Ashampoo Office 3 -- discounted to $29.95, if you know where to look

[TomColvin]

Subscribers to Ashampoo's email newsletter have received an announcement that Ashampoo Office 3 is available for a brief period for $29.95, rather than the usual $59.95.  However, anyone can available of the special.  Take a look at the "Service Letter" tab, where the announcement is also posted.

I tried downloading from the link on that notice.  One is taken to the CNET download center, but two tries both yielded corrupt, incomplete files.  Best to download direct from the software's product page at Ashampoo.

This company seems to be very aggressive at discounting its products.  With a little patience, one should be able to snap almost any of its products at a significant discount.

[Curt]

Oh, now $30? Well, what can you do, the prices are climbing all the time...


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[Curt]

There is a little story about these 'yiggles' that they use. If you buy this and this from them they will give you so and so many yiggles. When you have 'earned' (=purchased) 2000 yiggles you are entitled to a 20% discount, once, as a Silver member. At 4000 yiggles you become a Gold member, and the one time rebate is 40 percent. For some reason, I don't know why, Ashampoo stopped sending me these "newsletters" offering rebate. No more offerings for Curt. How many yiggles do I have? 3985. For me the difference between a 20 and a 40 percent discount is 15 yiggles!

Edited:
I should explain that the entire Ashampoo catalogue will give you less than 4000 yiggles.

[Darwin]

Is it a one-time rebate? Thought you could use it whenever you like. Anyway, one thing to note is that you can't apply your yiggles discount to software that is already discounted. As their discounted prices are almost always greater than 40%, I've never actually used my Yiggles (I have over 4000 so would qualify for the 40% discount). It's ALWAYS worth it to be patient with Ashampoo purchases - keep your eyes peeled for a discount!

[Curt]

..the entire Ashampoo catalogue will give you less than 4000 yiggles.

.. I have over 4000 ...

How did you manage this? 
Was it merely the many upgrades as time went by,
or did you - like me  - forgot you already had a program, and purchased two?

Sorry, Mike, of course you purchased extras for someone else, as a gift.
Yes, I'll bet you did! 

[Darwin]

Upgrades - I only paid full price for the first two programmes that I bought... in 2001!

[Curt]

... full price for the first ..... in 2001!

Wow! Did you get caught in traffic or something? Or are you simply addicted to discounts?! I have already decided there will be no Ashampoo on my next PC.

Well, this post is really just about a minor amusing detail: you have a lot of 0s and 1s in your post, Darwin, and you know I have a thing for numbers, so I just couldn't resist taking a picture of some of them:

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Your timing was (is?) remarkable, Darwin! 

- at least in my timezone...

[iphigenie]

I havent bought all that many ashampoo products, although I did upgrade over the years. Always when they had a special deal (and there will be a special deal on every one of their software versions)

But there is a flaw in yiggles, first you get 40% then you get 60% when you go above their 60% rebate level you can get some software free (spending yiggles based on the full price though) BUT at that point they no longer give you a rebate code and I was silly enough not to save it. Which means that if you want, say, 2 copies of something, you have to get it full price.

I have been trying to explain that to them but i dont think their english is good enough to grasp my point. I want my 60% yiggle code back!

[Darwin]

you have a lot of 0s and 1s in your post, Darwin

Just call me binary boy!

I only use two Ashampoo products these days - Uninstaller and Burning Studio - though I've purchased licences for four over the years. The others are PowerUp and WinOptimizer. Didn't really take that much to make it to the 40% discount. I just checked and my account shows 13 purchases since 2003 (anything earlier appears to have been removed) and I have 5018 Yiggles.

[CWuestefeld]

Get lots of ashampoo stuff free.

This blog post: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/05/05/get-26-ashampoo-software-full-license-key-code-worth-500-for-free/ gives links to downloads and licensing for 26 different ashampoo products, including what appear to be the current versions of Burning Studio and Uninstaller.

I really can't imagine why these links exist, but they look to me to be above-board. To get the license, it actually sends you to the ashampoo site, where you enter an address and they send you a license code. I installed Burning Studio, entered the emailed code, and it accepts it.

[Grorgy]

looks like they are the magazine versions, so probably no upgrades or anything like that with them, but the price is sure right 

[TomColvin]

In an exchange of emails with Ashampoo, I was told the Office discount is for a limited time only.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how Ashampoo works.  I'm guessing it is merely a reseller of products that it can rebrand.  Do they do any development themselves?

A visit to the SoftMaker homepage, the actual developer for the Office suite and its TextMaker component, gives excellent background about the company, a full product brochure and even a user's manual.  Part of me would prefer to download and purchase the program from SoftMaker, but it does not offer discounts [except to academics], and the full price costs $10 more than the full price at Ashampoo -- $69, rather than $59, tho the SoftMaker version does include a scripting component.

I also wish it was possible to buy only the TextMaker component, rather than the full suite -- of course at a very low price.

[Curt]

- I think you should go for the Softmaker original, because it will be updated much more often than Ashampoo's version.

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I sympathize a lot with iphigenie's loss. What a horrible feeling it must be! 

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I have only little doubt that Ashampoo writes most of their stuff themselves.

[tomos]

- I think you should go for the Softmaker original, because it will be updated much more often than Ashampoo's version.

as far as I know you can use the softmaker updates - I've done it once at any rate - but you have to go find them (as you say ashampoo doesnt update so often as the original)

I think it's okay to pass on this Ashampoo link (?)
Name the price! - You name the price!

[of course there's no guarantee they'll accept your price but we could see who get's what cheapest ]

[Curt]

I have this feeling that Ashampoo is hoping you will make an offer on one of their older programs...

Well, I offered $15 for the new $50 Uninstaller 3, and had to wait some days to receive their apology for not accepting my offer, (they know I have purchased ALL of their other programs, but NONE at full price). It was not possible for me to throw in my Yiggles, and I didn't have the patience to try $16, $17 etcetera, so my next bid was $20 which was accepted at once by the site's computer. [Edited: This deal gave me 400 Yiggles, so now I have 4.385 Yiggles, but for what?]  I guess each deal has some pre-formulated lowest-price, but it may not be the same price you can get.

--

I *think* I once asked SoftMaker about updating my Ashampoo Office at their site and was told they would have nothing to do with it; it was not their product. But tomos is making me wonder if I remember correctly.

[CWuestefeld]

I offered $15 for the new $50 Uninstaller 3

I got a copy of Uninstaller 2 Platinum, through the link I posted above. I was really impressed with it, so I tried Uninstaller 3. It's a big step backward. For one thing, as far as I could tell, the automatic installation monitor is gone. More seriously, a manual install process requires the user to manually push the buttons for saving the state before and then after (why?!?), whereas v2 Platinum would automatically execute those bracketing operations.

I quickly uninstalled v3 and went back to the previous version.

[Curt]

Hmm... you are worrying me, CWuestefeld: I purchased #3 half an hour ago!! 

Edited:
- however, the monitor is there, but you can de-activate it.

[Darwin]

I offered $15 for the new $50 Uninstaller 3

I got a copy of Uninstaller 2 Platinum, through the link I posted above. I was really impressed with it, so I tried Uninstaller 3. It's a big step backward. For one thing, as far as I could tell, the automatic installation monitor is gone. More seriously, a manual install process requires the user to manually push the buttons for saving the state before and then after (why?!?), whereas v2 Platinum would automatically execute those bracketing operations.

I quickly uninstalled v3 and went back to the previous version.

Had the exact same experience. I was offered the upgrade for $9.95 and took it... Uninstaller Platinum 2 is a much more robust and feature rich uninstaller. A combo  of it and Your Uninstaller! 2008 have served me well for years. Still have Uninstaller 3 installed for now, but am not using it...

[tomos]

I *think* I once asked SoftMaker about updating my Ashampoo Office at their site and was told they would have nothing to do with it; it was not their product. But tomos is making me wonder if I remember correctly.

I bought Ashampoo Office 2006 and upgraded to the 2008 version
I've gotten a good few mails at this stage from SoftMaker offering an upgrade from Ashampoo Office 2008 to SoftMaker Office 2008
for, I think, 20something euros (which probably means nearer €30 )

It's possible they refused to upgrade you from Ashampoo Office 2006 to SoftMaker Office 2008 ...

[Curt]

Yes, I too am getting these mails from Germany. I believe Softmaker is offering you upgrades to ('from') Ashampoo, because the first file you downloaded came from SoftMaker's site (and was also partly installed in the folder 'Softmaker') after you had given them your email address. They don't offer to update Ashampoo, but to upgrade. Are you planning to do the switch? I am. In fact I am planning to stay all clear of Ashampoo  on my next PC,  as I wrote earlier.