Be careful where you buy Houdini 4, or you could get burned

[Tom Likens]

I thought I'd pass this on to everyone, and perhaps save you a bit of money and aggravation. Robert is giving everyone who purchased Houdini 3 a 20% discount on Houdini 4 through Dec. 10th, BUT ONLY IF IT WAS PURCHASED FROM HIS WEBSITE.

This bit me in the rump, because I purchased Houdini 3 Pro last year (for about $100) from Amazon. It was fulfilled by "The House of Stanton" and came in a plastic case with a DVD and the Fritz interface. Unfortunately, that $100 doesn't qualify me for the 20% discount, (unexpected to say the least).

Also, I not sure how closely Robert is coordinating things with the other companies that are packaging Houdini as the serial number provided with the Houdini 3 DVD I received was odd (it was longer by 3 characters) and I went through a lot of trouble to get it to activate. In fact, it never really worked correctly and I basically wasted my money. If you're going to buy it, get it through the website since that is likely vetted the most. My guess is they are not tracking the serial numbers of the 3rd party repackaging companies.

Or to put it another way, if you go 3rd party then "caveat emptor"!

regards,
--tom

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

This is the fault of Houdini's author and no one else....

He should be held responsible for such selling scenario that waste people's money....
Dr.D

[Modern Times]

I don't see a problem with this at all. It is the same situation with current and past programs like Hiarcs, Shredder etc that could be purchased either directly or from chessbase. Discounts didn't apply then, and don't apply now, when you bought the chessbase version.

[Houdini]

There's a good reason for this: respect for Houdini's business partners.

If you've previously bought a Houdini product at ChessBase, it is not my intent to take away ChessBase's customers by offering a discount.
ChessBase is a partner, not a competitor.

The same applies to the ChessOK line of Houdini products. If you've previously bought Aquarium or Chess Assistant with Houdini, it is not my intent to discourage you from continuing to do so by giving a special discount.

While I could easily earn more by trying to "steal" ChessBase and ChessOK customers, it would not be very fair nor respectful to do so.

Thanks for your understanding,
Robert

[Tom Likens]

I don't see a problem with this at all. It is the same situation with current and past programs like Hiarcs, Shredder etc that could be purchased either directly or from chessbase. Discounts didn't apply then, and don't apply now, when you bought the chessbase version.

I don't really blame anyone for the policy, but I do think it should be stated clearly upfront. Once you know about it you can make an informed decision (hence the reason for my post). As for Houdini 3 not working, I think this is the problem that all small businesses have, not enough resources to verify things. Robert is most likely blindly trusting someone at Chessbase, "House of Stanton" etc. to "do the right thing" and in this case they didn't. It's a difficult thing to manage when you're a small, resource-limited company.

regards,
--tom

[JuLieN]

[moderation]
Some personal attacks and their answers were removed. Please, stay on topic and keep civil.

[Daniel Shawul]

When you buy via the webpage it used to be that you will donate to UNICEF. So I thought that was the reason why you had to buy it via the webpage.

Then I went there to buy it today but realized I couldn't be helping my country, where UNICEF operates a lot and also have a chess engine. Two birds in one stone

But sadly it seems now that they have served their purpose. I am not able to make donations, so I won't buy it. Stick with a stronger stockfish

@santa Ruxy, I will take the girl you may have the chess engine.

@mods, it would be great if you don't remove parts of threads that is not personal attack.

[Houdini]

I don't see a problem with this at all. It is the same situation with current and past programs like Hiarcs, Shredder etc that could be purchased either directly or from chessbase. Discounts didn't apply then, and don't apply now, when you bought the chessbase version.

I don't really blame anyone for the policy, but I do think it should be stated clearly upfront. Once you know about it you can make an informed decision (hence the reason for my post). As for Houdini 3 not working, I think this is the problem that all small businesses have, not enough resources to verify things. Robert is most likely blindly trusting someone at Chessbase, "House of Stanton" etc. to "do the right thing" and in this case they didn't. It's a difficult thing to manage when you're a small, resource-limited company.

regards,
--tom

There are two very different topics in your original post.

1) You only get our upgrade discount if you previously bought at our shop. The reason for this I explained in my post above, I don't want to "steal" customers from ChessBase and ChessOK.

2) Apparently you have a ChessBase Houdini 3 version that is not operational.
That is very much unacceptable, did you contact the ChessBase support for this?

Cheers,
Robert

[Sylwy]

@santa Ruxy,
A.-1.1-I will take the girl
A.-1.2-you may have the chess engine.

Hey Daniel, thank you !
A good affair for both !



Long live Scorpio !

SilvianR

[Tom Likens]

2) Apparently you have a ChessBase Houdini 3 version that is not operational.
That is very much unacceptable, did you contact the ChessBase support for this?

No. I run Linux and wine and it seems that wine doesn't really handle the ChessBase interface very well. I honestly didn't feel like opening that can of worms with the ChessBase people, since most Windows-only companies wash their hands of Linux. I see from your website that the version you sell directly is supposed to be wine compatible, so that may be acceptable. But iff I can run Houdini as a standalone program under wine via cutechess-cli and Xboard. Does that work?