ordering wenlin

[snarfer]

I've been trying to order wenlin from wenchina.com but have received no response to my emails. It's been nearly a week. Anybody have any better ideas as to how to get hold of this software at less than full retail? Wenchina.com advertises it for $150. I'm located in Beijing.

[roddy]

I fired an email off to Wenlin and they say they are looking into it. I'm kind of surprised Wenlin is working with someone who can't answer emails and has a website that, in Firefox at least, is a complete disaster.

Roddy

[snarfer]

The website looks marginally better in MS IE, but gains little in the way of function. I actually was wondering if the company is even legit, but they do advertise on on google.com and they're listed on the WenLin site. In fact it you search for WenLin on google.com their ad comes up.

Considering the evident popularity of the software I also can't understand why there doesn't seem to be a single Beijing retail outlet for it.

[fenlan]

Considering the evident popularity of the software I also can't understand why there doesn't seem to be a single Beijing retail outlet for it.

Maybe because it is overpriced?

[roddy]

Yeah, my first thought was that they weren't legit, but as you say they are listed on Wenlin's own site. Anyway, I got a response from Wenlin saying that they would have someone look into it, and also asking me to refer people to their own Ordering Page - I had a quick look through some resellers, and it seems to be common to get $50 off Wenlin's $250 suggested retail. I didn't see anything cheaper than this guy's $150 though, so I'd guess being based in China he keeps his overheads down.

I also got an email from the guy at Wenchina.com - Wenlin must have got in touch with him pretty quickly. However I don't think he actually read my email, as he seemed to think I was trying to get in touch with him, and didn't seem to have followed the link to this topic. I'm assuming he won't mind me posting the email address he used as it should bring him at least one customer - mpdr (a) psmail . net

At a guess I'd say the forwarding from the wenchina.com address to his real address has failed. Anyway, try at that address - and if you want to do me a favour, mention you got the info from this site - every little helps.

Cheers

Roddy

[snarfer]

Thanks Roddy, I will mention you.

As far as overpriced software is concerned, well the foreign language bookstore sells plenty of useless overpriced junk, such as "Interactive Chinese". So why not WenLin which, even if overpriced, might actually be useful?

[Taibei]

I'm kind of surprised Wenlin is working with someone who can't answer emails and has a website that, in Firefox at least, is a complete disaster.

Well, the Wenlin site itself is not too pretty to look at in any browser. (A few months ago I even went so far as to recode the Wenlin FAQ page for them. But I never got a response from them about that.) But at least the Wenlin site is in valid HTML -- which is more than can be said for almost all of the Web.

[roddy]

Agree on the pricing issue - as far as I can see Wenlin is the only decent game in town. If there's another PC software package with the ABC dictionary bundled I'd like to know about it.

Roddy

[wenchina]

We are a legitimate company selling Wenlin in China or the world. The reason we could not be reach is due to all the spam in this world. We are now upgrading to a new website and will move our website to a new provider. Sorry for the inconvinience caused due to these problems.

[wenchina]

Interesting to follow this thread. Yes, as from November we are hoping to work with an outlet in Beijing which will be posted at our Wenchina website. If any of you can recommend one, let me know, I am for helping get Wenlin on the shelves in Beijng.

NB. For not being able to forward emails: this is the problem with the provider we have now... Chinese... so that's why we are moving. Before the summer it was possible now not anymore...