Adobe is Out of Control
I have worked with and managed creative teams for nearly 25 years. During that time, I have used—and managed teams that use—multiple Adobe products every single day.
Adobe has long been considered the gold standard for creative professionals. We work with 42 factories around the world, exchanging artwork, packaging files, technical drawings, and creative assets. Every one of them uses Adobe products because Adobe is the industry standard.
That is precisely why the current state of your products and customer support is so frustrating.
Years ago, software was purchased, installed on the local hard drive , and it simply worked. Today, after the move to cloud-based subscriptions and the rapid rollout of AI features, Adobe products seem to contain more bugs, glitches, and account issues than ever before. That's disappointing. What's unacceptable is that your customer support organization appears incapable of resolving even basic account problems when they arise.
Our latest experience is a perfect example.
One of our team members suddenly lost access to Illustrator. No warning. No explanation. After troubleshooting internally, we contacted Adobe Support.
The response?
"Our records show your account is past due."
That would have been a reasonable explanation if it were true.
The reality is Adobe has our credit card, charges us approximately $2,200 per month, and had successfully processed a payment the very same morning. I had the receipt in front of me while speaking with your support team.
Your representatives could see the payment.
They acknowledged the payment.
Yet somehow they could not fix the problem.
The issue was escalated to a team leader who was professional, polite, and genuinely seemed interested in helping. Unfortunately, he was trapped behind systems, policies, and tools that appear completely broken.
The solution we were ultimately given was astonishing:
• Create an entirely new Adobe account
• Mirror all existing licenses
• Migrate users manually
• Cancel the old account later
• Wait up to 48 hours for resolution
That was the best solution Adobe could provide to a long-time customer spending thousands of dollars per month.
It gets worse.
The new account was created incorrectly...by them.
Additional licenses were added that were never requested, adding hundreds of dollars per month.
The promised follow-up call 48 hours later never happened.
Because I owned the original account, the new account could not be created under my email address, so it was assigned to one of our designers instead. Now she is left trying to untangle a licensing, ownership, and administration nightmare that Adobe itself created.
What's most remarkable is that this exact situation has happened before.
In 2024, we experienced essentially the same account and licensing disaster.
At some point, recurring failures stop being isolated incidents and become evidence of a systemic problem.
After nearly 60 years in business and life, I've had my share of bad customer experiences. I am generally patient and forgiving because I understand that most companies are trying to do their best in an increasingly complicated world.
But Adobe is becoming the exception.
What concerns me most is that every interaction feels exactly the same:
• Broken systems
• Poor communication
• Endless transfers
• No ownership
• No accountability
• No resolution
I want to be clear: I do not blame the front-line support representatives. The individuals I speak with are generally courteous and genuinely trying to help.
This is not a customer service employee problem.
This is a leadership problem.
Your teams are being asked to support enterprise customers using inadequate systems, weak processes, and technology that feels decades behind modern standards. Even your phone system sounds outdated and unreliable. Their phone calls literally sound worse than Neil Armstrong call Houston from the moon in 1969. Quite honestly, a Zoom meeting would be a dramatic improvement over the current customer experience. Maybe look into a Zoom license.
Today we find ourselves exactly where we should never be:
• Duplicate accounts
• Duplicate licenses
• Active billing
• No meaningful support
• No clear path to resolution
• No single point of accountability
If Adobe were not the industry standard, we would replace your products tomorrow.
The only thing protecting Adobe from the consequences of experiences like this is the fact that you remain deeply embedded in professional creative workflows.
That may have been enough in the past.
It should not be enough for the future.
Someone within Adobe leadership needs to take ownership of these recurring failures and fix the underlying systems that continue to create them. Our company is not looking for apologies. We are looking for competence, accountability, and a permanent resolution.
At this point, that should not be too much to ask.
Sincerely,