The Great Courses

I gladly would give the Courses available here 5 stars! They will fascinate you and make you a more interesting, intelligent person. But the app is not worthy of their greatness. The promise of this app is that you can absorb a lot of courses, watching in multiple settings. It’s best feature is that you can switch between video and audio versions of the courses. However it frequently causes me to lose my place. It does not reliably sync with the Apple TV app so I have stopped using that. Also switching between video and audio occasionally restarts the lesson. Also some useful features for a listening app are absent such as a sleep timer or variable speed playback for audio. These are not necessary but the reliable syncing and keeping track of your progress is a must for the experience that this content deserves. Also the search feature oddly doesn’t always return courses that have the search term in the name of the course.

Despite providing good content, this organization has a unintuitive app and zero customer support. I got the download for two classes in December but could not them to import them into the app. Despite extensively working through the app on my phone I decided to call customer support. The first time I waited on hold for 45 minutes and there was no answer. The second time I waited for 35 minutes and there was no answer. When I emailed customer support, I got a response after 10 days. When I explain the situation in more detail over email, the customer service rep just disappeared and never responded back. We are basically forced to go to the credit card company and get a refund for the purchase. Strangely enough however, when you call In to give them more money to make a purchase (which I tried only to get a human on the phone) one gets a person on the phone right away. But when they transfer you over to Technical Support, there is no one there - imagine that! So buyer beware! Unless you mail order something from them, get ready for a scam, a refund scenario or no response. What this company has in great content is deeply overshadowed by zero customer support and a lack of concern for its customers.

I see everyone on here is complaining about how hard it is to use while driving, which makes me very concerned about what else they’re doing while driving. Yes, you need to download first if you live in a rural area. Yes, you can’t skip, stop, rewind, or fast forward easily while driving. You’re not supposed to! Put the phone down, people! The only true issue I have is the buttons are tiny, and even when I was home, sitting still, I had to try several times to make it understand I wanted to download. And I have fairly small fingers. That being said, it’s a really cool way to get these lectures. We spend most of our lives on the go, and I’m just not going to taking the time to stop and watch something or use my computer to listen. But I can easily finish a lecture in a day’s worth of car time with this app. Which is not so great for my wallet, granted, but a great way to consume information.