[Framers] Final note about Adobe Licensing

Thu Jun 21 19:29:45 PDT 2018

I agree that this is a situation that should have never happened. Because of
some software pirates, Adobe puts its loyal customers through grief with all
of the activation and licensing issues. Tammy is one of the many long-time
Adobe customers that have loudly evangelized for Adobe products over the
years. She shouldn't have to beg to activate a program that she already paid
for and registered.

Adobe has its cash cow CC subscription program but has let its customer
support and quality control degrade over the years. It took me about 45
minutes to downgrade my CC subscription to a single product subscription
(InDesign). This somehow caused my installed CS6 programs to stop working.
Another long chat session and they finally got it working. Then I was double
billed on my final month of the full subscription ($53.99 for full CC and
$22.67 for InDesign). I didn't bother to contact them about that; it wasn't
worth another 45 minutes or more to get a refund.

Years ago, Quark was the company that treated their customers like dirt. Now
it is Adobe. I love FrameMaker for its features and its ability to be
automated, but its quality and workmanship is disappointing. Anyway, I don't
rant very much and don't like to be negative, but I know that Tammy and I
aren't the only ones that are frustrated with Adobe Systems. 

Rick Quatro
Carmen Publishing Inc.
rick at frameexpert.com
585-729-6746 NEW!

-----Original Message-----
From: Framers <framers-bounces+rick=rickquatro.com at lists.frameusers.com> On
Behalf Of tammyvb at spectrumwritingllc.com
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2018 7:04 PM
To: 'An email list for people using Adobe FrameMaker software.'
<framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: [Framers] Final note about Adobe Licensing

So, I had some offlist inquiries about how the licensing issue went with
Adobe, and in a nutshell, it didn't.  Here's a quick summary:

1.	Adobe wants proof of purchase or invoice for this extremely old
software. I bought it so long ago (when it first came out), that I simply do
not have that anymore. I do have a registered product, but evidently that is
not good enough.
2.	Adobe provided an email to me that stated that they would be more
than happy to charge me out the wazoo for upgrading to the latest and
greatest subscription version of CS - Basically, pay every year for what I
paid for this one time perpetual license.
3.	They also sent the email below:

You might have been using this license for last couple of years. You are
facing this issue now because Adobe is running a new program
<http://www.adobe.com/genuine.html> http://www.adobe.com/genuine.html under
this, we are running a validation test to check the software is properly
licensed or not. We introduced this in 2016 and gradually we are going to
cover all our customers those who have unknowingly purchased the non genuine
product.  Earlier Adobe was not aware of this counterfeit issue, so even
those invalid serial keys were able to register and use it without any
interruption, but after Adobe notice this issue all those in valid serial
keys were flagged out.

Uhm, OK, but the whole irony is that Adobe is notorious for licensing
problems with valid licenses, so how on earth could an invalid serial number
even be allowed to be registered? I don't buy that at all. I can even
remember a few times entering a license number wrong for a product and
getting an error message and having to double-check and redo my entry!!! So
an invalid number going through unscathed for multiple installations
throughout the years and then blam, it is dead in the water??

Compare this experience to the absolutely incredible one that I had w/
Madcap Flare:

1.	Had a license transferred to me (the whole process took less than 30
minutes.)
2.	Called support to activate the transferred license - someone
answered like in 5 seconds  vs. the hour wait on hold with Adobe w/out any
help whatsoever.
3.	Provided my identifying information, CRS replied "one sec," and
voila, license was activated, and now working beautifully in Flare.
4.	Just downloaded the latest and greatest version of Flare and
automatically get one month of PLATINUM support (yes, PLATINUM support) for
free. Have a whole list of questions I want to ask, submitted them to MadCap
and they are setting a specific time for me to use this support to get all
my questions answered.

Final result - Flare purchased and is being used for a new client project
with the prospect of another soon. Adobe was absolutely NO longer in the
running. . . .I will have to stick w/ Adobe for my long time clients that
know it and have been using the setup that I established for them - but
going forward, unless a client really balks, it's Flare.

TVB

Tammy Van Boening

Principal/Owner

Spectrum Writing, LLC

www.spectrumwritingllc.com <http://www.spectrumwritingllc.com> 

303-840-1755

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