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This article is from August 28, 2009, and is no longer current.

Adobe Apologizes to World for Poor Customer Service

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In a letter posted as a PDF file on Adobe’s main
support Web page,
vice president of technical services Lambert Walsh acknowledges that its recent customer support has not been up to snuff.
The text of the letter is below. Share your response by clicking the Comments button.
Open Letter to Adobe Customers
Adobe is committed to providing the most advanced, innovative products and services in the world. Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. We are working diligently — in fact, teams are working around the clock — to resolve these issues. I’d like to thank all our customers who are sharing feedback and giving us the opportunity to respond. We appreciate your loyalty, support, and willingness to make your concerns heard.
Adobe is in the process of transitioning to a new global service provider that will help grow and improve the quality of our customer service worldwide. While our new partner is a recognized leader in service and support solutions, this is a major global transition that includes bringing more than 800 new agents onboard. Clearly this process has not gone as smoothly as we had planned, and we are working to immediately remedy the situation. We are confident that once this transition is completed, we will provide customers with new and better ways to engage with Adobe using their preferred methods, helping to ensure prompt, effective customer service.
The Adobe Customer Care leadership team is monitoring our customers’ experiences closely to understand and respond to the challenges you are encountering. If you experience difficulties of any kind, contacting Customer Service in your local region remains the best initial course of action; however, during this transition period, unresolved issues can also be directed to [email protected].
Thank you for your patience and understanding as we make this transition and work to improve our service and support operations for customers around the world.
Regards,
Lambert Walsh
Vice President, Technical Services

  • Anonymous says:

    Does this mean they’ll scrap the awful Jive-based forum? Please!

    • fransiska Dastrup says:

      Here they apologize to the world and yet their still as crappy , I purchased adobe premiere elements 14 and needed help to get my code to work and I have spend a whole day trying to get some help. When you do get some one on the line , they just push you off the next person.
      I hate this company.
      Can not wait for Donald Thrump to be president hopefully we can keep our customers services here in the states.

    • Joe says:

      Horrific customer service!!! Not sure if an apology is supposed to suffice when they still stink to high heaven. I have had a terrible experience and will NEVER trust them again!!!

  • Anonymous says:

    I have been furious with Adobe customer service for the last 3 months. Each time I call, they give me a new case number stating “Pending Adobe Response” I have yet to have any of my cases resolved. I eventually contacted VISA and filed a dispute. They are now trying to get my money back.

  • Anonymous says:

    I sincerely hope this doesn’t mean that Adobe has partnered with a service based overseas. There is nothing that turns my blood cold faster than trying to pry help out of someone who barely speaks the English language and is answering questions from a que card. If that is indeed the case Adobe will have sunk to an astounding low.

  • Anonymous says:

    Please pardon us while we jettison our US-based customer service employees and send hundreds more jobs overseas. The service might be crappy, but we’re saving tons of money. You understand, don’t you? Please bear with us. Big smiley face.

  • Anonymous says:

    Contacting customer service (above) at http://www.adobe.com? Chose your country and it takes you back to the same page to choose your country again…forever!

  • Anonymous says:

    Dearadobe, THANKYOU to all best helpeers.. Please to here you work MOST HARD to globalise expectation of service. YOU VERY GOOD now must restart computer!

  • Anonymous says:

    They should have announce the switch over and put out a note to expect problems, until Switch over was complete and running smooth.

  • Leikonik says:

    Sounds like standard version of excuses every company is using to placate angry customers… Time will show how serious Adobe really is about improving their customer support.

  • d brugge says:

    Getting a rep who does not speak English as their primary language can be frustrating, however, I did encounter one very excellent service tech in India who really knew his stuff and could communicate it clearly. Unfortunately they are very rare, and in this case, he promised support follow up which never came.

    Much worse than the tech who does not speak English is the total, clueless idiot. Adobe has swelled their ranks with these and even given made some of them supervisors.
    I wish I had recordings of some of the conversations that I have participated in. They would surely be a hit on some of the humor sites. After spending three hours with an excellent level 2 tech, I was patched over to someone who was supposed to point me to a driver download. She could not understand my request nor the written notes sent her by the previous tech. In strained English, she directed me to Photoshop.org for a possible solution.

    Next to the lack of common intelligence, Adobe’s biggest problem is no one taking ownership of a problem. I repeatedly get told that the tech is writing up my case and a senior tech will contact me. Then a week later I get a notice saying that my case has been resolved and the ticket closed.

    When I write a ticket and say that the Knowledge Base article that they sent me does not apply and give detailed reasons why, I get a new response with nothing but a link to the same article followed by an email saying my issue is resolved and my ticket closed.

    I wouldn’t even have to waste their time if their Knowledge Base had a decent search engine. I have better luck finding an answer on Wikipedia.

    I have to close now. I feel my blood pressure getting in dangerous levels again.

  • Anonymous says:

    Sorry, US ppl… good customer service is not a question of having a support center in country. Big companies have support centers around the world, which service their own area. Commonly Americas-EMEA-AsiaPac. We in Europe are in years past used to calling from Sweden or Italy and talking to a support person in UK or Netherlands. It’s simply a question of having people working long enough to acquire real knowledge and understading as opposed to certifications.

    The problem is, as usual, money. We had a darned good, professional support team in EMEA. Outsourced to a “recognized leader in service and support solutions”. Launching the team was announced to be a “major global transition that includes bringing more than 800 new agents onboard.” A year later majority of the good, professional team had left, mainly because of the fact that money didn’t by far correspond to what was expected performance-wise. And that’s not even when it really started going downhill.

    The team was dismantled last summer and moved to a cheaper company. Now you guys are reaping the fruit. You should realize that “bringing 800 new agents” doesn’t mean 800 NEW agents – it means 800 ppl taken from the street to replace ppl who have been working to help you guys sometimes for years. It’ll take about another three to six months before the newbies are professionally on the level that you expect.

    In telephone support business people come and go. You may see 200 ppl passing through the floor within a year. That’s about two new hires every 3 days. Can you really expect to have knowledgeable people helping you in this situation?

    This is an ongoing trend all over IT business. They pay the support guys peanuts, correspondingly they get monkeys. This trend will continue as long as you, the paying customers, are willing to accept it.

    So the actual question is: are you, and how long?

    You get those customer surveys, and usually dump them without a second look. Except when you are not satisfied with the service you received. Now the problem is that these surveys actually do get read, so how about giving a positive feedback when it’s due? That might encourage the company actually to keep the good, knowledgeable people aboard and even pay them accordingly instead of all getting the same absolute minimum allowed salary – which in turn would lessen the turnover of the people on the floor, and eventually give you guys the service level which a professional user could expect.

  • Anonymous says:

    Is adbecare@adobe .com supposed to be [email protected]? Unfortunate place for a typo.

  • Anonymous says:

    I paid a month ago for a cross-platform upgrade. Opened a case and cannot get anyone there to help. Their online help is non-existent and their phone help is at least one hour of waiting before they inform you they can’t help.

    Wish there was another version of Illustrator with another company. Tired of bad service and spending big bucks with them!

  • Anonymous says:

    I have had a $700 upgrade disk for 4 months and can’t get it installed as it won’t accept any of my perfectly valid and qualifying serial numbers! On top of that, it doesn’t even recognise the earlier version is installed on my machine! Nothing helpful in the forums and I can’t deal with it during work hours! By the time I figure out how to contact them, it will be time to buy a new upgrade. We need more products to compete with Adobe’s. They aren’t really even trying anymore.

  • Anonymous says:

    DOes not seem to amaze me the negligence Adobe applies to their customer service. It may stem from the same applied to their product development. Hope your issue is resolved asap.

  • Anonymous says:

    Does not seem to amaze me the negligence Adobe applies to their customer service. It may stem from the same applied to their product development. Hope your issue is resolved asap.

  • Anonymous says:

    Long overdue! and honestly not believable either. i love adobe products, but their service sucks. it took them 5 months to send my my upgrade from CS3 to CS4 when they innitally said 2 weeks. not to mention if you have an issue, you’ll spend hours on the phone with them if not weeks, only to have the issue unreselved!

  • Anonymous says:

    Well, if they are improving service, it hasn’t happened yet. Granted, a lot of people have had worse problems than mine. I placed an order for a cross-platform upgrade from Adobe CS to Adobe CS4 from Windows to Mac. I called customer service twice and was told each time that the issue would be resolved within 24 hours. It wasn’t. I also put in cases in their portal that says they will respond within 24 business hours. Some of them have sat there a few days and are not yet responded to.

    This might get me in a bit of trouble, but honestly, Quark now even provides better service than Adobe. I have heard horror stories from the past, but they have helped me every time I’ve tried to contact them, sometimes within minutes. No, I don’t work for Quark. It’s too bad that they have a dying product right now, or I’d just use them.

  • Anonymous says:

    Just trying to order and download Adobe products is a nightmare. They take the money from the credit card in seconds but the order is “under review” for hours or days. Calling customer support results in an expensive phone call that is redirected to their outsourced mid east support people that have trouble understanding English so trying to resolve the delays is very frustrating. the process does seen to indicate they do not want any complaints or to provide customer service. I am still waiting for my $400 software. I think I will buy a pirated copy next time.

  • Anonymous says:

    The product installation fails because it wants you to close the product installation. If that weren’t stupid enough, their customer service says they only support until 7PST during the week. Great, why sell to hobbyists or busy professionals.
    Then I spend an hour waiting to chat, and more than a half hour waiting to telephone their support line.
    There has to be some competition, because they are entirely professional. If I developed a product that fails on installation, I’d be out of work, they should be too.
    Geno

  • Anonymous says:

    Beyond horrible. I’ve been trying to get what I think is either a bug or some obscure file issue looked into and it’s been almost two weeks just getting to someone who is even mildly familiar with the software. The routine is always the same. You get someone on the phone (the “wait in the cue and we’ll cal you option is by far the way to go, having already experienced the ridiculous hold times you get by just calling) who knows nothing about the software, they put you on hold for a LONG TIME to ask someone who knows almost nothing about the software, then they come back on the line, thank you repeatedly for your patience, and either tell you that the problem is with another application (which doesn’t make sense), refer you to another ridiculous Adobe non-support center, or suggest something so ludicrous that you’re ready to have a coronary. If you demand to talk to someone else, the supervisor is always “on the line” with another customer (i.e., sleeping because it’s 3 AM in Mumbai). I mean, why the BS with the fake name and the absurd time excuses? We’re not idiots! I have gotten a “supervisor” once, who also had to “consult” with another “expert” and couldn’t resolve or explain anything about my problem. At least he was able to reproduce the problem on his end, which is FAR better than anything I’d gotten before him, and he seemed like a decent, intelligent guy, who was interested in resolving my problem, which I guess means he will be leaving soon. He says he’s escalating my issue, but apparently this means that the person at the next level up, which I assume means someone who might have actually used the software, will be communicating BY EMAIL with him, not me. And I get to wait another four days for the potential of some word on the issue because it’s Thursday, meaning Friday in India, and they don’t work on the weekend. So I might get more information, or I might just blow my entire project because there is no support whatsoever for Adobe products. I am a professional. I am not a moron. I have been using Adobe products since they started making them. I rely on this software for my income. This is unacceptable and there is no recourse because Adobe owns it all.

  • Anonymous says:

    Apparently they have still done nothing about their customer service, since I’ve received extremely poor customer service from more than two people who treated me incredibly poorly and rude beyond anything you could ever imagine. I hope someone will contact me about the rudeness of this customer support person, so that I can show how badly they treat people.

  • Anonymous says:

    It’s 2011 and it still sucks. It has been the worst customer service experience I have ever had. What is their excuse now?

  • Anonymous says:

    I just chatted with one very rude customer service rep named Tashi. I wasn’t finished asking questions when he/she rudely said goodbye and disconnected. He/she did not answer half the questions I asked and also answered but then changed his/her answers later in the chat. I’m now without answers and more confused and even somewhat distrusting of the information I was given. I won’t be buying Adobe products again. Not CS 5.5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or any!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Anonymous says:

    I’ve been trying to resolve an issue over the phone for the past 6 days. The reps are rude, ignorant, and constantly contradict themselves. I can understand why so many people choose pirated software.
    My issue is still unresolved and I’m back to “waiting for a response” from another non-english speaking rep, who won’t actually call me back at all, so I will end up calling again in a day or two so I can be put on hold 3 or 4 times, then told that a senior agent will have to call me back.

    Infuriating.

  • Anonymous says:

    Last week I was on hold for more than 30 minutes because the export program I bought does not work. I contacted the chat line and they said it was not their problem. So I called again……so far my hold time is almost an hour……

  • Anonymous says:

    Move over AT&T, adobe just took your place as the worst customer service on the planet!!!

  • Anonymous says:

    I guess they need to make a perpetual apology as their service still stinks. Their customer chat help is anything but help, “May I speak to a real person please? your canned responses cannot be coming from someone with a brain. ” Buy from a third party if you have to buy their junk at all. Dealing with them is a nightmare!

  • Anonymous says:

    It’s such a shame that for a company with such great products, they’ve outsourced customer service to a land unknown and given their reps little ability to do anything. That’s not customer care. I think it’s holding customers hostage to needing their products with poor commitment to servicing them. Shame. Such a poor shame.

  • Guest says:

    Well, this is 2015 and Adobe Customer Service is still the worse ever. I have gotten scammed by someone who claimed to work for Adobe (first time ever in over 25 years). I have even considered getting rid of my Mac and buy a PC so that I don’t have to use Adobe Elements. Very damn frustrating.

  • Almost seven years since this article was posted, and Adobe’s customer support has only got worse. That global solution was an Indian call centre. They’re hopeless. I’ve been waiting and waiting for a resolution to an issue (my files were deleted), and no one wants to help, no one calls back when they say they will, and the help line is just full of the same scripted excuses. Absolutely pathetic.

  • Michael Collins says:

    Typical of Adobe: I tried Adobe Connect. I asked the sales guy how to use the integrated audio. The sales guy told me had never used the product he was selling.
    One of my corporate clients uses Adobe Analytics. Even though they pay $30K per year, it takes 2 – 3 weeks to get a knowledgeable person on the phone to answer a question.
    If you can’t figure out how to use an Adobe product by yourself, then find something else. Their entire support infrastructure is designed to look like they provide support so as to aid sales. You don’t realize how terrible the support is until you actually need it.

  • K says:

    Adobe bad service is back people.
    Are you having issues with your PC, Workstation, MAC, Mobile device not responding, hanging, lagging when it comes to using any of the Adobe software. Particularly Premier, After Effects, LightRoom.
    Have you called Adobe to be told that they will not escalate your case nor answer with clarity a solution. This is what I am experiencing and have done so for the last few months…
    Have you even been told that your PC, Workstation etc does not meet the minimum specifications…
    Then you are not alone, please start to contact Adobe and keep on doing so until they resolve your issues, this spike in Customer Service issues will mean that they will listen… if they do not listen and resolve your issues, may I suggest you find an alternative software provider is my advice… as it is far to stressful.

  • Dave says:

    2017, and Adobe support is still horrible. Had a licensing issue,s spent 2 hours on chat insisting on an escalation. The agent just pasted from a script, then I finally got transferred to a supervisor who also just pasted from a script. I said please have someone call me to discuss the issue to help me find a solution. I was told someone would contact me in 24-48 hours and don’t be worried, they will help. 5 days later I get a one sentence scripted reply with no way to respond. I am done spending thousands on Adobe products to get horrible service and have them violate their own EULA agreements.

  • Hape says:

    Still this support is the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever encountered. I think Adobe just hires companies in India or something and they don’t even speak a bit of English and will never help you.

  • Kathy Whyte says:

    After 6 years using CS5 that I bought on ebay for $499, I got messages that my trial period was almost over. Then Photoshop stopped opening and would not accept my serial number, saying it was not legitimate. They kept passing me off to different Indian reps whose accents I had a hard time deciphering. So the bottom line is, they want us all to buy their monthly payments. No more discs. Adobe = Sleazy dictators. :(

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