March 1st Pricing Changes

So actually, you cannot buy a year, and then buy an additional 2 years. The maximum you can buy is two years today, regardless of credit.

Sebire, in my case, I had a year left, but I used that credit towards a two year subscription which pushed my expiry out to Feb 2012. You can confirm this by looking at the expiry date in the "my account" section of the "home" page.

No problem :)

Oh okay, thanks for getting back to me ousijia ^_^

Doesn't really sound fair, does it?

Hi Doodlemonster,

If you stay with your recurring basic then the price is the same - however if you upgrade to premium for two months, and then go back to basic after March then you will be charged the new price for a basic subscription.

Just to add my bit : I'm primarily here to learn Chinese from the mp3s and PDFs. I like to have a bit of fun within the community, and when some discussion sparks my interest I like to get involved. CPod is letting me do this as a non-subscriber. Thank you, CPod. If CPod revoked it's policy with regard to non-subscribers, I could very easily live with that. I'd also like to say that I think that the product (not service) which CPod delivers is top-notch. I don't consider downloading in bulk to be a variety of theft - CPod allows this to be done, and I reckon I've paid for it. Because CPod beats it's competitors hands-down I will be re-subscribing to follow new lessons at some time in the future, when my piggy-bank is looking healthier.

Another thought just struck me - I am only able to devote 30 or 40 minutes a day to CPod, thus my 'consumption level' is pretty low. If my job were less demanding, if I was unemployed, or whatever, then I would be able to spend four or five times as much time with CPod, and my 'value for money' would be proportonally greater. It could be argued that the pricing structure is biased against those like me who haven't so much free time; surely a good argument against the idea that downloading in bulk is somehow 'not playing the game'. If I had that much more time to spend with CPod, then I would have been able to study those 2 or 3 year's-worth of lessons without resorting to bulk downloading. A bit of a dilemma, yes ?

Anyway, I really ought to get on with studying :)

Firstly, I guarantee I am here for the mp3s and PDFs only. I am an active member of the community because I am here. I could easily cope without that aspect - in fact I think it often distracts me from my learning. And what YOU fail to see is that the vast majority of CPod users are NOT active members of the community.

Secondly, I fully appreciate how hard the people at CPod are working. I just believe a large amount of their work is misdirected. I have not asked for CPod to be cheaper - only stated that there is no justification for the rise based on where it is intended that money be spent. I am saying I could cope with a rise if the money were spent on lessons, and not on BS.

What you fail to see is that we are here not because of the mp3 files.(like you say go_manly) because if you were, you wouldn't be such an active member of the community.

If you want to just download the files, then great, do it. It's just like downloading movies without paying for them or music. The fact is, we are here because we want to be part of a community where we exchange ideas, questions and answers. This service is not just giving us a podcast, it's much more.

If Cpod was cheaper and the quality would be affected, we would all be complaining and saying how much better others are even though it's more expensive. I think we should take a step back and realize that there are people over at Cpod that are working pretty hard, and here we are saying, let's get 7 lessons a week, give us this, give us that. If you don't believe me, I urge you to visit those guys over in Shanghai and see how much work and the complex process it takes to bring us our lessons.

That's what I did during the last 2 weeks of my subscription - downloaded just about everything I could from CPod. I could go for 2 or 3 years without renewing my subscription, but probably won't.

Precisely.

Adding to this, I think most people have enough lessons stored up to last them a long time. It would be tempting for people to let their current subscription lapse and learn the lessons they already have. Then in 3 months time, sign up for a 1 month subscription, download the last 3 months lessons, then cancel the subscription after a month. Then just keep upgrading and cancelling every 3 months. It works out much cheaper.

Don't worry, I've just resubscribed for another 2 years. But I think this example illustrates the folly of the short-term subscriptions. I (and many others) am here for the lessons - the rest is just bells-and-whistles. And a one-month user can have as many lessons in his archive as someone who has been paying since the beginning.

Oh, I just realised, I can't do that, because my 6 months expires after the end of the new prices. Did I choose the wrong time to subscribe, or what?! :)

So having newly subscribed for 6 months, if I now set that subscription to automatically renew, I will never pay more than I've already paid?

Sorry but I don't understand why you, or anyone, would want to discourage users, esp long-time users who have seen how CPod services have evolved over the years, from giving their feedback here.

really high quality, as in not so frequently plagued by server problems? *sigh* If so, I would be interested ... I think CPod realize that they may be starting to wear users' patience thin. And that the "complaints" voiced here are actually the opposite of hostile; they are advance notice of how some users may decide to act in the future, users who wish they could remain loyal, telling CPod what it is that may make them leave. I'm sure they're listening.

If Pete is brought back with a weekly or even bi-weekly PWP, that would really make a positive impression on me CPod!

kimiik, there are some really high quality alternatives out there, particularly if you're above Elementary. This is 2010, not 2007 any more, and CPod shouldn't be complacent.

The issues I brought up are all things I'm willing to overlook in a start-up, especially in light of the value ChinesePod does provide. They do, however, make price increases a little harder to swallow. I'm not planning to go anywhere else, but if I'm going to absorb a price increase, ChinesePod should be ready to absorb some criticism.

Henning: Good point. After 2008, when I started my Guided subscription, I didn't spend much time on the website. I sort of "took my ball and went home." I guess I need to take some time to look around and appreciate improvements that occurred in the mean time.

In fact, Cpod's competitors can't really match the quality of Cpod lessons. Cpod is, by far, the leader of chinese podcasts and it has even set a high standard for other language podcasts. By experience, I know that this high standard suits very well the way I learn languages.

Then, as long as the quality maintains, I'm stuck with Cpod and will pay the price. ;o)

Maarco, as I said before, CPod's competitors have basic subscriptions for a fraction more than the old prices, and much less than the new prices. The new features are great for the premium subscribers, but why pay over $120 for a very similar service that you can get for $60 or less elsewhere?

In reality, many people would ask for :

* Access the 6 last lessons with no extra features

But I understand that this kind of offer is not in the interest of Cpod.

IMHO the ideal approach to pricing below Premium would be modular, e.g.

* 4 Practice sessions for x$

* Have your written homework (max length: w characters) corrected for y$

* Access 20 lessons with all features for z$.

* Access to the Skritter feature

* Using a mobile app

With Premium staying the all-inclusive-package.

Sebire, I am afraid to say that your point is not valid. If your point was valid, then let's complain to apple for charging me 250 bucks for an iPod in order to subsidize their new iPad.

On the other hand, if LiveMocha is so great, stay there! I think ChinesePod is a great service that has undergone a lot of changes, and as a startup, we have been getting a lot for a fraction of what you could get anywhere else! The price increase isn't that bad people! At the end of the day, you either accept it and pay, or leave. Period.

That may be the case, but if you have listened to a lot of the lessons that interest you in a particular channel, then the once a week new lesson is exactly the same service as we were receiving in 2007.

Furthermore, I believe when the free lessons were removed, the promise was that this money was to be ploughed into innovative teaching methods (such as video). Video was shortly axed, and for a basic subscriber, only the activity stream has been added (and I have found LiveMocha to be a suitable alternative to that - I get feedback within about 15 mins usually).

As Tal said before, all these additional services such as iPhone and Android apps are no use if you have neither an iPhone or an Google phone. Do iPhone customers have to pay for the iPhone app when the download it? Or is it given away for free, subsidised by non-users subscriptions? Why is my subscription going up by 80% when I get nothing extra for that? Perhaps a new customer will get a massive archive for them to play with - that is of less value for a long-term customer.

There are price increases, and there a price increases.

Point taken. I'd just like to highlight the fact that the quantity of lessons in our archive has grown by (depending on when in 2007 you started using the service) around 700-800 lessons. So really the content people are paying for is changing (for the better, imho). Think of it like a book. You buy it and magically tomorrow it's one page longer!

To be fair: The value (of the Premium subscription) has increased significantly in the course of the last year, the most notable addition being the Skritter add-in. Also, I now use the "Placement test" for practicing vocab about every second day. And there have been numerous smaller updates as well. 2008 was a bad year, 2009 was fine.

Not going to happen.

Regarding Basic Subscription: It is still cheaper to subscribe to the basic for 2 years under the new price structure ($199/24 = $8.30), than to renew monthly at $9. Best deal is to renew for two years before the March 1st deadline :)

Hi forbronco -

One-month subscriptions started before March 1st (at the price of $9 per month, on an automatically recurring basis) will remain at $9 per month for as long as they continue to be renewed. In this sense, you can "lock in" to this subscription. The other subscriptions do not work on this ongoing basis, and therefore cannot be "locked-into".

For new subscribers to Basic (after March 1st), however, the monthly subscription will be $14.

I hope that clarifies the matter?

a few years ago, the content was free on the web, now the itunes feed is rather empty.

Because a few years ago I read it was 80/20. Times have changed...

Thanks Hank for being transparent.

So if I remember the subscriptions correctly, 50% of the users will be uneffected and possibly more if users choose to continue with there current re occuring subscriptions!?!

why?

Seriously? No way. Impossible.

Roughly speaking ChinesePod subscriptions break down Basic (35%), Premium (50%), Guided & Executive Plan (15%).

hehe thanks for the pointer ^^ but I don't have any school ID though :/ I have like a diary with my name on that we write stuff in such as coursework/homework/field trips etc. I guess that could partly count as school ID?

Edit: I've just found a printed copy of my timetable with my full name and form class on the top. That difinitely counts, right? But it's been very doodled on though... :S (hence me being the doodlemonster :P) but you can still read the main bulk of the text.

Do you think it's worth sending these things off?

"Be sure to send us proof of your full-time student status (at least 2 of the following):

Scanned copy of your current school ID

A verification email from your .edu address

Current class schedule

"

student = student = student ;)

I wish I could get this chance.

Thanks for the help everyone! ^^ It was interesting to hear about the "lock on" of old prices so i'll make sure I get in there before March 1st!

Unfortunately, I don't think I qualify for a student discount since I'm not at university but I'm 16 doing my GCSEs at school :( But thanks for the tip anyway ^^ I'll bare that in mind for when i do go to university.

Thanks for adding this detail, matthiask.

Further details here: http://chinesepod.com/help/subscription#2

- And, I agree: I hope you will stay, doodly!

@Doodly,

hey, if you are a student, you just have to submit your university email address to cpod and you get a discount of 20% now and 25% later, so it's not 14 but 10,4 US for you. (hope you will stay on board!)

Hi daniel70

Monthly subscriptions are unaffected if purchased before March 1st. This is because the monthly subscription is the only type that automatically recurs - an ongoing contract, as it were.

Selected 6,12 & 24-month subscriptions will be affected by the changes after 1st March, as outlined in the blog.

So, to take advantage of the "old" price, you would need to purchase/extend before March 1st.

Please do contact us if you would like any help or further advice. We're here to help if we can.

I'm afraid I don't fully understand. Does this mean that if I have a yearly premium subscription, and I make no changes to my account, at renewal time next October, I will be charged the old price, not the new price? Hank uses "lock in" in one of his blog comments. Have I already "locked in" the old rate?

Hi doodlemonster -

With the incoming changes, monthly recurring subscriptions bought before March 1st will not rise in price after that date. So, if you are paying $9 a month now, you will not be affected.

Also, from March 1st students will receive a 25% discount on new subscriptions (previously it was 20%).

In this way, we have tried to minimise the impact the price changes have on students.

If you'd be willing to contact us at support@praxislanguage.com or PM me, we'll be able to look into arranging your student discount.

Thanks

why the rant. I cannot hear the mp3's from the android browser - I'm very happy about the android app.

Well, considering CPod's competitors price their basic subscription at less than half what CPod are proposing, what reason do I have to stay loyal considering the Basic subscription has had very little value added to it over the years? Consider I may listen to one lesson a week during a good week, and less during a bad week, at what probably works out at around £1 for 10 mins- I may as well just have actual lessons. I was paying £6 an hour at university.

I'd be all for the Android/iPhone app being an add-on rather than part of the service. I don't think it is for everyone. I considered getting an android so I could use the service, but decided it was an expense I did not need and wouldn't greatly add to my learning experience. I have occasionally have time to study when I am out and about, but not enough to make it worth it. I can see how it would be useful for some. But I'm not comfortable subsidizing it.

That said, I am very happy with Chinesepod.

Hi Bicmatic,

Am sending you an email now regarding the phone survey.

bicmatic - I'm sorry to hear this. I'll look into it for you first thing tomorrow, and make sure it is followed-up.

Thanks a lot, go_manly ! I'll take a good look at it at the weekend.

是的。道林·格雷的画像！

Well, I didn't get that feeling. In any case I tend to be concentrating too much on learning the language to worry about idiosyncrasies of the hosts.

Hi Brick,

道林·格雷的画像?

the hosts on germanclass are very annoying and give an impression of beign bored.

I've checked out GermanClass101.com - its similar to this site, and may be what you are looking for.

Hey Henning - you're old ? I've got a festering portrait picture of myself safely locked away in the attic; you've discovered the same secret ??

Not just difficult for English speakers - it was a Polish colleague, who is fluent in both German and English, who told me this. Like go_manly says, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the foreigner to understand his problems with your language. I wouldn't have a clue if the statement is correct or not, as I don't speak German. I wasn't trying to be objectionable ( for a change, Haha.); I actually love the sound of your language, appreciate Germany's massive contribution to European culture, and wish I had been taught it at school.

east germany @_@

Matthias,

kleine Bällchen...Huh? Never heard that expression in my life. Are you living in another Germany than I do? Maybe that is a generation thing (I am too old).

:)

But here comes the challenge: Transform that one into a Chinese version. High score if you find a Chengyu that captures exactly the same meaning and tone (there surely is one).

you got it right. you hear this from time to time in Germany. when somebody want to threaten you without being serious about it.

OK, I'm missing something in the translation.

"Make little balls, and throw them at him until his HAIR bleeds"??

LOL

kleine Baellchen formen und auf ihn werfen bis ihm die Haare bluten.

"Furthermore, the auxiliary serves as beacon that a verb will follow."

Yes, and that is what is initially so frustrating for English speakers. When we hear the auxiliary, we know the verb has to follow. But we are so used to hearing it immediately, that we often focus too much on listening for the verb, and not enough on the rest of the sentence. Just as with leaning any new language however, it becomes easier with time.

Anyway, enough German, back to Mandarin.

What the heck: (with or without 'mit') zerreissen, falten, fallen lassen, ein Spielzeug machen, zerknüllen, das Auto aufschreiben, ...

Indeed. Now I got your point. And agree with all of your arguments. However, the point I wanted to make is that the verb is not the most important token in a sentence, since the object limits the choice of verbs in most of the cases to just a few options.

[

gosh, I'm too German

let me rephrase:

However, the point I wanted to make is as follows. The verb is not the most important token in a sentence. The object limits the choice of verbs to just few options. This holds for most cases.

]

Furthermore, the auxilary serves as beacon that a verb will follow.

There is no difference at all between your example and mine, but you missed the point.

The points I was making were:

1. That the last verb is more important than the auxiliary. I wasn't saying that English or German has the better word order. Your example should have involved leaving out the auxiliary, not the noun, if you wanted to challenge that point.

2. There is going to be some difficulty for an English speaker trying to deal with that word order, when he is used to hearing the verb early in the sentence.

okay, maybe "object" is a too harsh word. I didn't wanna offend any native with this.

However, your example is rather weak. What actually are the options what you may do with a paper tissue. spielen, schnauben, den Boden aufwischen.

On the other hand: What is the win if I may say:

You may play with this ...

So tell me with what you may play (and I am not thinking of a paper tissue here ;)

Object? That's a bit over the top isn't it? He is only citing a commonly stated problem encountered by English speakers trying to learn German, just as if you were stating a particular difficulty you had with learning Mandarin.

In any case, the final verb is MORE important than the auxiliary in understanding the meaning.

Sie dürfen mit diesen Papierserviette ...

Tell me the meaning of the sentence without the final verb.

I object to this statement. :) Especially since the verb is a) not too essential for understanding and b) does end up in the end of the sentence only if an auxiliary verb is used.

Derrick

Thanks anyway ! I never learned German at school, much to my regret. I've been told that the worst part of understanding German is having to wait untill the end of the speech for the meaning to be revealed with the final verb :-)

Cheers.

I started learning German at school, then after a couple of years break, picked it up again. This is more than 20 years ago, so I have no memory of the resources I used, and I won't be much help to you I'm afraid.

But I remember that after a couple of years, I could watch episodes of Derryk (not sure if that is the correct spelling) the German detective series, and understand a fair slab of it without the subtitles. That is something I am nowhere near in my Mandarin studies. Unfortunately, I have forgotten a large chunk of my German over the last 20 years.

Hi go_manly,

I'm also not keen on brick walls ( hellotherebrick was my initial response to the early Intermediate lessons); I think that learning is done best when it is not a struggle, but a pleasure to do. I often think about learning German, but am put off when I think about what to do after Pimsleur (which I found to be a perfect introduction to language) or Michel Thomas. I'd really appreciate it if you could give me a pointer or two here. Did you take German classes ?

Yes, that's my experience of the more recent 'Intermediate' lessons, too. When I first graduated myself from staying at the Ele level, I wanted my routine to stay the same - just plug in and listen to/study the new Intermed lessons in the car whilst commuting. But I found that I needed to go over the lessons at home a couple of times first with a dictionary, making a few notes, before I can just relax and listen to them and let them sink in. After a few months I've got used to my new routine, and I'm definitely finding things easier already. My strategy is to work backwards from the recent Intermediate lessons.

But that is not what consolidation is. Consolidation is a follow-up to learning, so the just-learned material is used and not forgotten. A means of fixing new material in your memory. And for me (and a significant number of others I'm sure) it is necessary.

When learning German I didn't have the feeling of having my 'comfort zone constantly stretched'. It was slow and steady, but with measurable progress all the way - no brick walls. So no, it doesn't have to be that way.

I'm afraid you're wrong re. consolidation. If you stick with the Intermediate level (for example) long enough you should certainly notice words, phrases, and patterns cropping up again and again in different contexts and situations. I think it's possible to be too impatient for progress which has to come with persistent and patient effort over the long term. Having one's comfort zone constantly stretched is part of the deal of language learning I'm afraid.

A large proportion of the "new material" is old material, and if you do check out older Intermediate lessons I'm sure you can't fail to notice that the "Intermediate" level is now much easier and slower than formerly. It might be better renamed as your "bridge" between Elementary and Intermediate, since the UI level is now the real intermediate level.

Personally, what I really want is not more new material. Just 5 or 10 minutes each week of discussion using old material from the Newbie and Elementary lessons, and perhaps lower Intermediate. No new words, no explanation, just discussion at a nice steady pace. I find that every Intermediate lesson I hear has so many new words, and so many other words that I've seen only once or twice before, that I just can't sit back, relax, and listen. Sometimes we need to stop learning new material, and consolidate what we have already learned, and I think consolidation is one thing lacking on this site.

So pick a theme, find all the lessons at say the intermediate level related to that theme, and just have 2 people having a chat using that vocabulary, and little other specialised vocabulary.

Oh right.This makes me really curious as to how many lessons most poddies are getting through a week.I can't keep up with all the new lessons coming out ,let alone ever finding time to delve into the archive.Having said that I have nothing against more lessons.Personally if there were to be more I'd either like to see pretzell's suggestion of a return of movie madness or another whole new channel exploring the language from a different level.I'd really especially love to see them have another crack at a radical show.

Well we're already getting 2 Elementary or 2 Intermediate lessons each week. There's no reason why 2 levels can't be doubled up.

Or, we could have an Elementary-Intermediate bridging level.

Who said that?

What do ya reckon the 7th should be?

It goes without saying that I will be able to get over this price change. ;o)

By "salto", I didn't mean "salto mortale" (from italian) but challenging jump (aka athletic salto or salto).

One of the challenges we face at Praxis Language is communication with our engineering team which is comprised of only Chinese (I appreciate the irony since we are a language training company!). John does his best to bridge this gap, but it is a big job for him alone.

Let's do this. I am a big believer in the power of third-party API's so I will step in and help bridge the gap between our internal tech team and the developer community. February is a little bit chaotic with Chinese New Year, but let's brainstorm/plan until the end of this month and then I will have them free up some tech resources from March 1 to start moving this project forward.

An aside, but for some reason every time I think of HTML scraping I think of pre-modern dentistry. Scary stuff.

Hank, I look forward to the API. Bear in mind that some of your developer community has API design experience. Don't be afraid to make use of our knowledge and experience.

Hopefully the community will actively help us out creating the API's and nurturing a more formal developer community.

Sounds great. I hope you're not shy about releasing betas to the community. Anything would be better than scraping moving html.

@bababardwan,

We would have done this sooner, but we want to be sure when we do there won't be any API changes that will break everyone's apps. The Tech Team is busy re-working the groups architecture on the site (to better support ChinesePod Teachers) and when they finish that we will get started. Our own iPhone & Android app's will use the same API, so all the features currently in those apps will be opened up.