On April 26th, I placed my order for Adobe Photoshop CS3. Naively, I assumed since it was software, that I'd get it either immediately, or within a couple days. Silly me. After about a week and a half, Heidi mentioned that our card hadn't been charged for it, so I got a little nervous. I'd purchased it with a 50% off coupon that had expired April 30th. Fortunately, I had the receipt email (for what that's worth).

Still, I visited Adobe.com looking for a customer service number to call and verify they had my purchase on file. They'd nicely put an info box above the contact numbers telling people that they just started shipping CS3, so it would be two to four weeks before they got caught up with the backlog. Two to four weeks. Well, that sucks. I'd waited until the very last minute on that coupon so we could put off the financial impact, and now I got to wait another month? Swell.

It arrived May 29th, and I was elated. I woke up early on the the 30th, like a kid on Christmas, and ran down to my office to install it before work. I expected a straight forward drag-the-icon-to-the-applications-folder style install, but nope. Still, no biggie. I'm just happy I have it. It could take an hour to install and I'd be fine.

...Boy this is taking a long time to install...

Done! Righto, let's get this boy registered and activated in my name as a legit Photoshop owner. I've waited years for this day.

Aaaand the activation process spits out an error and sends me to the "Register over the phone" method. Hmm, that's lame. I call the number and speak to a lovely woman who politely sends me through the "If you're a pirate, which you probably are, we will kick you in the nuts, insult your mother, and send you to jail with a shirt that says 'I like guys'" verification process. I understand their position (for the most part), and hey, I'm legit damn it, so I can lift my chin and answer honestly.

I explain the situation, inform her a few times that "no, I didn't download the software, it arrived in the mail", then provide my serial number a few times only to find out that it's apparently invalid. Invalid? Come again? This must be a confusing situation for them. I mean, I'm clearly a pirate, since I'm trying the old invalid serial number trick, but damn if my credentials don't check out. I must have gotten the real owner's life story. It's the only explanation.

She transfers me to another nice lady, who asks a few more verifying questions ("Yes, I understand that you'd say bad things about my mom"), then has me provide my serial number a few more times. Yep, invalid. Nice. Well no problem, they can email me a new serial number.

In 24 to 48 hours.

They must have a large un-air-conditioned warehouse filled with underage former Nike "employees" assembling new serial numbers by throwing colored pegs at a distant lite-brite board. Seriously, have you ever heard of computers? You know, those things that you write really expensive programs for? Yeah, they can do that instantly.

Regardless, given that I called them at 8am, that means the kids should have my colorful new serial number ready by end of day Thursday.

It's Sunday, June 3rd, and I have a nice shiny new box and disk case with a bad serial number on it, and a very expensive "Trial Version" of Photoshop CS3 running on my computer. I'm hoping Adobe's version of 24-48 hours doesn't stretch beyond the trial period.

Maybe they ran out of light pegs.

Update: I called Adobe on the 7th to discover that they'd effectively lost my request for reserialization and they'd get that going for me (again) within the next 24-48 hours. Mind you, this was after spending roughly an hour on hold and being tossed back and forth between customer service and technical support spitting out the invalid serial number a few times at each step. The pinnacle was having an elder customer support rep say I'm sorry. I can't work and talk at the same time like young kids. I was filled with confidence that this time they'd get it right.

Well, it just so happens they did. I finally got my serial number on the 11th. I also received an email request to take a customer service survey. I think I might just fill that out.