CS4 activation and serial number question
 

I'm interested in buying the Master Suite from somebody who has the original box. It's unregistered, and not yet activated, and never installed...

I called Adobe service to check for authenticity. They require the serial number.

Unfortunately, the seller believes that revealing the serial number might endanger her original package..I can potentially steal the S/N, activate, and the seller would be holding a worthless box of CD's..

Is the seller correct in her fears?
We're currently at an impasse.

I refuse to buy software that can't be verified for authenticity, and the seller refuses to release the serial number, for fear of losing the activation process...

Is the seller correct??

Go over to her house - Call Adobe from there. Tell them your situation. Have her go in the other room and give the serial number - Get the phone back from her and talk to the dude to see if it's good to go.

Or meet her somewhere and do it on your cell phone - Have her give the number on the phone in her car and hand the phone back. Easy.

Easy provided you live within, say, a few hundred miles of each other ...

Yes, logistics is a concern...
I didn't want to over explain my situation. In the meanwhile, i'm gonna try and iron this out with Adobe support...

Buying software second hand usually is problematic, if not downright illegal. With the serial number you could download from adobe, enter the serial number and be off and running, so she has a point.

You wrote that the software was "unregistered and never installed" but how do you KNOW? More importantly why wasn't it? I know when I spend a couple grand for software the "what can brown do for you" truck has barely left the dirveway before I'm loading it.

I wouldn't list the Master Collection under "impulse buy" so that would make me nervous, even if she spent way less on the educational version. Is it her's and can she produce a receipt? Does she even edit video? Nothing like buying stolen property to save a little cash.

It sounds like being at an impass is the right place to be.

Don't forget that if it is the educational version, then Adobe won't register it anyway without you proving you're a student!

When I worked in a college, it was common for us to buy a number of software packages, and very often we just bought the number we wanted for the machines we had, and didn't buy just one and a site license. All we'd do would be open one packet, for the discs then use the individual numbers on the packages to register them. So when you get the brand new box, the serial could already be used somewhere - the sealed box doesn't count.

Even worse - but I don't think Adobe do this - is where you install software and register it (as I did when working at a college and we had a surplus copy of Sibelius) I took it home and registered it. Two years later, after I'd been left about a year - somebody at the college must have found the box in the store room, and installed it on a new machine. My copy was fine until I did an update, and it promptly unregistered itself as the newly registered one took precedence.

Second hand software is always tricky.

David...
If the software hasn't been installed, registered, or activated, i don't see the problem of legality.
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That's why i'd like to know the SN..That way, when i talk to an Adobe rep, they can verify that it's not an active and running copy....That's all.

I've talked to the girl, and with a bit of backround checking, she seems genuine..

The colleges ask the student's to buy the software, but they get it in bulk, so perhaps there's student pricing. If the student decides NOT to keep it, i think they're entitled to sell it..No different than buying a book..I don't think it was an impulse buy on her end...
I am absolutely ensured that this is NOT a studen't version..



But nonetheless, we're both at an impasse here...