Any Pimsleur Discount?

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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby aokoye » Mon Apr 03, 2017 6:08 am

Speakeasy wrote:Hypothesis 2
Simon & Schuster does monitor the discussions on this forum; new member “Pimsleur” is a legitimate representant of the holder of the copyright to the Pimsleur materials. This discussion thread should be taken as a very serious lesson as to publisher’s willingness to defend its legitimate business interests. We should all familiarize ourselves with the “Forum Rules” pertaining to “Copyright violations” and heed them. This was “for real” up to, and including, the punchline.

Your various hypotheses amuse me but I do want to note that it isn't uncommon for companies monitor the internet for mentions of their products. The only eyebrow raising thing in this case is that Pimsleur responded on a Sunday (though who knows - other companies might have lawyers who send out cease and desist notices on weekends).
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby rdearman » Mon Apr 03, 2017 10:42 am

I don't actually mind which case, if any, but I would remind all members we have very strict rules about copyright violation.
The administrators of this website will not tolerate the illegal distribution or links to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Encouraging the use of illegal copyrighted material is also prohibited.


The full rules around copyright violation and other rules for behaviour are located here: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2968
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby Pimsleur » Mon Apr 03, 2017 11:30 am

rdearman wrote:I don't actually mind which case, if any, but I would remind all members we have very strict rules about copyright violation.
The administrators of this website will not tolerate the illegal distribution or links to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Encouraging the use of illegal copyrighted material is also prohibited.


The full rules around copyright violation and other rules for behaviour are located here: http://forum.language-learners.org/view ... =25&t=2968


Thanks, Rderman.
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby emk » Mon Apr 03, 2017 3:00 pm

Speakeasy wrote:Hypothesis 2
Simon & Schuster does monitor the discussions on this forum; new member “Pimsleur” is a legitimate representant of the holder of the copyright to the Pimsleur materials. This discussion thread should be taken as a very serious lesson as to publisher’s willingness to defend its legitimate business interests. We should all familiarize ourselves with the “Forum Rules” pertaining to “Copyright violations” and heed them. This was “for real” up to, and including, the punchline.

Using my special administrator powers, I'm pretty sure that the "Pimsleur" account is actually somebody from Pimsleur's editorial offices.

Speakeasy wrote:It ended badly when someone, real or imagined, jumped in with a reminder that we’re all being watched ... all the time.

Speakeasy, you are being watched, all the time. ;-)

Pimsleur wrote:Unfortunately, the courses you purchased are unauthorized. We do not have any resellers that sell our courses at such a steep discount. These fraudulent sellers will often throw in out-of-print editions such as Spanish Plus or French Plus as additional incentives.

Unfortunately, I can confirm that fraudulent Pimsleur courses have been a problem over the years. Back on the old site, I remember having to ban a spammer who appeared to be selling illegally-produced copies of out-of-date Pimsleur courses for moderately high prices. It was extremely shady. Unfortunately, it was quite a while ago, and I don't have any of the details anymore.

As rdearman points out, we do have published forum rules on copyright. In nutshell: Please don't use this forum for distributing copyrighted materials without permission, and don't play wink-nudge games—they don't fool anybody. First of all, rdearman hates getting letters from lawyers. But also (though I can't speak specifically about Pimsleur), a lot of the best courses out there are produced by individuals (a few of them senior members here on this forum) or by pretty small businesses that are just barely hanging on. I very selfishly desire for these publishers to stay in business and keep making courses.

For those people looking for affordable courses:

I do know that many public libraries in the US carry Pimsleur courses, or can get them via interlibrary loan. The consensus of people who have tried Pimsleur on the forum is that it's a solid, audio-based drill course that will produce results (which is more than I can say for certain other expensive, well-known publishers). However, if your budget is limited and your library can't help, there are also some excellent courses from other publishers in the US$60 range. Or if you really like drills, the FSI courses are in the public domain and available for free download.
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby Pimsleur » Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:02 pm

emk wrote:I do know that many public libraries in the US carry Pimsleur courses, or can get them via interlibrary loan. The consensus of people who have tried Pimsleur on the forum is that it's a solid, audio-based drill course that will produce results (which is more than I can say for certain other expensive, well-known publishers). However, if your budget is limited and your library can't help, there are also some excellent courses from other publishers in the US$60 range. Or if you really like drills, the FSI courses are in the public domain and available for free download.


Thanks, emk. We are always trying to make our courses more affordable. A few years back we released digital versions, which we priced 65% cheaper than the CD courses. We are also working on new exciting pricing for this summer! While we are owned by a large publishing house, Pimsleur is a very small team of dedicated language enthusiasts. Our executive editor has been involved with Pimsleur since the 70's when her husband acquired the rights to the method from Paul. She still does--to this day--the final edit on every course that sees the light! People selling our courses illegally hurts us as a company and language learners as a whole. Selling our courses is what allows us to keep on working on new courses and updating existing courses (e.g., we entirely rewrote and rerecorded Korean late last year to adjust to the fast-changing nature of the Korean language.) The truth is that making a Pimsleur course is expensive. Each course is especially tailored to reflect the culture and grammar of the language while also carefully considering and applying the Pimsleur Method to each course. The seasoned Pimsleur editorial team works on every course with a native course writer as well as native informants to review the scripts. The whole process takes a year to write 30 lessons.
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby rdearman » Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:24 pm

@Pimsleur: If you're taking suggestions, transcripts would be useful, especially for languages like Mandarin. :)
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:53 pm

rdearman wrote:@Pimsleur: If you're taking suggestions, transcripts would be useful, especially for languages like Mandarin. :)
To a lesser degree, the "Unlimited" versions of the Pimsleur courses address the absence of written materials that are directly related to the audio lessons.

As a more general matter, I described my experience of having prepared my own transcripts for the Pimsleur German I, II, III modules in the discussion thread "Pimsleur transcript?" (http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?p=34601#p34601).

As a continuation of this digression, I would add that, about a year ago, I purchased used copies of all of the Reader's Digest "At Home with ..." editions of the Pimsleur courses that were published in the early 1980's. These editions included a small booklet that contained a glossary, a transcript of the introductory dialogues, cultural notes, and specific advice to travellers. My recommendation to the Pimsleur Team would be that they incorporate this type of documentation in all of their courses. I could, if they would like, prepare a PDF version of the "At Home with German" booklet and send it to them, subject to receiving a guarantee from them that they will obtain Reader's Digest permission for me to prepare and transmit the document.

EDITED: typos, wie immer!
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby Pimsleur » Mon Apr 03, 2017 5:31 pm

rdearman wrote:@Pimsleur: If you're taking suggestions, transcripts would be useful, especially for languages like Mandarin. :)


We've worked in the written content from the course into our premium Unlimited edition. For most users (of course there are some exceptions), providing a full transcript to follow along with the audio greatly reduces the efficacy of the method. This is something that Dr. Pimsleur observed in his research and the reason why he slowly develop the Pimsleur Method as he did. At the same time, we recognize that some learners are genuinely interested in the written aspects of the language. We carefully developed Unlimited to provide that written content (through various interactive exercises) while not detracting from a method that we know works very well for its stated goal.
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby Xenops » Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:04 pm

Pimsleur wrote:
rdearman wrote:@Pimsleur: If you're taking suggestions, transcripts would be useful, especially for languages like Mandarin. :)


We've worked in the written content from the course into our premium Unlimited edition. For most users (of course there are some exceptions), providing a full transcript to follow along with the audio greatly reduces the efficacy of the method. This is something that Dr. Pimsleur observed in his research and the reason why he slowly develop the Pimsleur Method as he did. At the same time, we recognize that some learners are genuinely interested in the written aspects of the language. We carefully developed Unlimited to provide that written content (through various interactive exercises) while not detracting from a method that we know works very well for its stated goal.


To my knowledge, Audible doesn't sell the Unlimited editions? I have found that site to be the cheapest way to legally obtain lessons.

I confess that I have been a Pimsleur fan for years, but lately I have dropped the practice of using them. Towards the end of level 1 of French and into the first half of level 2, I was very frustrated with the lack of explanation for the past tense: "I have gone", "I have not seen her since two years ago", etc, because I never knew when to use "je suis" or "j'ai" with the past participle. As I judge my handle of the lesson by giving the answer before the native speaker does, I could never get the right answer, and thus became frustrated. I love the idea of Pimsleur, and I saw the results of using the Japanese one when I visited Japan, but now my enthusiasm has decreased significantly.
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Re: Any Pimsleur Discount?

Postby Pimsleur » Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:20 pm

Xenops wrote:
To my knowledge, Audible doesn't sell the Unlimited editions? I have found that site to be the cheapest way to legally obtain lessons.



That's correct. Audible doesn't sell the premium course. It is only available as a download from the official Pimsleur.com store. A few online sellers carry the boxed version, but those are being phased out since there is less and less of a market for DVD installers. As a matter of fact, our recently released Japanese Unlimited and English for Spanish Unlimited courses are only available as downloads.
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