I purchased CS3 in July this year, a few weeks later, on the 20th of August I upgraded to CS3 extended.
When CS4 was announced, I contaced Adobe and asked for a free upgrade, considering I payed over 1,100 euro within 6 weeks for the product already. The chap on the phone was favouring my request and agreed when I mentioned this to make sense in my case, but although he was an Adobe Rep, he had no say in the matter and had to ask his "manager".
Unfortunately we can not give you a free upgrade. Our apologies.
Now they want me to pay another 349 Euro ex VAT, I was told I was 4 days too late with my invoicing being 20th of August 2008. Her response took 6 days! Right.
I consider a grace period of 1 month not flexible enough and economically nonsense, apart from the european pricing issue that is well known and also wrong in my belief.
Needless to say that I am not a happy camper concerning this unflexible and way too tight policy. Adobe has been treated very well in Ireland in the past few years in deed, probably too well!
The combined 2007 turnover of both irish subsidiaries was @ $2.6 bn, yet, they only payed just $5m in Irish corporation tax, so an article in the Sunday Tribune by Ken Griffin, admittedly a while ago, but still, that was the case.
US SOFTWARE company Adobe’s two Irish subsidiaries had a combined turnover of $2.6bn last year yet paid just $5m in Irish corporation tax, according to new accounts.
The first subsidiary, Adobe Software Trading Company, made a pre-tax profit of $407m yet paid only $2.1m in Irish corporation tax . . . an effective rate of 0.5%.
The second company, Adobe Systems Software Ireland, made a pre-tax profit of $36.3m and paid $2.9m in corporation tax, giving it an effective tax rate of 7.9%
In my view, for the most diverse software company on the planet, this grace period policy needs an update, pun intended.
May be worth mentioning, when I ordered my CS3 extended upgrade, they overcharged my Visa, the value charged was higher than what I was told by the sales chap on the phone. Only after a lengthy, massive and legally backed up intervention from my side they agreed to re imburse my Visa with the delta, but you do not want to know what it took, and with what arrogance I had to deal with. I am not saying this is Adobe typical, rather was my own unlucky experience with Adobe Ireland so far.
Enough said.... sorry for the vent, but and this is the main reason I am posting this, if you should know any different on grace period upgrades from CS3 to CS4 in Ireland, in other words had been granted the free upgrade whereby your invoice for CS3 was after the 15th of August 2008, I would be grateful to hear from you.
Best wishes,
Oceanviewstudio - Ireland
Georg Baumann
