The long quiet
It’s been months since Adobe last said a word. Not even a polite auto-reply, not even a well-aimed emoji. I’ve had more meaningful communication from a Vietnamese toaster.
They could have chosen decency. They could have said, “We recognise our systems failed—let’s make this right.”
Instead, Adobe chose the corporate version of playing dead.
Silence, in business, isn’t neutrality—it’s strategy. It’s the digital equivalent of hiding behind the sofa when the doorbell rings and whispering, “If we stay very still, the problem might leave.”
The veteran who didn’t go away
They may have assumed I’d vanish, that I’d finally tire of sending emails into the void. But I’m a military veteran—a man trained in persistence, not surrender.
And I’m still here, tapping politely on their digital window like a well-mannered zombie who refuses to rot quietly.
Every company like Adobe depends on attrition—on people giving up. The trick is to make the maze so absurd that escape feels like defeat.
But sometimes the wrong customer gets trapped in the maze. The one who brought a notebook, a spotlight, and an audience.
A recap for those arriving late
Adobe double-billed me for overlapping subscriptions—Creative Cloud Pro and the Photography Plan.
Their agents contradicted each other like drunk philosophers.
Refunds were promised, denied, promised again, and finally delivered.
The transcripts I requested—records of my own conversations—were incomplete.
When I asked for a goodwill settlement, they vanished like pixels in a power cut.
I wasn’t asking for much. I offered to settle quietly, sign an NDA, and donate a significant chunk of any compensation to children’s charities here in Đà Lạt.
I even helped them spot their own design flaws:
- Their support agents can’t see what their customers can.
- Their product packages change names more often than a witness in a mob trial.
That advice alone probably saved them more than they’ve ever billed me.
And still—nothing but silence.
The pattern: DHL, Amazon, Adobe
This isn’t new. It’s the same corporate pathology wearing different logos.
At DHL, I found “support” designed to be unsupportable.
At Amazon, I found phantom payments so baffling that the Washington State Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division had to step in and ask Amazon to explain itself—as documented here.
And now, Adobe—masters of creativity—have turned their innovation skills toward ghosting customers.
Contain, exhaust, deny, disappear. It’s not a customer service strategy—it’s a hostage negotiation without the courtesy of a phone line.
Lesson for Adobe
This isn’t about one frustrated customer—it’s about a cultural infection.
When companies grow so large that nobody feels responsible for listening, they stop being organisations and start being fog.
Leaders who outsource empathy to AI aren’t leading—they’re curating apathy.
Remember: Customers forgive honest mistakes—they don’t forgive contempt.
Silence is still communication—it just says we’ve stopped caring.
Every ignored email is a small act of corporate rot.
Adobe’s silence is their new brand voice. Unfortunately, it’s in the key of “Couldn’t Care Less Minor.”
Closing words
They can still fix this. They can still choose accountability over avoidance.
But every day they don’t, the silence grows louder—and it sounds a lot like laughter from the crowd watching Goliath trip over his own boots.
And me? I’m still here. Still writing. Still tapping on the window. Because sometimes the polite zombie wins.
The post Silence as strategy: Adobe’s customer care collapse appeared first on vietnam leadership coach.
