After reformatting my desktop (and installing the world) I was bitten by the “too many activations” error while trying to register my Adobe-ID. I lost about an hour chatting to the web support staff, with no sucess. I resorted to Adobe forums, where Jim Lester provided a helpful answer:
Support through ADE is not offered via phone or Web Chat support. It is only offered through submitting a web case (http://www.adobe.com/support/digitaleditions – click on ‘Submit a web case’). Avereage resolution time for these cases runs about 3 days.
Note: you have 6 activations (for computers, and then 6 seperate activations for devices) and each time you reformat you lose your activation
I submitted my web case and in less than 24h I got a friendly email informing me that I was OK.