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Adobe policy “We don’t offer any support and we don’t care”

Contributor ,
Feb 09, 2010 Feb 09, 2010

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For over 1 month now I have been trying to get help from Adobe to resolve an issue with Captivate 4 that has stopped me doing my job (brief details below).

Apart from some suggestions from Forum members (that did not work, I regret), there has been absolutely, totally, nothing constructive from Adobe, neither Technical Support nor Customer Service…..4 weeks! I cannot do my job and Adobe doesn’t care.

The only positive thing that Adobe Technical Support have managed to do, is to screw up my Adobe account and mix my details up with someone else, so when I do speak to someone and provided I can understand what they are saying, they have no idea what the problem is and so I start from square one, and still get nothing resolved.

If Adobe was freeware, I could expect this level of support – but it is far from that and as a customer I expect, and Adobe has a duty of care to provide – support to enable me to do my job using their product….after all it is in their best interest.

As I am unable to do my job, I am considering starting legal proceeding against Adobe and also contacting the various consumer groups and trade magazines to make other “would be” Adobe users aware of the totally unacceptable lack of support and care.

I am also suggesting to my company (55,000 employees) that we stop using Captivate as a group and look at Articulate or similar.

My problem:

My CP files are getting corrupted.

Captivate 4 freezes when I hit the “end” key to stop recording.

I get an error message and Captivate closes down.

If I open the CP file again, it will not allow me to add any more recordings to it.

Noel Griffiths

Staffordshire

England

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LEGEND ,
Feb 10, 2010 Feb 10, 2010

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*NOTE: Noel cross-posted the same issue to two different threads. As stated in the Before you post message, duplicates are deleted without notice, leaving behind the original post. Allen Partridge apparently replied to the thread in the process of my deleting it to clean up the cross-posting. So I'm copying the gist of Mr. Partridge's reply here for Noel and all to see.

Allen Partridge wrote:

Noel, I appreciate your frustration and can see how you must find the delay very disheartening. I actually became aware of your case earlier this week, so I know that in fact engineers at Adobe are looking specifically at potential root causes for the file corruption that is happening on your machine. I'm surprised to learn that you aren't getting feedback about those investigations, though it's possible that QE is simply waiting until they have a resolution to the problem to get back to you. I'm sure you can understand that we take a case like yours very seriously, and are working to reproduce the issue in a consistent manner in order to resolve it. Please feel free to contact me directly with any concerns related to this matter as we continue to attempt to identify the root cause. Corrupt files are certainly not unfamiliar territory in mm authoring apps, and its often quite difficult to distinguish what might be causing them. Sometimes its even the computer hardware itself. I'll ask QE for an update again today - as I did yesterday, and hope that the engineers assigned to your case are able to isolate the issue very soon. My direct email is allenp at adobe dot com. Allen


My apologies to Mr. Partridge for any issues that may arise from the unfortunate timing.

Sincerely... Rick

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Contributor ,
Feb 10, 2010 Feb 10, 2010

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Sorry about duplicate message...I did not read the policy, but

am in such great need for help and wanted to make as many people as possible aware of

my situation I posted the same message twice.

FYI...I have replied to Allen Partridge direct and this was my reply:

Allen,

Thanks for your email.

I have this morning spoken to Ross McGuire up in Adobe Glasgow, and now I have your email.

Ross took control of my PC this morning and whilst recording the session, replicated the error. He is going to pass on to his Tech Team along with some files I emailed him.

I guess the most frustrating thing is not hearing anything positive from anyone for almost 4 weeks(!)...until today. I have no idea what, if anything, is being done behind the scenes.

If you dont get any response you have to assume nothing is being done, or your message has just been tossed in the bin.

I am sure you can appreciate that, and I wonder how many other Adobe customers are also suffering the same way?

I work in a customer service role within my company and strive to provide the very best to my internal and external customers...so tend (often foolishly) to expect a similar level of service when I become a customer.

I am pinning all my hopes on what Ross is doing for me. I totally accept identifying the root cause cannot be easy, but by the same token I really dont believe it should require some irate messages from me after 4 weeks to kick start what is after all basic support, and in Adobe's interest to find the cause and ensure it is correct.

Fingers crossed.........

Noel

Staffordshire

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LEGEND ,
Feb 10, 2010 Feb 10, 2010

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Hi Noel

Sorry to hear of the issues. Hopefully Adobe will get it resolved for you. Support can often be maddening.

In the case of Adobe, I do believe they have outsourced support as so many other companies have. I also once worked in a support role in the corporate world before my own job and my wife's job were lost due to outsourcing. While I miss the regular paycheck and health insurance, it did land me in my own business where I'm trying to make ends meet with training and consulting. Enough about that though.

Adobe apparently does recognize there is an issue with support. Months ago they issued an open letter containing an apology.

Click here to read

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links

Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form

Adobe Certified Captivate Training

SorcerStone Blog

Captivate eBooks

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New Here ,
Feb 16, 2010 Feb 16, 2010

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Hello Noel

I'm fairly new to all of this and can offer sympathy.  I have had a similar issue to you and found the only way round it was to create a new template and start again.  You can copy most of your slides over to your new course but keep checking in case you copy a corrupt file and the problem starts all over again.

I have also had problems with Adobe customer service.  On four occassions I have contacted customer support, never hearing from them on two occassions and on the other two they did'nt understand my problem despite screen shots.  It was as if they were giving me the answer to some one else's problem and then they just close your service call.

I must say I have found mega support on these forums.  Rick is very good as is Lilybiri. People must remember though they are not employees of Adobe but give their free-time.

I'm getting to enjoy Captivate 4 more these days but will still keep a look out for maybe something a little less fiddly.

Ken

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Contributor ,
Feb 16, 2010 Feb 16, 2010

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Hi Ken,

Appreciate your reply.

1. I totally agree with you that the Forum has some very helpful people and through the forum I have solved some earlier issues.

2. What frustrates the hell out of me is the approach Adobe adopts ...you either get help from someone reading a script (and then it is often hard to understand what they are saying) and if you are lucky, the fix might be in there somewhere. If the problem is anything more than a "basic" problem...you are on your own, and I think Adobe then wash their hands of the matter, and hope the good people who read this forum - and maybe other similar Forums - will sort the problem out amongst ourslevles.

3. I eventually got hold of someone at Adobe who has been excellent and last week (4 weeks after my problem started) was able to sort things out for me.

4. If I had my choice, I would never use any Adobe software again, based on my recent "nightmare".

5. Finally, the "workaround" you mentioned now works for me, but it was not working to begin with.

Noel

England

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Engaged ,
Feb 26, 2010 Feb 26, 2010

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Greetings Noel,

In regards to your issue, I believe I suffered through similar pains a few months ago.

Forgive me if this has already been suggested (or asked):

1. Are you using Windows Vista or 7 in 64bit mode?

2. If you are using any version of Vista/7, be sure to run Captivate in XP compatibility mode and administrator mode. (see attachment)

3. Save/backup often, and make dated multiple copies of your project(s). That way, when/if you do encounter corruption,

    you may not need to start over.

    This should be a standard fail-safe practice for any file..with any software. Any program can potentially corrupt your data.

Since I did #2 and I followed my own experience by doing #3, I have not encountered another issue of this nature.

BTW, I certainly and completely understand your utter frustration with Adobe technical support. It is shameful that their support is this bad. I too had a number of unfortunate encounters with them. Either they showed complete indifference to my issue or they had no clue how to solve my issue. In the end, promises of follow-up were never fulfilled. You may be tempted to believe that paying for Adobe support will yield different results; unfortunately it did not in my case. Wow, at the very least, they could have at least pretended to try to solve my issues!

The only valuable support resource is this group and sadly, those unpaid regulars. To be fair, I won't name names... because I will likely forget to mention one or two of them.

Additionally, and as you may of noticed, a few sympathetic Adobe employees do check these forums. Kudos to them, as well!

Best of luck,

Shawn

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Contributor ,
Feb 27, 2010 Feb 27, 2010

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Hi Shawn,

I am using XP. I do save and date the project each day...which is a real pain when you are restricted to space on my company's C Drive, so have had to invest in external hard drive to save all the "extra copies". It is all wrong in my mind, it is like having to carry around multiple cell phones due to the fact the one the company told you to use is flawed and cannt be trusted and you know you wont get any useful help when it does crash!

As to the support (or lack of it) Adobe offer via their Tech Support...One last comment from me as the whole subject of "support" really makes my blood boil. I was in a position of strength within Adobe and cared about my customers and really wanted them to have a truely pleasant and productive experience with Captivate (etc etc), I would take a hard look at what we offer now, how many frustrated customers there are out there who have most likely found an alternative (Articulate for example), and do something about it to turn the situation around before it spirals down the drain.

Noel

Staffordshire

England

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Engaged ,
Mar 01, 2010 Mar 01, 2010

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>It is all wrong in my mind, it is like having to carry around multiple  cell phones due to the fact the one the company told you to use is  flawed

>and cannt be trusted and you know you wont get any useful help  when it does crash!

No, I do not agree. Your analogy isn't accurate.

A cell phone is, more or less, a closed system. Aside from user hacking, its software, and hardware are not modifiable by the end user. As a result, the manufacturer can build millions of the same cell phone and expect the same consistent behavior from all of them. Desktop computers are a different "animal". As such, Adobe (or any other software manufacturer) cannot guarantee that their software (e.g. Adobe Captivate in this example) will behave in the EXACT same way on EVERY computer. This is simply impossible!

It could be one little open source program or some odd network card or USB hardware or a Windows service pack or bad RAM or a hard drive glitch that upsets the behavior of Captivate. No one knows, until it happens to you. As long as you’re surfing the net, updating Windows or other applications, or even power cycling your computer every day, your computer is constantly changing.

That is why everyone should constantly backup, make multiple copies of your data, et cetera! This is simply good computing practice. It has nothing to do with flawed design, or other wise. Your computer's behavior is constantly changing by design.

Shameless plug (but seriously, this is useful once you have a good working environment): One of the only ways to guarantee locked in consistent behavior is by installing Deep Freeze (my company's flagship product); Google it for more info.

BTW, This explaination doesn't get Adobe off the hook for their terrible support. 😞

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