Illustrator CS6 is not saving files properly.

Question

I'm having issues with Illustrator CS6 (16.0.0) saving my files properly.  Let me give you some background here.
I work for a company that manufactures fishing lures.  I have to create the product cards that these products are to be packaged.  I use Illustrator CS6 to create my cards and I save a master file that includes the original text.  From there, I save the file as an Illustrator CS3 file since most printers I dealt with don't have anything versions higher than CS3.  I take these cards and convert the text to an object so that no one has to deal with fonts or mismatched font errors.  After this, I create a PDF of that same file so that my contacts at the print shop can see the card files and keep a reference for themselves.  On several occasions now, I've gotten emails from my clients saying that they need the necessary fonts to print these cards.  I check my files that should now be all objects and its back to being font text again.  I double check these files beore sending them but if I should have to close out these files and work on another project, then come back to files I've working on.  The objects are now back to fonts again.  All the while, I'm saving my progress.  I've been bitten too many times on this in the past, so I'm a saving freak.
I'm using an iMac (2011) 3.4 Ghz Intel Core i7 with 16 gig of RAM, 2 gig AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics, several hard drives (most being network drives) including the 1TB HD that came with the computer, MacOS 10.8 (Mountian Lion) - the same occurs with any flavor of MacOS 10.7 (Lion) too.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Wayne

Answer 1

Wayne,
You have used Type>Create Outlines, with no live Type left behind (after saving the original artwork, of course), no?
What if you Save As PDF, thus embedding the font(s), and they take it from there?