Point for American Express

The day in the life of me this week has been proposal writing and fighting people like "Robert," "Shawn" and "Justin" in some Asian country who work for Adobe's Customer Service. The reason for our disagreement has been my mistaken purchase of the Adobe InDesign upgrade to CS3. Years ago I bought the Creative Suite, and to upgrade, I have to upgrade the whole suite, not just one program from it. When I learned this, which took about 1 hour to discover after going round and round with fake-named people, only to have a young woman indirectly tell me what I needed to purchase.

I made the purchase, which was a download of the software, and proceeded with the next step to get a refund. I cannot tell you how many people I spoke with, getting answers like "Oh, our systems are slow today. I'm just not seeing your first order in the computer yet. Why don't you call back in a couple of hours and it will show up and we can start the refund process." A couple of hours later, still no order in the system. "Justin" gives me a phone case order, and I am to fax a PDF to the number on the form. I am not to email it, even though there is an email provided at the bottom of the form as another option.

The next day, the fax on their end gives me "Communication Error." I call again. And talk to "Shawn." More of the same. He gets my customer ID wrong, and when suggests that I email the form, which was previously not encouraged, he gives me the following email address: "www.adobe.com/support/..." I tell him this is a URL. He tells me it is an email. I won't reveal how I was further with him.

Yesterday I faxed the form again. The fax seemed to go through. I put it out of my mind and waited to follow up today. No fax. No email. No refund. By the end of the discussion, and getting from Nameless to "Robert," a supervisor with an actual Employee ID number unlike "Shawn" who maybe did not know his b/c he told me he did not have one, who told me that he would in fact get the fax, as the machine is in his office. He then confirmed that the fax first goes to the Research Department, which is in another place, not his office or building, and they do not have phones or emails. Gerdy left the room for my next episode.

Enter American Express. From the beginning I should have called them. A nice man calmly listened to me, quite a relief from the nervous accented people who are trained to say: "I am so sorry for putting you on hold again and again. Thank you so much for being so patient," which really just wastes time when they repeat it throughout the phone call. The man at American Express understood, and he opened an Investigation after telling me that I was not responsible for the amount that I need refunded. That was all I needed to hear. American Express may be aggressive in their credit tactics, in that they want to give you more and more reasons to have more credit and reason to flop, but at the end of the day, at least this week, they have done their job.