Rosetta Stone

Rosetta stone used to be ridiculously expensive. $1000 for a few CDs of training was way too expensive. You can take a college level class for far less money. But now I found that it only costs $99 for their package of downloadable content and I have always wanted to learn new asian languages especially for travel. For that price it is definitely worth it and I enjoy using my ipad to learn on the go.

I bought their Japanese Level 1-3 CD-ROM several years after it first came out. The version that I had was compatible with Windows XP and Vista. Now, years later, I wanted to unlock the software so that I could donate it to a coworker's daughter who was very interested in learning Japanese. She's home-schooled, so I thought that this would help her in her studies. When the software is installed on your computer there's a product key that has to be unlocked before you can install it on another computer. Since I bought this software about 10 years ago, I no longer have the computer that it was installed on, so I emailed Rosetta Stone's customer service to see if they would unlock the product key for me. They told me that I would have to log onto the computer and do it myself. I explained to them that the computer had died and had been disposed of many years ago and that I would need them to do it. They told me that they could do it; however, since the software was so old, I just needed to just go online and sign-up for the new online program. They told me that the discs were no good. Of course, I wasn't having that. I paid around $300 (possibly more) when I bought this CD-ROM and I wanted the software unlocked. So, over a period of several weeks I emailed back and forth with them explaining over and over again that if someone has a computer with Windows XP or Vista (or can run one in compatibility mode) that the CD-ROM was not obsolete and that I needed them to unlock it. In the end, they basically refused to unlock the $300 software that I paid for and owned. So, having that horrible experience with them, I will never buy another one of their products and I cannot recommend them. They lost a customer who would've spent more money with them. But now, I will never give them another dime.