Thursday, March 09, 2006
Prentice Hall and the Kotler's Marketing Managment 12e MP3 study guides
What a bunch buffoons at Prentice Hall!
Long story short, if you are looking for Kotler's Marketing Management 12e MP3s, go to http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?productID=BK_PEAR_000002&BV_UseBVCookie=Yesdo not use Prentice Hall, especially if you are in a rush. See the full story below....
I already have issues with the college textbook industry (Now being a proud member of CALPIRG) and how they have the audacity to charge $180 for Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller's Marketing Management 12e in the United States and yet charge 495 ruppee's (Or about $11) in India for the same book. With my newly learned marketing lingo, I now understand how obscene price discrimination can get.
Anyway, since the class started over 10 weeks ago, one of the interesting add ons to the book was an MP3 study guide (Marketing Management, VangoNotes Audio Study Guide, 12/E ISBN: 0-13-228147-3) from Vango (www.vangonotes.com). I was highly interested back in early January when the class started, but according to Prentice Hall, the materials were not to be available until February 1. Fair enough, midterms would still be a few weeks off. Prentice hall also referenced Vango's website, incorectly http://www.vangonotes.comhttp://www.vangonotes.com, but I was able to use my superior technological abilities to figure the issue out and get to the website, try out the demo and set my mind to purchase the item. Note Vango Notes does not sell directly or provide any contact links on their site. Strange, but whatever.
8 days later and still no availability, so I contact Prentice Hall, I alert them in an email that their available date is past due and their link to Vango Notes is incorrect. They thank me for the information about the site (Still broken at that point) and I am told to contact the local rep, Nicola Greenfield regarding the release date. No repsonse to emails or voice mails from Nicola, but they do finally fix the URL for VangoNotes.
On February 14, I finally get word back from Prentice Hall that the new release date is expected to be March 1. Woo Hoo! Midterms be damned, at least I can get it for the final in April (I Hope).
On Monday, February 27, our prefessor receives an email from Prentice Hall that the MP3s will be made available. I have optimism that if they are contacting the professor that they will meet their commitment.
March 1 came and went, again I submit another support case. Where are the MP3s? On March 3 I receive a response:
"Dear Mr. Brown,
The Kotler, Marketing Management, VangoNotes Audio Study Guide, 12/E was delayed in production but is now complete. They are still determining the exact live date but expect to have this product posted for sale by mid-March at the latest.
We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Should you have additional questions relating to this issue, feel free to reply to this message so that we may assist you further..."
So I faithfully check every day. Nothing! Availability date still estimated as 3/1/2006. Meanwhile, one of my classmates was smart enough to check other MP3 websites and found it already availalble!!! Why Vango does not list available sources or Prentice Hall do the honorable thing and point me to Audible.com is beyond me. Now I am going to download and purchase form Audible. I am contacting the rest of my classmates and getting them to purchase their copy from audible.com.
So another purchase from an American student lost for Prentice Hall (2 semesters I have bought their books in Grey Market version from http://www.half.com) I didnt get the ruppee price, but still paid less that a 1/3 than the bookstore's price. One of my team members recommended I enter the Business Plan competition undercutting the bookstore by flying to India each trimester and buy everyone's books for them there and booking the miles hahaha.
3/22/2006 Update. The Audible files will download in a proprietary .aa format. This makes the audio files less than portable. I still think this is great resource, but will require a little elbow grease. If you are a new Audible member, you can get the audio files for $9 (1 free download with your subscription). I would then make sure you download the Audible Manager. Then go to Goldwave and download their audio studio application. With about 10 minutes of playing with Goldwave, you should have it down. With the Audible Manager loaded, you can easily convert the files from .aa to .mp3 with Goldwave. The key is to reduce the bitrate to 48 kbps. Default conversion rates triple the file size. At 48 kpbs, the files only increase 50%, but all the chapters will be about 230Mb, easily fitting on an MP3 jukebox CD or flash drive.
Oh, and still no MP3s available on the Prentice Hall site. ;-)
3/25/2006 Update. Prentice Hall finally made the product available, however it's a link, guess where it goes? Back to Audible. Do yourself a favor and go to the link at the top of this post directly to avoid Prentice Hall getting a referral that they dont deserve.
Long story short, if you are looking for Kotler's Marketing Management 12e MP3s, go to http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?productID=BK_PEAR_000002&BV_UseBVCookie=Yesdo not use Prentice Hall, especially if you are in a rush. See the full story below....
I already have issues with the college textbook industry (Now being a proud member of CALPIRG) and how they have the audacity to charge $180 for Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller's Marketing Management 12e in the United States and yet charge 495 ruppee's (Or about $11) in India for the same book. With my newly learned marketing lingo, I now understand how obscene price discrimination can get.
Anyway, since the class started over 10 weeks ago, one of the interesting add ons to the book was an MP3 study guide (Marketing Management, VangoNotes Audio Study Guide, 12/E ISBN: 0-13-228147-3) from Vango (www.vangonotes.com). I was highly interested back in early January when the class started, but according to Prentice Hall, the materials were not to be available until February 1. Fair enough, midterms would still be a few weeks off. Prentice hall also referenced Vango's website, incorectly http://www.vangonotes.comhttp://www.vangonotes.com, but I was able to use my superior technological abilities to figure the issue out and get to the website, try out the demo and set my mind to purchase the item. Note Vango Notes does not sell directly or provide any contact links on their site. Strange, but whatever.
8 days later and still no availability, so I contact Prentice Hall, I alert them in an email that their available date is past due and their link to Vango Notes is incorrect. They thank me for the information about the site (Still broken at that point) and I am told to contact the local rep, Nicola Greenfield regarding the release date. No repsonse to emails or voice mails from Nicola, but they do finally fix the URL for VangoNotes.
On February 14, I finally get word back from Prentice Hall that the new release date is expected to be March 1. Woo Hoo! Midterms be damned, at least I can get it for the final in April (I Hope).
On Monday, February 27, our prefessor receives an email from Prentice Hall that the MP3s will be made available. I have optimism that if they are contacting the professor that they will meet their commitment.
March 1 came and went, again I submit another support case. Where are the MP3s? On March 3 I receive a response:
"Dear Mr. Brown,
The Kotler, Marketing Management, VangoNotes Audio Study Guide, 12/E was delayed in production but is now complete. They are still determining the exact live date but expect to have this product posted for sale by mid-March at the latest.
We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Should you have additional questions relating to this issue, feel free to reply to this message so that we may assist you further..."
So I faithfully check every day. Nothing! Availability date still estimated as 3/1/2006. Meanwhile, one of my classmates was smart enough to check other MP3 websites and found it already availalble!!! Why Vango does not list available sources or Prentice Hall do the honorable thing and point me to Audible.com is beyond me. Now I am going to download and purchase form Audible. I am contacting the rest of my classmates and getting them to purchase their copy from audible.com.
So another purchase from an American student lost for Prentice Hall (2 semesters I have bought their books in Grey Market version from http://www.half.com) I didnt get the ruppee price, but still paid less that a 1/3 than the bookstore's price. One of my team members recommended I enter the Business Plan competition undercutting the bookstore by flying to India each trimester and buy everyone's books for them there and booking the miles hahaha.
3/22/2006 Update. The Audible files will download in a proprietary .aa format. This makes the audio files less than portable. I still think this is great resource, but will require a little elbow grease. If you are a new Audible member, you can get the audio files for $9 (1 free download with your subscription). I would then make sure you download the Audible Manager. Then go to Goldwave and download their audio studio application. With about 10 minutes of playing with Goldwave, you should have it down. With the Audible Manager loaded, you can easily convert the files from .aa to .mp3 with Goldwave. The key is to reduce the bitrate to 48 kbps. Default conversion rates triple the file size. At 48 kpbs, the files only increase 50%, but all the chapters will be about 230Mb, easily fitting on an MP3 jukebox CD or flash drive.
Oh, and still no MP3s available on the Prentice Hall site. ;-)
3/25/2006 Update. Prentice Hall finally made the product available, however it's a link, guess where it goes? Back to Audible. Do yourself a favor and go to the link at the top of this post directly to avoid Prentice Hall getting a referral that they dont deserve.
