Check ratings before you buy. I generally stick with 97 percent or better
ratings. If something looks too good to be true, it is.

Well, I think I just got screwed by an eBay Power Seller with 100% feedback and over 100 ratings. AND she had at least a dozen positive reviews from people who had purchased Photoshop from her previously. :-( The deal was for CS2 for about $200, supposedly new and unregistered, and it came shrink wrapped. I guess I'm going to have to talk to Adobe and see if it's a pirate copy.

As for GIMP, I would love to use it if it didn't crash my system the minute I touched my Wacom tablet.

I'm looking into buying this software, and I've been trying to do it through adobe as a student. But I'm looking for a second option, off nextag I found this site
[url]http://www.softwareforless.com/findspecs.asp?partid=65046F[/url]
Is it safe to buy from places like this?

Thanks,
Kevin

If your registration shows up in your Adobe account online, then all is well. If it doesn't show up, you may have a problem.

Hello All

Has anybody come across this problem before on the 15/06/2008 i won an ebay auction which was the adobe photoshop cs3 extended version
for £150 which i thought was a very good bargain.
The person who sold it to me answered all my questions that i asked
for instance
was it a student version was it new or secondhand had it been registered and activated and also was it a PIRATED version
the answer came back to me as it was a fully good retail version like you see in the shops.
So on that i was happy and i duly won the auction
As this person came from the netherlands the software would be with me in about a weeks time,over a week had passed no software
Then i got an email appologising he had been away and just got back my auction had slipped his mind a few days later i recived a S.M.S.
tracking number for my parcel which was coming from China which i thought was strange eventually it arrived
installed the prog put in the serial number and activated it everything went okay then i went to register it and put my name and address in with the rest of the details and it said okay that you will get an email shortly
This email never arrived.So i went into my account on the adobe website to have a look to see if it was in and in the registration section on my adobe elements was showing
so then i went to the page where you can put in your serial number in
and it came up with an error saying it did nor reconise the number
What i'm puzzled about is why did it activate and also why did it say you will recivee an email shortly if my serial number is bogus one doe anybody know ??
Also on the bottom of my box my pinumber according to google does not reconise it as an adobe photoshop cs3 pinnumber ??
await anybodys answer please

Thankyou Michael

For your reply it was good of you to do so
Sorry i have not been in touch with you sooner
i have been ill but i'm better now i will do
as you say and see what transpires from it
but i have written 2 emails to the person who sold me the
software and have not had a reply as yet although i do not think i
will get one and i will be supirsed if i do
So tomorrow i'm going to ring up adobe and ask them about my copy
also i will gert in touch with my credit card people
but i do not know what they can do as it has been paid already into the persons account but will keep you posted.
But i'm in a quandery realy as i'm a pensioner and the price of the software is out of my price range to but normally that is why i turned to ebay just in case there was a bargain
Sometimes you can be lucky.
The quandry part is if i tell adobe they may want the software and therefore i will loose the use of the software or adobe may say you can have a reduced priced version say at £250 which is still cheap if you bought it elswhere but even that price is out of my league £150 is my max.
The software i have is working perfectly it has even updated the software so i'm a bit loathed to part with it now so you see the problem i have
I do have the adobe elements 6 but i now have moved on from that software that is why i bought photoshop cs3
and that is where i'm at, at this moment in time.

He has it!

David, I don't know what country you live in, but in the U.S., the credit card companies can reverse a charge, which means they get the money back from the vendor, within some specified period, for good reason. The procedures and standards will vary by card company. American Express allows you to contest a charge as incorrect, fraudulent, etc., and they will give you a temporary credit automatically; this becomes permanent if the vendor doesn't justify the charge, so it shifts the burden of proof to the vendor. I haven't contested a charge for fraud or pirated software, but I have challenged charges for "discount cards" that I never ordered or received, for some unknown alleged purchase from TimesofIndia.com (which I have never visited), for an unordered software subscription from RealNetworks, etc. In each case, I was immediately credited, and I am a very satisfied AmEx customer as a result. Check with your credit card company to see what its policies are.

Ditto on Michael. Mine have been subscriptions to magazines I've never heard of. Visa and MC treated me like garbage so I canceled them. AmEx since '96.

I for one look forward to watching them burn. Please update us here on whatever progress you see.

From my understanding, about ninety percent of the Adobe software being sold on eBay is pirated, along with most of the other software, thats the only way they can sell it for so cheap. I would steer clear of software on eBay and buy from trusted stores.

that would be nice. it would be nice to be able to confidently buy used sw from ebay at a deep discount from people who genuinely want to sell their stake in such software. as it is now i wouldn't buy sw from ebay with YOUR credit card! :) good find rick!

Hi,
I just wanted to add to this post. I followed it before I purchased my copy of CS3 from a reputable Adobe dealer here in Australia. In fact the supplier was Adobe Australia's preferred dealer and they directed me there. When I received CS3, on the box it said "Made in Singapore". I was very concerned and rang Adobe here, as well as having my son living in USA do the same thing with Adobe. Both of them verified that I have a genuine copy. Perhaps "Made in Singapore" is not a definite clue to holding a pirated copy. It may be that Adobe produce their product here for the Asia-Pacific market.

> Perhaps "Made in Singapore" is not a definite clue to holding a pirated copy.

no. from what i understand there is a legit adobe manufacturer in singapore. it's just that the most pirated copy seems to have been taken from an original that was made there so that many of the pirate copies out there bear the 'made in singapore' tag.

;)

Nick, unfortunately, this is not always a safe way to obtain a legitimate discount either.

While the upgrade product may be legitimate, the 'base' or qualifying product (if it even comes with one) may not be - some sellers just supply a paper license with a serial number that may already be registered, or from a keygen...
when they do supply a legacy product, this may also be counterfeit, so it's still a case of 'if it sounds too good to be true... it usually is'.

Congratulation if you got the genuine one that cheap.

But I suggest that,next time, if you want to make sure that you got genuine one, just buy straight from the company or their authorized reseller.

And you may get some discount if they're running promotions. But not likely that the company itself willing to sell it for very low price without running a grand campaign to public eyes.

Adobe had the same thing happen when they bought Macromedia.

I don't know of anywhere that you can get CS3 in the US for $200USD wholesale or otherwise. Probably a scam.