Maybe I am missing some subtlety here, but it looks like your upgrade pricing for the recently-announced Creative Suite 3 is tad thick-headed. To whit, the following incomprehensible stipulation buried in your already mind-bogglingly complicated product packaging and upgrade licensing terms:
"Upgrade pricing is available only for products listed above and requires a qualifying previous product on the same platform, with serial number."
What I want to do is upgrade from Macromedia Studio (on Windows) to Adobe CS3 Web Premium (on Mac). It seems like this should cost me $499, which would make the upgrade a no-brainer. But because of your "same platform" restriction, it looks like you instead want to charge me $1,500 for a whole new license. It’s the same software, I just want to run it on a different operating system.
You know I love you crazy kids, but you’re basically imposing a $1,000 per user tax on each of your customers who want to switch to Mac from Windows. What business purpose could that possibly solve? (Hint: It’s not "to make more money," since I’m not shelling out $1,500 for a brand new license for this software.)
Kisses,
Jeffrey
Update: James posted in comments that Adobe will do a "cross-upgrade" if you call their 800 number and place the order that way. I just completed this, and it was a colossal pain in the butt. Some of their customer service people know how to do this, others don’t. One Adobe customer service guy I talked to actually tried to get me to send the box of software on my desk back to Adobe so he could send me something else that would work. When I objected, he said "I get a little tired of people saying it’s my fault". Sorry, dude: if your salesperson says that the software upgrade costs $XXX and I pay for it and you ship it to me and it doesn’t install, it is indeed your problem. It’s certainly not my problem.
What I really needed was a non-bozonic customer service person who could just give me an upgrade serial number so the software I’d already installed on my Mac would work. I called back later in the morning and was transferred back and forth between sales and customer service and disconnected several times before I got someone who could help me — even then, the total call time including waiting on hold was 45 minutes.
If you need to do this, be prepared to give them your Adobe customer ID number and every serial number of every Macromedia product you’ve ever owned so they can verify that you’re not an evil software pirate. Also make sure, if you’re calling on a cel phone, that your phone’s battery is charged all the way, or better yet, plugged into its charger — running out of cel phone juice is how I got disconnected on my first call. At the beginning of each call they take your phone number so they can hypothetically call you back if there’s a disconnect, but after three or four disconnects I never got a call back from any of the Adobe people I talked to.
My issue is now resolved, though, and I’m busy plugging away with CS3 on my Mac now.
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I switched from Windows to Mac recently and initially thought the situation was as you specify. However, the answer is just phone them up – the sales person I spoke to was more than happy to send me a “cross-grade”, no problem.
Although I must say the upgrade prices are Adobe at their rapacious best. Having bought the Macromedia suite and Adobe CS2, there is no upgrade price for dual-suite owners. I can’t say after 10 years that I expect “fair and reasonable” from Adobe. Just the opposite, actually.
“I get a little tired of people saying it’s my fault”.
Sounds like someone picked the wrong career path! There are many ways to deflect customer blame-laying without getting all defensive.
I’ve been attempting to unravel an ordeal that started over a simple cross platform. I’ve now spent over 8 hours on hold with Adobe, who’s official motto is apparently “GO F#CK YOURSELF!!” as they clearly could absolutely care less about my problem, the fact they’ve supposidly shipped my package FOUR times now yet they can’t provide tracking numbers on any of them and none of them have yet arrived. I’ve blasted their ironically named “greatservice@adobe.com” both respectfully and disrespectfully demanding attention on the issue with z-e-r-o response. I’ve had my problem “escallated” 3 times now, which means they assure you you’ll get a return call with some actual answers in “24 to 48 hours” then they wad your “escallated” report into a ball and throw it in the trash, because I have yet to recieve a SINGLE return phone call.
I’ve lost every fragment of respect I once had with Adobe. I’ve been a loyal customer for 12 years, having purchased multiple licenses of nearly every one of their products and this is the “thanks for making us fat a$$ rich” that I get.
After attempting to explain my problem to the first person that answered my phone i (I couldn’t understand him) I was transfered to a second person in tech support. He seemed just as excited about helping me but at least I could understand him. He wasn’t much help but I did manage to pry a few answers from him and asked to be sent to sales to see how much more it was going to cost me to upgrade my system. I had already spent over a thousand dollars on my editing software and now I needed to upgrade again! Well, I got lucky. I actually got a person that seemed to really care about what she was doing and her name is Devlin. She was pleasant to talk to, she actually really helped me and asked all the right questions.
I was in fear at first because of all the comments I had read before in some of the forums dealing with Adobe but she was a gem.
Thank you Devlin for solving my problems and it was a pleasure talking and understanding you. You are an asset to Adobe, I hope they know this.
Adobe: Please ,please please..,have people on the other end that we can understand. Bring your 1st tier support back to the USA.
I was almost ready to give up and sell my PP Edit Suite and go somewhere else. You and I need people like Devlin to help us when we have serious questions to ask. I’ll give you one more chance…