CourseSmart

I am experiencing much of the same frustrations already mentioned in other reviews. Horrible website interface, very cluttered, pages take a long time loading, and are very hard to navigate. The app is a bit better, but only marginally so and only works on limited devices. Reading offline only works on limited devices as well. Cannot read offline on my laptop. Just really frustrating. Lots of work to be done by this company to make their product user friendly. I have rented more than one book with them and am having the same issues with all of them.

DO NOT BUY FROM COURSEMART!
It sucks that a business supposedly in education would be purposely deceitful, but CourseSmart knowingly bamboozles any who make honest mistakes. And worse, the poor design of the website is likely designed to make people make mistakes.
After accidentally purchasing the wrong edition of a book for school, I realized the mistake instantly and can’t see any content from the book. I tried to change, but apparently simply viewing the access code automatically renders the book non-​refundable. After finding that a technological workaround wouldn’t work, I called customer service to try to exchange the book for the newer edition… and they were totally unhelpful.
So now they’ve left me with an unreadable book, no help, and no next steps. Don’t end up like me — AVOID AVOID AVOID COURSESMART!!! They’ll do you dirty too if they can help it. You can find something better!

I get these textbooks free through my graduate program.
And I am so frustrated. It appears the problems I’m experiencing — extreme lag time — have been going on forever. I keep getting flash error messages which shut down the website.
How can I learn if I’m struggling with the distractions of a crappy website?

Customer service sucks. Website interface sucks. Reader program sucks. Printing option sucks. OH AND GUESS WHAT? YOUR BOOK EXPIRES! hooray!
is there a way i can 0 star this? 1 star doesn’t cut it.
I can’t even view my book offline because the site says that I’ve already checked it out on another browser, and that I need to check it back in on the same browser. I’ve checked on all my browser and cannot find the offline version anywhere. Tried troubleshooting 982 349 238 493 times which resulted me in tears of frustration. Baffled, I contacted customer support. They emailed me back 2 weeks later saying my issue was resolved. It was never resolved. LOL
Though the book is a LOT cheaper than a hard copy, don’t even bother. The price will not worth the inconvenience.

Never in my life have I dealt with worse customer service. I purchased what stated to come with access to Connect, and once i paid for the material never had the access code. Funny thing is that i had a screenshot of what I purchased and took it to customer service where they claim it never stated that while I have proof it did.
Not only was that bad but the eTextbook lagged and took more time to load than the savings is worth. Highly do NOT recommend.

Everything Aysha P said is 100% correct as per my experience. Price, quality, and printing. An extra note about the printing. I cannot imagine a company delivering such a poor end product. Not only is the printing EXTRAORDINARILY time consuming, but the pdf results are not searchable! The printed pdf pages are an image, not text, so if you hope to have a searchable pdf copy past the 180 day lease… forget about it. I will never purchase anything from this company again. I may go buy the $ 180 hard copy book and flush the $ 150 I spent on this garbage. If I could burn this ebook, I would.

Course Smart is horrible on every level. You cannot get to the site most of the time to even get your homework done. I can’t not believe that I wasted almost $ 300 on textbooks but am having trouble getting anything done in my classes because this website is down more than it is up. And contacting their «helpdesk» is a joke. I just receive a generic reply that answers FAQs, but is no actual help for anything else. I am writing this when I should be doing my homework, but cannot access it. For the 10^th time in the one month that I have been trying. I am so frustrated…
DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!

Let me state upfront that this review is for my fiancé’s experience with a CourseSmart text. That said, generally only strongly liking or disliking things tend to drive me to Unilocal and so… here I am.
The first problem I have with CourseSmart is the price point. It’s only $ 30 cheaper than a physical copy of the textbook. At first, the small savings seems nice enough, but you wind up paying much more in time and inconvenience for using the service.
Second issue: the actual reading experience is awful. The pages load at a glacial pace, one… by… one. Browsing is impossible because scrolling forward or backward requires a new page to load and in the meantime, the previous page is erased. Because of how sensitive the scrolling feature is, you often inadvertently find yourself on a new page, thus triggering the horrible cycle of wait — load page — repeat. All that just to return to what you were reading a few moments ago.
Finally, printing any portion of the text is a frustrating exercise of sisyphean proportions. You can only print ten pages at a time. And before you do, you have to download the set of pages before printing. And make sure to close the first print window that pops up – because that only calls up the pages you PREVIOUSLY tried to print. Confused? Me too. God help you if you need to print a whole chapter for an open note exam, or simply get fed up with the web interface and want to read printed text.
TL;DR — If you value your time, efficiency, or not adding stress to your studying, just buy the actual book or ebook instead of using this service.

HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE
i ran into a situation where due to inclement weather my class final extended past the final date of my subscription. upon request for an extension for my text to last a little longer so i could print out the chapter i needed to re-​review i was told i would need to repurchase the entire subscription again. no amount of concern or empathy, just more money now kinda attitude. ill never give them another penny. ill study via google before i give them a dime.

First experience and it was BAD.
So I was looking for an eBook online and I ran into CourseSmart which seemed to
be good at first, but quite the contrary. I was looking online for my business book to see if there were any editions of the book with supplemental materials or online exercises and I thought I found it, but it was not, which I later found out. It was the eBook with the «MyBizLab».
After purchasing the book it turns out that I could not access the book because this type of eBook is only used for classes that do the classes online. This information was not listed whatsoever in their description of the product page, which I made very clear to them over the phone. The reason why I believed it cost a bit more than the regular edition was because it had supplemental materials.
Well, the only way I could access the eBook was by having a course code, which an instructor teaching the class would be able to provide. My teacher isn’t teaching the class online, so you can see how this is a problem for me. I requested a refund and told them the aforementioned, but they refused to give me a refund. What bothered me the most was that I was never able to input the code to gain access to the eBook in the first place. I do not have a reasonable explanation for why they would not issue me a refund. Total waste of money!
Note: PLEASE READ
The iOS and Android versions of the CourseSmart app are not very good. And I’m not just saying this because of my frustration. I tested the app before knowing I didn’t have acces to the book. I had not even logged into my account and the app was all ready jittery and force closing. This app is not updated frequently and is a hassle to use offline from what other online reviews mentioned.
Tip:
Order all ebooks through the Amazon Kindle store. The delivery is instant to your iPad or other tablet and most, if not all ebooks have a full free tiral version of the book. It’s a nice quality app, fluid, stable and the books are all accessible offline.
Because its Amazon, they are always keeping the app up to date. If you want to avoid a pain in the arse, save money, and bad customer service go to Amazon. Even if it’s a little more expensive, which is hardly ever the case, you’ll be happy with your ebook purchase or rent. Trust me.

CourseSmart actually helped me save money on my text books when financial aid was not cutting it. I also liked that I could bring it up on my i pad and my i phone, nothing like reading on the way to class! I would definitely use it again if I need to.

I agree! Do not use this product. The interface is slow, the usability is clunky, and the type is in low resolution. There were many tables, like the periodic table, I could not use because I could not read them. It was such a pain to have to log in all the time too. Turning back and forth from page to page was extremely slow and very frustrating!

I ordered a book I needed for US History at SLCC online from this company. Not only was the quality of the website poor, but the lag while trying to read it was worse. I have topnotch internet and bandwidth. It is not a problem on my end. I tried to resolve my issues with coursesmart, including a refund — which was within the deadline timeframe-​but I was just «passed» from one person to another. All stating I will need to escalate your «ticket». It was the worst customer service! I will may twice as much money, at the college, for my book before I buy anything from this company again.
*******edit 9÷24÷2010
The customer service manager contacted me after seeing this post and asked me to reply back with an email address to allow the opportunity to view the «tickets’. I receieved a refund the very next morning. I did not get a reply back from this person, but atleast a manager was aknowledging that I was not happy and appeared to want to resolve it. Thank you. I am still not sure I would want to deal with this company again but validation can go a long way.