I got ONE parcel.
Through the same procedure as yours I tried to get in touch with the Adobe UK supportportal but could not as I had forgotten login and password.
In the meantime I got mails telling me that the case would be closed within … 4 days ! I could not scan immediately the VISA card bill, to prove the second debit. I wrote immediately, sending by post a photocopy.
BCC Card Cy had no reply. Neighter I.
The only answer was : “Dear Monsieur …. your case is closed” !!!
What a rough way to threat customers.
I suppose I will be paid back for the second item I did not receive; Adobe is a well known Cy. But, now, reading you blog, I fear …
In that case I shall start an action through the Customer’s Association which I am member off. They are complaining as many of us, that most Internet companies work only through the Web. What when you P.C. does not work ? A good way to avoid claims …
Yours,
Montigny.
Best of luck Montigny!
First of all, let me say I have literally been an Adobe user for 20 years. Their software has always been amazing. I have wracked up thousands upon thousands of dollars on just about every major app they sell. But my faith in the company has really been shaken over the past weeks by their whole sales/customer support system.
I decided a month ago to switch from a PC, back to my first love, the Mac. I ordered a new MacBook Pro, and then set about getting software for it. I thought it would be a good time to upgrade much of what I have now to the latest versions. Everything was going fine until I tried to upgrade to the latest Creative Suite. First I was a bit put out when I could not find any upgrade path from any of the software I own to the Master Collection. I have two full shelves of Adobe products, but because up until now I purchased them almost all as individual licenses, nothing was good enough for an upgrade. I found one small discount for the Web Edition of the Creative Suite with my copy of Photoshop CS3. So I decided to go that route. After a great deal of work on the Adobe web site, which was very, very sluggish, I placed my order. The moment I saw the receipt page I realized I made a mistake and orderd the wrong upgrade. I had orderd the Master Collection upgrade, instead of the Web Edition. This was on February 2. Ok. A bit frustrating, but it was an error on my part. On my email receipt it stated if I needed to get in touch with Adobe about my order, contact Customer Service through their web portal. (no phone number) I got online and looked again for a phone number, but did not find one, so I filled out their form. So within 5 minutes of placing the incorrect order I did what they asked and submitted the form. The response to the form was they would get back to me within 24 hours. 48 hours later on February 4th, I got an email from Adobe, saying I needed to call Customer Service, giving me the phone number.
I called the number, and suprisingly got through to customer support in seconds. A half hour later “Allen” at customer support tells me that the product already shipped, and I’ll have to wait until I get it. Then call back and get instructions on how to send it back. Not happy I hang up and wait. A few days later I receive the shipment. I call Adobe immediatly. Again I get right through to support. Again it takes at least a half hour to get the instructions on how to send it back. I follow their instructions to the letter. Drop the shipment off at FedEx and wait some more. It is now Feb. 9th. On Feb. 11, I get notification from FedEx that the shipment had been delivered to Adobe. Then I wait to see the charge credited to my account. On Feb. 18, I decide maybe I need to call again. So once more I get on the phone, talk to customer service, and twenty minutes later am told that yes they received the product back, and it could take up to 10 days to credit my card. Ok, so Feb. 21 is the magic day. Today is Feb 22, three weeks since I placed my original order, and still no credit to my card.
So tomorrow I get the pleasure of calling Adobe Customer Support for the fourth time. The crazy thing is, once I finally do get credited, I’m going to turn around and buy one of the Creative Suite packages. The software is just that good. But the same cannot be said for the support. I really think Adobe could learn a thing or two about support from Apple, who seem to bend over backward to help me whenever there is any kind of issue at all. Sadly I think Adobe used to be much better than they are now. But perhaps the fact that they’ve bought out nearly all their competition has made them too comfortable in their monopoly. It can only last so long.
The worst thing, Dale, is that you’re obviously a loyal customer and probably an Adobe advocate. Making you happy would get Adobe more custom (although it sounds like you’ve spend quite a lot of money with them over the years) but from their end your case is probably a low priority because it’s “just an upgrade”.
I’m not sure buying software such as this over the internet is worth it in the end. At least if you went into a store you’d get exactly what you want and be able to deal with a (hopefully) helpful person, face to face.
I read these comments and weep, I am waiting for a serial number for ADOBE cs4 Design Premium Student Edition. So far three case numbers, one online chat an hour …then wait four days ..tick tick tick…no response, so I phone Adobe Australia and get to speak to a semi literate person who then says they have escalated the issue and I should get a reply..”When?” I ask its been 5 days and copious emails etc etc etc. Three days…hmmmmmm I know that I am but a poverty stricken lowly student, the point is that no matter who I am having paid for the software, proved my identity and student status (four times now) I am entitled to a serial number in good time. On the site it states a first response within 4 hours then after 1 day…my first response was written to a Brian not a Kim, secondly I want to speak to someone who can speak English well not some offshore phone person who speaks broken English in India, Dubai, Morocco, or China.
Most companies would be horrified comments like these and make an effort not only to rectify the situation but offer some form of compensation as well. Not so with Adobe. I have no choice it is the industry standard software required for my course, I forfeited a weeks grocery money on top of what I saved to buy the program to complete my assignments at home, my partner is extremely unwell with multiple sclerosis so I need to fit my studies in between bouts of caring for him and a teenage daughter. I am trying to upskill so that I can support my family better and this is one drama I just dont need.
Sorry you’ve had such trouble Kim. And students are really people that Adobe should spend a lot of effort on, since over their careers in the digital media field they are likely to be big, repeat customers! If they get in early and treat students well, they’re setting themselves up with loyal customers, who when they are earning more will also be spending more.
I think Adobe have blown it in recent years. Their products, and those of Macromedia, were long praised as being best of breed—as you said, a number of their products are “industry standard”. But it looks like they’ve become lazy and are taking their traditional customer base for granted. Designers who were passionate about using good tools to produce good work were what made both Adobe and Macromedia what they are (or should that be were?). But now they only seem to care about large corporates who place “enterprise” orders.
Patrick, same problem here. What a disaster.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Balázs Suhajda, Kenneth Miepe. Kenneth Miepe said: RT @suhajdab: #Adobe doesn't allow changing the country in the user account!? WTF? Just wanted to do so myself… http://bit.ly/4ud7ij #fail [...]
I just contacted Adobe using live chat, and they changed my country from Denmark to the USA without any problems…
However it took forever to get to the point in the live chat, but it worked in the end…
I guess thumbs up for Adobe changing the rules for that…
Cheers Olafur
I contacted Adobe through Live chat and after some to and fro questioning they Had to delete my old account so I set a new account with the same email address.
It only took a few minutes, although sill not ideal.
Jase
Post a comment