There will be many who disagree with me, and most of them will simply disregard the arguments I’ve presented here. But I won’t spend hours writing this post for them. Attempts by businesses to trick their clients and potential customers into parting with more cash bother me. Furthermore, I saw that The Great Courses was doing this with their Plus subscription program. With any luck, you’ll be able to use the information in this review to determine whether or not The Great Courses Plus is a scam.
This paper will define The Great Courses Plus, identify its owner, explain how the company is cheating its clients, and highlight the company’s obvious political leaning. It took me two weeks to write this report, and I really hope you find it useful.
I want to make it clear that I have no connection to either The Great Courses or The Great Courses Plus. There are no referral links in this post because it is an independent investigation of the company and its creator(s).
What is The Great Course Plus?
It has been stated that The Great Courses Plus is like Netflix for education.If you already know what they are and what this article is about, you may safely skip this paragraph.They offer video lectures on practically any topic imaginable. This is the kind of service that would wow even Neil deGrasse Tyson.
In 1990, we opened for business. Before the advent of modern video streaming technology, such courses were only available on physical media such as CDs and DVDs.The Great Courses Plus is a paid membership site where you may access a curated selection of lectures from their extensive archive. However, it’s worth noting that they don’t offer all of the lessons included in The Great Courses’ collection. Since the cost of the service is not negligible.
Even though they boast about adding three to four new dishes each month, the quality of their offerings is not what it once was. The Great Courses is slowly watering down the quality of their offerings in an effort to match the quantity of competitors like SkillShare.
Is The Great Courses Plus Right for You?
Those who think it’s funny to flaunt their knowledge. Because you’ll have to shell out for a university education if you’re serious about gaining practical, relevant skills and knowledge. Despite what the advertising would have you believe, this is NOT a suitable alternative to higher education.The vast majority of the classes will make you feel smart but will provide very little practical value to your life.
Please don’t waste your time with this service if you’re trying to become an expert in a particular field. But if it makes you look smart in front of your pals, by all means!
The Parent Company and Racism
The teaching firm has a terrible work environment since its owner and upper management are racist. It has been said that they overwork their employees and pay them too little.
The Teaching Company appears to be a benign umbrella organization at first appearance, but upon more inspection I discovered that it is actually a deeply racist institution.
Glassdoor has dozens of ratings from employees, and the lack of diversity is consistently cited as a major complaint.
Mr. Rollins appears to employ a large number of racists, despite the fact that many prefer to overlook racism or even claim it doesn’t exist. In the year 2021, it shocks me that major corporations like The Great Courses Plus still exhibit racial bigotry.
The workers also mention other problems. The corporation is notorious for making its employees work long hours for low pay and few benefits. Mr. Rollins’ dedication to his staff is on display in light of the fact that the company’s owners are making hundreds of thousands of dollars but would rather not pay them well.
Courses Used to Force Political Agendas
Both the right and the left agree that there should be no political propaganda taught in schools. Most people would consider it unethical and unacceptable behavior. The Great Courses, however, appears to be hiding some shady motivations behind their lessons.
Approximately fifty people approved of Josie M.’s assessment of Great Courses on SiteJabber. For over a decade, she has purchased courses from this provider, covering topics as diverse as philosophy and history. She does admit that many classes are worthwhile, but then she drops a bombshell.
Courses are infused with the political opinions of the professors teaching them. All the classes now lean heavily on “wokeness” and “political correctness” as their political stance.I looked at one course called “Fighting Disinformation” and found it to be full of propaganda spread by three instructors who once worked for an NGO financed by Soros and Gates.
This is terrible, because it shows that there are more skeletons in the closet at The Great Courses Plus than anyone could have possibly imagined.
Subscription service users will primarily consist of impressionable college kids, and the corporation likely knows this.
Another Instance of Political Biasness
You’re in for a pleasant shock if you thought The Great Courses were only “a little” biased in their political leanings.
The extremely biased Winston Churchill lectures that a former Great Courses Plus user purchased left him feeling cheated. The lectures were heavily slanted in terms of both history and facts. The unhappy customer went so far as to post on The Great Courses’ Facebook wall to express their thoughts. Numerous people liked and replied to the comment, indicating its popularity. However, the employees took offense to the review and publicly trolled the customer by making slanderous claims about them.This is indicative of the company’s general pattern of terrible treatment of customers. They don’t give a damn about their clients.
The worst part is that the client didn’t even say anything malicious; they just pointed out the product’s shortcomings.
Many Fake Reviews of Great Courses Plus Online
Here’s a little game you can play. Please look for the term “The Great Courses Plus review” in your preferred search engine.
You can expect to see anything along these lines:
At first sight, things appear to be in order now. But let’s look more closely.
Careful inspection will reveal that all of the links on this page lead to affiliate or review sites that can’t be trusted.
Furthermore, there are zero negative comments about this service. Considering how many people have actually complained about it, this seems rather suspect.
The list begins with an advertisement from the firm itself and continues with a review by Jill Duffy from PCmag, followed by an evaluation from experteditor.com.au, then wisdomfuel, etc.
The Great Courses (The Teaching Company) pays ALL of these sites to produce glowing reviews of their product. Scammers like Sam Ovens and Tai Lopez exploit this type of affiliate fraud, but it appears that legitimate businesses are beginning to dabble in it as well.
Reviews and complaints have been hidden beneath paid promotional content, so you won’t find them here. It’s a shrewd strategy by the marketing department, as it prevents potential buyers from learning about the company’s poor customer service, fabricated evaluations, and deceptive billing practices.
Surprisingly, I’m not the only person to catch on to this ruse of a phony review.
In 2019, a user on SiteJabber.com commented on the company listing, bringing up the subject of phony reviews.
After realizing that The Great Courses Plus has no reviews anywhere on Google, Dale R. concluded that the corporation is manipulating its own reviews in order to mislead clients.
He did some research and discovered consumer complaints regarding bogus billing and poor service from the company.
In an effort to “balance things out,” the company also appears to publish bogus “negative” ratings on their site. Simply put, it strengthens the listing’s credibility and makes it look more real. In his evaluation, Dale brought some other problems as well.
He also discussed the awful censoring and politically biased nature of the service’s educational offerings.
No Refunds
The Great Courses Plus has a rigorous no refunds policy, so if you buy a membership to test it out, you’ll have to do so at your own risk. This is a highly unethical action.
The brilliant minds at Great Courses Plus apparently opted not to honor refund requests from customers, in contrast to industry heavyweights like Amazon.
Many people are upset with the firm over this decision, but their voices have been drowned out by paid-for PR stories. In order to cultivate a fictitious “good” reputation, this strategy is widely employed by businesses. The most well-known perpetrator of this scam is Eric Porat.
Only a 7-day free trial is available, and it requires your credit card details. First off, seven days are insufficient to judge whether a platform is worthwhile paying for, especially if it is centred on education. Because they recognised that customers required time to test out and become enamoured with their platform, Netflix offered a 30-day free trial as part of their promos.
Second, before you can begin your free trial with The Great Courses Plus, you must provide your payment details. Most individuals are now aware of why dodgy businesses need this information. They do this so that once the seven days have passed, they may begin billing your credit card secretly. Many people fail to remember that they provided their credit card information to a service, and those businesses continue to charge them.
It’s a dubious strategy that takes advantage of people’s hectic schedules.
Great Courses Plus made false charges.
Numerous complaints about The Great Courses Plus’s billing of subscribers even after cancellation of the free trial have been filed. The majority of these grievances are listed on their BBB profile. They have 35 complaints on BBB as of the editing of this piece, and the vast majority of them are related to this claim.
It is acceptable to presume that hundreds of people have been charged for a service they didn’t even desire for free trials. The Great Courses Plus executives are aware that this is fraud and have been awarded a “BBB Accreditation Badge” as a result. This only means that they pay BBB.org money to ensure that they maintain a positive reputation in the marketplace.These people are making a lot of money in an extremely unethical way, but Mr. Rollins, the founder, doesn’t seem to mind.
The Troublesome Great Courses Plus App is Taking Money from People
There is a dedicated app for The Great Courses Plus. You can start studying by downloading it to your devices, but be careful—you could end up wasting your money!
On the Google Play store, the app has received abysmal reviews. Numerous users have expressed their displeasure at being charged for a subscription but not receiving the service.
The software appears to take your money but not provide the service you paid for.
Even if it’s only a bug, the business doesn’t care enough about its customers to fix it. After all, this “bug” is generating revenue for them without taxing their systems.
The app also has other problems besides the subscription. Even when you provide the right credentials, the software frequently returns messages like “invalid password”. You can get trapped in portrait mode unless you restart your phone or delete the app’s cache if the app doesn’t rotate at times.
The software is a disaster all around. Because the app won’t function, if you intend to get a The Great Courses Plus membership, be prepared to only use your computer, laptop, or possibly your phone’s browser.
The majority of people would actually prefer to use their cellphones or tablets, therefore this is a major hindrance.
The Great Courses Plus Complaints & Reviews 2021: Customershate it!
I am not the only one to try to spread light on the horrible servicesof The Great Courses Plus. Many Twitter and Reddit users have also complained about it, some even calling it “debris”.The customer service of this company is rather mediocre, they respond to tweets on the public forum, but in fact they do not help the user. This is a very common problem for service providers, who will issue a retaliatory tweet in response to any complaint they receive on the platform and will not actually help the user. They do this to look like they have excellent customer service in public, while they don’t actually do the work for it. The great courses seem to do so quite frequently. We are now looking at some complaints about Great Courses Pluson Twitter:
This user highlighted an important point in his tweet,The Great Courses Plus does not offer all its courses as a monthly subscription service. In fact, this is a very misleading doc, because they do not mention which courses are excluded or included in the course. It is simply a wrong marketing. Many courses are not available on the service, and you will have to pay over $300 to access them.
Twitter user @kaveinthran is a blind user of the app and struggles with the horrible interface of the company’s iOS app. Many sections of the appare not accessible through screen readers,which makes them useless for blind users.
Finally, we have @profain, they’ve been paying forthe service for many years, and recently they saw an advertisement where the companyoffereda lower price than what they were paying.They asked customer support if they could get the same offer. Instead of providing good customer service,the company canceled their account immediately without even asking.
The Great Courses Plus Review 2021 Verdict
The Great Courses Plus has terrible customer service with hundreds of unresolved customer complaints.They have posted false The Great Courses Plus reviews to hide the frequent criticisms ofreal customers. Their employees complained of clear racism and low wages in the workplace. Although the owner is a respectable intellectual, he seems to push his hard political prejudices onthe courses and deceive customers. I would strongly recommend that you avoid this overpriced service.
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