Classroom Hacks: Company to steer clear of -- Adobe

There are so many wonderful companies that help teachers and educators out with discounts. I will highlight some of these below and more later this week

Adobe in particular seems to want to tell teachers and educators that we are important. Their website is very slick and pretty. They seem very eager to help educators. However, with my recent experience I have to say that nothing could be further from the truth.

I thought it was a great deal to get Adobe Acrobat for my classroom. I was planning on creating an online 'yearbook' filled with class pictures, writings, etc. I checked out the pricing on Acrobat. Mostly over a teacher's abilty to purchase. Then I was pleasantly suprised to see on their "Educator's Program" page they promore Acorbat Pro for just 159.00 USD. Well don't be fooled. You may not get your product at all.

I ordered on May 3 2009. I used my district's e-mail address. I gave them the name of my school, district and sent a scanned copy of my District ID Card as requested. I used PayPal to pay, thinking that would expedite shipping as I have funds available. Then I waited. I called to see what was happening and was told it was in progress...

I waited...

I called three times to find out what was going on with my order. Each time I spoke with a very nice but very unhelpful staff member from India. When I said they could easily call my HR department to confrim my status as a teacher, they said that they don't do that. They said that the 'Education Department' is located in the US, but has no phone number and they don't contact the public directly. They gave me an email.

I sent an email to the address they directed me to. Finally they got back to me saying the 'proof' I sent them that I was a teacher wasn't enough, although I submitted everything requested on their website. They said they needed a pay stub. I couldn't upload it through their website because the file was 'too large'. So I emailed it to them three seperate times.

I am quite web savvy and thus was very concerned about sending that private information through to who knows where. But I did crossing my fingers I would get this product before the end of the school year.

And I waited...

Today (June 1 2009) I got a message saying that my order has 'run out'. I'm welcome to open a new order. This is insane. There is no way Adobe is interested in working with the teachers of the US. I suppose it must look good to have it on their webstie but in practice it's not something that happens. Truly, I feel I have been scammed by them. AND someone out in cyberspace has my pay information. This is NO way to run a company that says they cater and care about teachers.

There are lots of great companies that give great deals to teachers. Borders, JoAnn come to mind. Sometimes Michael's will honor the Teacher Discount cards, ometimes not, it depends on the person on 'duty'. I'll find more, and please post any you find that actually work.

I could have spent the time finding and using a competing product that also creates .pdf files.

Here are some alternatives to using the real .pdf creator, and these are free. Please stay away from Adobe, and use these:

Search for Adobe Acrobat on eBay

PrimoPdf free for .pdf maker, 99. for professional suite

PDF995 free trial, 9.99 single user, 19.95 .pdf suite, 29.99 Toolset Suite

What is a .pdf? Here is the information:

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.^[

Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout 2D document (and, with Acrobat 3D, embedded 3D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2D vector graphics which compose the documents.

Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008.