Durbin Digital

I want to start off by saying I love Adobe products, been an advocate of Adobe products for well over 12 years, started teaching people of all ages how to use Adobe products more than 7 years ago, and look forward to the smell of new software. Call me geeky if you must!

I was extremely excited about the new CS5 upgrade, and have been saving to upgrade the Master Collection ALL YEAR (not joking). The college I teach at is upgrading our lab over the summer, so this upgrade is somewhat required, since “you can’t teach it if you don’t know it”, and the school doesn’t pay for staff software. We are on our own to keep current.

I kept up on all of the pre-launch web-casts, pre-release announcements, and even participated in the Beta testing offered through NAPP. So when the pre-release promotion pricing kicked in, I jumped in and purchased my upgrade.

This is where things went awry….

As soon as the announcement was made that pre-orders were being accepted, I went directly to the adobe.com website, logged in, and filled out my order. Double checked everything, made sure I checked “CDs sent to me” (anyone out there that has ever had to deal with dial up internet knows… you CANNOT DOWNLOAD ANYTHING!!)… triple checked and clicked submit. This was April 12th….

April 15th hit and I got a confirmation email stating that my order for the CS5 “download” has been confirmed… WHOA wait a minute… “download”? So I immediately called the Adobe order department and talked to a nice guy named Richard, he proceeded to cancel the previous order and resubmit the correct order for the CDs, I confirmed this with him several times (I am paranoid that way), he then proceeded to give me a confirmation number and told me my final price was $773.89… (this was slightly cheaper than online, SWEET!) and I asked him no less than 3 more times if that price included the shipping, taxes, promos and everything, he walked me through the cost, shipping is free because of the promo, NAPP discount 20% (the little extra discount is where I assumed the extra savings was compared to online) and the pre-order special pricing they had going. SWEET! I was so excited about receiving new software. I deducted the amount he gave me over the phone from my checkbook, paid my bills, and counted down the days til shipping day arrived.

The 29th rolls around and I am eager to track my order, so I log onto my computer to find a new email saying that my order was processed and would be shipped within 24 hours. I logged into my bank account to verify how much I had left so I could get gas on my way to work and saw that Adobe had charged $829.10 instead of the $773.89 I was told. My gut sunk like a rock, not only did I not have the $30 I had allotted for gas, my account had been over-drafted… prompting another call to Adobe to find out what went wrong with the pricing. There was a 2.5 hour wait time, I had to get my girls to school and get to work *sigh*, so I resigned to making the call the next day.

April 30th, just over 1 hour on hold and 3 transfers later, I got to talk to Rob. Rob told me that there must have been an error with processing and that my CDs would be shipped and someone would call me about getting a refund for the difference, my case would be elevated to a higher level, because he didn’t have the authority to issue refunds. I felt better, a bit, until I got an email. Basically saying, we cannot ship you CDs because your order processed as “download” and there are no refunds, because our pricing is “correct”.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, one of the Adobe staff, said cancel the order, put it in on a return and place a new order. If I do that, will I still get the same pricing? NO, because it is technically a new order. So where am I supposed to come up with another $300, it took me all year to save the $800 to upgrade in the first place *GAH*!! No, I’m not going to cancel/return the order, because I DIDN’T ORDER “DOWNLOADS” in the first place! (I’m not posting exact wordings, because I’ve been unable to login to my Adobe account for the last few days)

After 9 hours arguing with several people on the phone, I resigned to eating the price difference and over-draft charges, as long as the CDs would be shipped. I have to learn the NEW stuff, so I can teach it SOON… just get me the software… it is paid for after all! I was told they would be shipped, so I waited a few days for a confirmation number with tracking information…. and waited and waited… finally I called again and got Eve on the phone. She said that they cannot send me CDs because I ordered “download” and I explained to her that I didn’t order “download”, I had ordered “CDs”, but there was a problem with the online processing and I called talked to Richard, who had supposedly “fixed” the order well before the ship date, and that I had been told that the CDs would be shipped and I was trying to get a tracking number. She then told me that they wouldn’t ship the CDs because it was processed as a download, so after 2 hours and 15 minutes, she said they could send me the “downloader CDs” which would install the software and I could use the serial numbers from the downloads, BUT it will cost you $20. She talked to her supervisor and they agreed to send them to me at no charge… FINALLY I will get the software and things will work out, eat the cost difference and overdraft, at this point I don’t care about the $55 difference and the $37 overdraft fee, I just need the software so I can plan my summer classes.

The next day I receive an email stating that my order has shipped… WOOHOO … read a little further… they drafted my account for $21.70… WTH!!! Adobe has over-drafted my account again!! They said they wouldn’t charge me for the CDs… I don’t use profanities very often but I can tell you they’ve been flying a lot lately!

I have spent well over 16 hours on the phone talking to Adobe staff, they have cost me an additional $55 for ?!correct pricing!?, $74 in over-drafts, I currently have 4 open cases online, and have put 8.75 hours into typing up correspondence with Adobe people.

Think I am happy with ADOBE right now? Hell NO!! And I still don’t have my software … not a happy person right now!

If I had money to blow I would just wait it out, or cancel the order, or ??, but I don’t! I am a single parent of 4, I made barely $7K last year, I watch my money to the penny, so this kind of major company screw up really puts my home in a bind! Thank you adobe I needed a little more chaos in my life!

There will be some major changes happening here at DurbinDigital over the next few weeks, changes for the better!

I will be moving the digi-scrapping content over to the DurbinDigital blog. This will clean up this side of things to a great degree & bring this site more of a focus on Photography, Photoshop & other fun related stuff. I will also be adding a “Downloads” section, which I am very excited about! I have a growing list of interesting blogs, and creative people to introduce to you, too!

I am hoping that these changes will be as exciting for you as they are for me!

Stay tuned! ThanX for visiting!

This last Friday, I had the honor of writing up a product review for the Tamron 18-270mm All-in-One lens, over at DesignByFirgs!

So please take a moment and give it a read!

This update has been a long time coming.

I have sadly neglected my site, to keep up with my presence at MomShots, on Twitter, and to be a good parent. It all started with a parent in the hospital, a viral illness running through every kid in my household, Thanksgiving & Christmas, on-call WORK (the job I actually get paid to do), and many other little life detours. I admit, I allowed life to take over for a few months, but am now ready to take the reigns back!

No complaining! I do after all feel that EVERY little life experience deepens who we really are!

NOW on to the update!

Just over 2 weeks ago (my, my, how time flies) my very good friend Janine Smith over at Landailyn awarded me with the >Kreativ< Blogger Award! This is a very great honor! An honor that comes with responsibility of passing on or “paying forward” the honors of such award!

And here are the rules!

This is almost like a game of Creative Tag. I tagged these seven creative souls, now their mission, should they choose to accept it, is as follows:

1. Copy the award to your site.
2. Link to the person from whom you received the award.
3. Nominate 7 other bloggers.
4. Link to those sites on your blog.
5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominate.

So, It is my turn to pick 7 creative bloggers!

They are in no particular order:

Moon With A View (Cutzi Jobes) ~ I love her candidness of day to day life, her strong views  on adoption, God and life in general! A genuinely sweet, loving, person that I wholeheartedly adore! And her family is just so dang cute too!

MomShots (Jessica Stier) ~ I love this site! (So much so, I have become a contributor of tips!) The goal of this wonderful photography site is pretty much a personal mission to photograph her kids better, while sharing her learning and knowledge with the rest of us! She has wonderful insight, is open to new ideas about photography, and is a well of awesome resources for hobbyist photographers!

DaniDraws (Dani Jones) ~ Dani is a wonderful illustrator! She takes the time to post to her blog regularly with new illustrations she is working on, gives great advice for freelancers, AND hosts a live video stream of her work quite regularly (interactive too, so you can ask questions & get answers while you watch!)! Very fascinating watching her work!

A.J.Wood ~ This is the link for Photoshop Jedi AJ’s Tip Tweets! Very helpful Photoshop tips! AJ always has the best Photoshop insider information and tips! He also has a great blog too!

PioneerWoman (Ree Drummond) ~ This lady has a site packed full of photography & Photoshop tips and Photoshop ACTIONS! Her photos are wonderful! I am almost speechless about how much great stuff is packed into this site! And she has some really awesome giveaways!

I know that is only 5 and it says 7, but these fabulous blogs have already received the >Kreativ< Blogger Award, (but are more than deserving of it) so I am going to give them KUDOS by posting up links!

Janinealogy (Janine Smith)

DesignByFirgs (Elizabeth Gast)

PursuingPhotoshop (Karen Stansel)

Creative Wisdom (Leah Dossey)

Please check out these fabulous blogs and give these amazing people some comment love!!

I have joined the Technorati blogging crew, please show me some love and fav this blog!

Please click here > > > >

Don’t forget to visit MomShots for the weekly tip! This week is about COLOR!!

Photoshop CS4 is looking like it has some really nice improvements… NAPP has some great previews of the improvements they have made! Looks promising!

OK enough rambling on, back to work for me!!

I wanted to take a moment to let everyone know that MomShots is hosting a sweet giveaway! You could win yourself a copy of “The Digital Photography Book” by Scott Kelby. To get an entry all you have to do is leave a comment on the giveaway post! You can even earn more entries by mantioning MomShots on your website! So swing on over and give MomShots some love!

Back2Basics (B2B) is up and running check out the DurbinDigital blog to see what we are up to! There is a great TOP 5 to get you started on a plan to success!

In other news, I attended (as Tech Support Staff) the Social Media Conference that was hosted at WCC. The attendance was great and the speakers there were awesome! The speaker from Apple was top notch and very engaging. Very relevant information for social network marketing.

The TOW at MomShots for the week was spot color, a fun little effect for your photos. So head over there and give it a look!

And for any of you web “surfers”, if there are burning questions about the software programs you are using, just post them up here in the comments sections. If I don’t know the answer, I will find it for you, or direct you to the most relevant source… who knows, your suggestion might even make it to a Tip Of the Week!

Also, for any of you Digital Scrapbookers out there, I am currently working on an extra’s disk for my Scrapbooking class this fall, and if you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see for content on a CD let me know! If I use your ideas/suggestions (i.e. type of custom brushes, patterns for papers, embellishments etc…), I will mail you a free copy of the CD so PLEASE make sure you leave me your email!

Until next time!

OK, so I don’t get very excited about anything very often so this is a BIG deal. Over at ConceptArt they have started a new thread. It is for past weekly challenges that you didn’t quite get done in time, OR you just want to go back and try your hand at. There is going to be some Kickin’ artwork in there very soon! And I have already claimed my spot for adding my revisitations to! Sweet motivation to get some personal artwork done.

Also, for those of you following along, MomShots posted up my tip on color cast for last week, and the next one up will be spot color!

And watch my blog in the next couple of weeks for the “B2B” (Back 2 Basics) section, that is all about taking a step back and revisiting our foundation knowledge of art and photography!

ThanX for peeking in!

I am putting a suggestion to the MomShots clan (or anyone else that is interested in learning some new tricks)! I want to know what you are wanting to get out of the MomShots Tip Of the Week. What do you want to know more about? Are there images out there that make you wonder “How’d they do that?” Well here is your chance to ask up! You can comment me here OR you can leave suggestions as comments on the MomShots website!

Don’t forget… the Back2Basics will be starting in Sept.!

Twellow! This great site is the all mighty Yellow Pages of Twitter users.

If you are a freelancer, small business owner, blogger, etc. this is the place you want to be! There are many different ‘categories’ that you can list yourself/your business into. And it is fairly easy to use. If you have a profile on Twitter, you can import (or claim) your profile straight from Twitter. Once you have your profile set up you can take a browse around the different categories and add yourself to the category with a simple click (there is a little green plus in the title bar for the category). Another great aspect of Twello, is that you can add your other social networking sites, like Facebook or Digg.

So what are you waiting for? Get yourself out there!