Deceptive Advertising--Where's the Croatian?

BACKGROUND

The ECTACO company sells a range of hand-held electronic dictionaries that function as bilingual translators. Two forms of handhelds are produced: one that speaks, one that doesn't. This review covers the speaking dictionary. All speaking dictionaries sold by ECTACO only pronounce English, in a synthetic voice. So if you are a native English speaker who wants to hear a foreign language come out of your handheld, you are out of luck.

TRUE OF ALL ECTACO DICTIONARY/TRANSLATORS

A rather smallish keyboard sits below a four line low-resolution monochrome LCD display that can be back lit for low lighting conditions.

The device uses 3AAA batteries, and can be plugged into an AC adapter you must purchase separately.

Calendar, clock, and alarm are built in (just as you will find in your toaster, TV, microwave, car, phone, etc.)

SPECIFIC TO ESC600T DICTIONARY/TRANSLATOR

If you are reading this review, you are probably already familiar with both Serbian and Croatian. One basic difference is that Serbian uses the Cyrillic alphabet (as Russian does) while Croatian uses the Roman alphabet (ABC). The keyboard for the ESC600T is Roman alphabet only. There is some accommodation for special characters, but one must use the shift key, since the same QWERTY keyboard is used across ECTACO's product line.

I cannot speak to the accuracy of other ECTACO electronic dictionaries, but their "Croatian" dictionary leaves me less than impressed. In fact, it's not a Croatian dictionary at all!

If they have not modified their website, you will see two web pages that are subtly different, but in fact advertise the same item. The first describes an English-Serbian dictionary:

Serbian
http://www.ectaco.ca/products/Language-Teacher-ESC600T

The second describes an English-Croatian dictionary (with a "bonus" Serbian dictionary):

Croatian
http://www.ectaco.ca/products/Language-Teacher---ESC600T

Don't be fooled! What you get is a Serbian-English dictionary, without any Croatian vocabulary. Simple differences (Milk = "mljeko" [Croatian] vs "mleko" [Serbian]) are not acknowledged. Worse, partial transliteration of some words from Cyrillic to Roman letters has made for some corrupted Serbian entries. For example, the Cyrillic letter for "R" looks like the Roman "P." Often as not, a Serbian word that properly starts with the letter R in the Roman alphabet starts with the letter P.

The absence of Croatian vocabulary, along with the sloppiness of the Serbian, is disappointing.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

I ordered the product on the company website: http://www.ectaco.com. Prices are in Canadian dollars. My credit card was billed immediately, but I received no confirmation that the product was shipped. It was shipped 3 days later (the same day I emailed them asking about my order). It arrived via UPS.

Upon noticing that Croatian was completely absent from the product I ordered, I contacted customer support via email. I honestly wondered whether I had received the wrong product. I emailed them 3, 7, and 12 days later, without a response. Digging through their website more carefully, I uncovered their "Serbian" page and their "Croatian" pages noted above. The fourth time I emailed them, I said that I was returning the product. I was informed that refunds were not possible, because seven days had expired since I had received the product. I am now taking the issue up with my credit card company.