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LearningSpanishLikeCrazy (LSLC) w/ FSI | ||
Tags: Fake Reviews | LSLC | Platiquemos | Pimsleur | Reading | FSI | Book | Grammar | English | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| mtwalker Newbie United States imageray.net Joined 7187 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 65 of 193 28 April 2005 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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heartburn, a few days ago after doing your google search for LSLC
reviews on Amazon I took it upon myself to complain to Amazon. They actually responded and asked my to send them ISBN numbers and book review subject lines. I cut and pasted 10 or so. I checked tonight and it seems that some of the reviews have been removed. Maybe someone is indeed listening. Edited by mtwalker on 28 April 2005 at 2:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 66 of 193 28 April 2005 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Ah! So I'm not crazy after all. Well, at least not about the reviews disappearing. Good work MT!
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| Crazy Patrick Newbie United States learninglikecrazy.co Joined 7153 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes | Message 67 of 193 28 April 2005 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Hola,
Its Patrick from Learning Spanish Like Crazy. I love all this controversy. For starters, I want to thank the competition for spreading lies that my company has posted false reviews at Amazon. Not only have the rumors caused my company's sales to skyrocket, but on a personal level, the competition's unwarranted attacks on me and my company have just made me a more resilient and a persevering person. And more determined in my goal to create the number one learning Spanish product in the entire world. Interestingly, only one of my competitors is alleging that the reviews are false. He offers no evidence. Just bald allegations. But I know why he is having trouble believing them. I'll tell you why. For many years, there has really been only one serious Learning Spanish product in the $200 plus range. And that's Pimsleurs. Pimsluer must account for 80% of the sales for Spanish products in the $200 plus range. The other 20% is probably shared among a dozen different companies. And its been that way for years. Then less than a year ago, LSLC enters the picture. And for the first time ever, Pimsleur has a serious competitor. In less than a year, LSLC is the most talked about Spanish course other than Pimsleurs. And that creates jealousy, envy and hatred on the part of the competition. And the more jealousy, envy and hatred that they have for LSLC, the more free publicity that they create for LSLC. I read the comments on this site about LSLC. Out of the people that tried both LSLC and Pimlseur, they all said that LSLC is the best. As one person posted on this forum "the reviews may sound like hype, but everything said in them is true." I guess the competition would also say the messages that were posted on this site were also false or "made-up." But I don't blame them for thinking that. In less than a year, my company has done what other companies could not do in many years -- that is, to become a serious contender for Pimsleur's throne. The only thing standing in LSLC's way is that we must first finish a level 2 and 3. And its only a matter of months for that. By the way, if someone slanders my company or my company's product, I have a legal right to sue them. And I have no problem with exercising my legal rights. BTW, someone mentioned that LSLC appears 58 times on web pages at Amazon for other Learning Spanish products when doing a search. But did anyone bother to visit the web pages? If they had visited the web pages they would have found out that LSLC appears all over Amazon.com because we buy advertising from them. (Actually we but it from Google, and Amazon is one of Google's advertising partners.) For example, go to Amazon.com and do a search for "Rosetta Stone Spanish." You will get results that say: Related Searches: rosetta stone; pimsleur spanish; learning spanish like crazy The words "learning spanish like crazy" will be a clickable link that will take you to another clickable link on Amazon.com that will take you straight to my site when you click on it. Since we buy advertising for our product to be advertised on Amazon when people search for related Spanish products, you will see it all over Amazon. The competition has also claimed that my company has attacked them. This is completely false. I am probably responsible for more sales of their products than they have achieved through their own marketing efforts. Let me explain, I have an opt-in list of well over 13,000 people that wish to learn Spanish. A day does not go buy when 2 or more people don't email me and ask if I can recommend an additional Learning Spanish product. I have a pre-written list of learning Spanish products that I recommend that they buy at Amazon.com (I could post the list here, if anyone is interested) In closing, I ask that the competition continue to "promote" LSLC, and continue neglecting to promote thier own products. As a result of their malicious promotion, earlier this week we were contacted by a major foreign language learning book distributor that wants to buy the rights to LSLC to sell off-line in bookstores. If the competition keeps promoting LSLC, I am afraid that they are going to make me a very, very, very, rich man. BTW, I welcome any comments from customers that have ideas on how to improve LSLC. Someone mentioned that on some of his CDs some of the voices were slightly louder than others. The recording engineer fixed that problem several months ago. If you fax us your receipt at 914-235-0338 and let us know what CD you had the problem with we will send you a replacement CD at no charge. This is a great forum. Since we are so busy at LSLC, I won't be able to post on this forum as much as I would like to, but I will try to visit regulary. By the way, I also want to thank our customers that have given us so much support. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 68 of 193 28 April 2005 at 9:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Well, maybe they can repair its reputation. If I was standing in my local Barnes & Noble looking at a Pimsleur course, and you approached me with LSLC, I'd be pretty suspicious. The B&N booksellers would probably ask you to leave. If you think that posting fake reviews is any different, you're wrong. I don't think anyone here is questioning the quality of LSLC. Everyone here either seems to like it, or hasn't used it. But I think everyone agrees that there is no possible way that all those reviews are legitimate. Edited by heartburn on 28 April 2005 at 11:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| mtwalker Newbie United States imageray.net Joined 7187 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 69 of 193 28 April 2005 at 10:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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heartburn, when I first used the search link, I was skeptical. Then I
noticed sort of a pattern in the reviews. Many were posted around the same time, late September - eary October of 2004. Most didn't slam the product they were reviewing but rather said it was a good supplement/ complement to LSLC (a smart thing, because excessive negativity would be more likely to dicredit the review). The finally a reference to LSLC and/ or its website was mentioned at the end of the review. This made it the last thing you read when you read the review. Maybe all of that was coincidence and I'm imagining a "formula" but since it appears the folks at Amazon also question the validity and integrity of some of the reviews, maybe not. I think it is important to report something like this when you notice it. I personally shop on Amazon.com often and use the reviews in my decision making process. If the reviews aren't legitimate then I could end up wasting my money and time. I hope more people would try to police reviewers at Amazon. For those who've never done it, they've made the process quite easy. If anyone sees a questionable review just click on the "report this" link at the bottom of the review. A pop-up opens with a "report this as inappropriate" button. When you click it you are asked to sign-in to your Amazon account. From there you get a feedback form where you can post your concerns. They emailed me back and asked for a list of ISBN numbers and review subject lines, so I probably could have included that in the form and saved a step. On a final note, I personally don't have a problem with the LSLC product. I enjoy learning Spanish. They may have a great product but I haven't tried it. I considered buying LSLC when I first learned about it but didn't. Their marketing techniques (not just the Amazon thing) make me feel uneasy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 70 of 193 28 April 2005 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Yes, I noticed the exact same pattern. In fact:
Edited by heartburn on 28 April 2005 at 10:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Platiquemos Hexaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Panama platiquemos-letstalk Joined 7165 days ago 126 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish | Message 71 of 193 28 April 2005 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Interesting to hear from Mr. Jackson himself. I’m going to number my paragraphs mostly to keep from confusing myself.
1. Quote
In view of this, why does the letter I received from his lawyers say that he’s been caused him financial loss as well as irreparable damage to his reputation? You can’t have it both ways. Is calling the unnamed competition a liar not defamatory? 2. Quote
I had never heard of Crazy until the review posted by, I think “Laura”, which criticized Platiquemos for having things like “escuadrones de bombardeo”, etc. Those things are from the original FSI program, and are NOT in Platiquemos, which I think is certainly evidence that “Laura” had no familiarity with Platiquemos whatsoever. The fact that she then goes on to praise Crazy to the skies is only coincidental? The fact that she clearly knew nothing about Platiquemos isn’t evidence that her review was false? It was only after a second similar review of Platiquemos (some faint praise, lauding Crazy as God’s gift to language learners) that I checked some other products to se if they were getting similar reviews. And they were. Coincidence? I have been an avid reader of Amazon reviews for several years. It is VERY rare for a negative review of a product to praise another. 3. Quoting again:
I disagree that Pimsleur’s is “serious” in the sense of taking a learner to a “serious” level of proficiency. Pimsleur itself only claims to get students to the ACTFL Intermediate level, which is barely above the “survival” level. Among “serious” products (those that could take a student to a real level of proficicency, such as ACTFL’s Advanced or Superior, or FSI’s 2 or 3) the undisputed kings of the hill for many years have been the old, unrevised FSI Basic Course and Programmatic Course (although Programmatic never got finished, thus leaving people in a bit of a bind). 4. Quoting again:
Once again, how does that square with the lawsuit threat citing economic damage and damage to Jackson’s reputation? I don’t have any idea what his reputation in language circles is, but I do have a pretty good idea of what the reputation of bankruptcy lawyers is. 5. Yet another quote:
No, heartburn mentioned 166 instances in connection with 58 different products. Mr. Jackson’s smokescreen about purchased advertising doesn’t hold up very well when one considers that the search included “was this review helpful to you?”.I really should leave this to heartburn to answer, though. 6. Still another quote:
Please do post your list. Betcha Platiquemos isn’t on it. 7. Yet another long quote:
Two interesting points about this: If he wants the “competition” to continue to pick on him and his company, why does he also threaten to sue for irreparable damages? Second, the distributor of Platiquemos is Multilingual Books, certainly one of the bigger sellers of language products. They had never heard of Crazy until I brought up the Amazon review business with them. Finally, [this is me, not a quote] the “new” Crazy webpage with the pretty girl says: “You learn spoken Spanish not the useless junk taught in classrooms and other Spanish courses”[emphasis added] If that’s not defamatory, I wish somebody would tell me what is. I close with French General Cambronne’s famous reply to an offer to surrender and avoid annihilation. Edited by administrator on 28 April 2005 at 11:46am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 72 of 193 28 April 2005 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Please excuse me for entering this discussion in the middle but I have a few basic questions to enlighten me and other readers who many not be familiar with either Platiquemos, FSI or LearningSpanishLikeCrazy:
1) There were several messages questioning LearningSpanishLikeCrazy's style of marketing and ethics. Apart from that point which is amply discussed in this thread, is there anything else negative with LearningSpanishLikeCrazy? I'd like to hear if there are any comments about the product, pricing and customer experience as opposed to the way it's sold. 2) In what way, if at all, does LearningSpanishLikeCrazy differ from FSI? Is there any real-value added or is it just the same package with a few additional files and a different name? Also, does Mr. Jackson of LearningSpanishLikeCrazy deny formally that he encouraged people to post reviews on Amazon.com that mentionned his product in a favorable light? I saw that he says that people who say so have no proof, but that is not the same as categorically denying that he has anything to do with it. If possible I'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth. Edited by administrator on 28 April 2005 at 3:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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