Development Soup

About a year and a half ago I bought Adobe Photoshop CS3 Design Premium. Being a web developer and game developer have relied on these products heavily. I started Photoshop about a week ago and I get:  ”Licensing for this product has stopped working” and the program closes

Three days later, after running their Licensing removal tool at all levels, and following other exceptionally silly tasks found here, running the cs3 clean script and then totally reinstalling the junkware I am still having the same issue. I called customer support, but just did not have 45min to 1Hour of time to wait.

I have seen several threads online regarding this issue, some people report success, some are still not able to use their software. I wish I could report that I am one of those lucky enough to get it working again, but I am not. How sad is it that since there is not much competition in this space we tolerate this from adobe? This is not just poor software design, it is bad business! I paid full price for this software, and it should work when I run it damn it!

All I can say is be very wary if you are considering purchasing Adobe products.

For the second night in a row I have been waiting on hold with yahoo customer support for over an hour. Although the “musak” version of “While You See a Chance” by Steve Winwood is rather uplifting, I would prefer to have my problem addressed.

I did finally get someone on the phone (1hr 12min wait) only to be placed on hold once more after explaining the issue I decided to send a bitchy email instead of waiting another millennium. Here is what I wrote, more to come…

First of all let me say that yahoo provides possibly the worst customer support I have ever experienced.
I have been unable to properly map subdomains, and have been unable to get any help, even after waiting on hold for longer than one hour.
The problem is a create a subdomain with your little wizard, and it does not map to the URL (Yes I have waited 24 hours)
If there is an actual person reading this email, by the time you read this I will have likely already switched to goDaddy or similar hosting services.
PS. this message is being posted to my blog.

Was the part about goDaddy too mean? That is pretty low I know. I just want them to hurt as much as it hurts me to listen to Kenny G for an hour after a full day of work and a night class.

**WARNING** This is an absolute rant!

Ok so recently I went online to purchase textbooks for school. Going between the usual suspects , half.com and Amazon.com, I decided to purchase my books from Amazon. I am sure that many of you reading have used this site and found it as wonderful as I have for its ease of use, targeted suggestions and its generally smart usability.

So a day goes by and I look in my cart to see what has processed and what has not. Both sales are normal, the one from a third party, and the book from amazon. I assume that everything is fine and go about my business. After about a week the book from the 3rd party arrives. I found it odd, because most often amazon ships faster, but I am busy person, with work, and several night classes, the book will get here eventually I assume. After 3 more days (and one class session) I am a little worried. Where is this book from amazon?! I go online to my amazon account after class and find an estimated ship date of Feb. 9th.

What!!!!? I am enraged. I start pacing, worrying, raising my voice to the computer screen. I never thought for a second that this could be possible. Not that the book is back ordered, that is perfectly understandable, but that amazon never sent an email. With all the money invested in marketing, you would think that this simple logic would be in place.

Customer A orders a textbook
therefore likely a student
therefore likely needs the book pronto
book out of stock? -> send email notification.

I called customer service and spoke to a very nice yet rather vapid young lady who told me that I would need to check back to my account to find out that the book is back ordered. In the busy day to day this is just another thing I have to remember to do that should be done for me (in my opinion).

I don’t know if its a good thing or not, but shopping online, and the web in general has made us spoiled. It is almost too good, and when a stupid thing happens on a trusted site like amazon, I can’t take it!! It makes me throw hysterical fits and preach to my wonderful wife, who just wants to watch medium in peace.