"Our county purchased a program through CengageBrain in August. There has not been a single day so far we have been able to successfully used the system. As the admin of my class I will periodically/randomly change from my account to a student and frequently a student not even in my school. That means a student somewhere has periodic access to my administrative system. The server goes down with more frequency than a thermometer in Greenland. I have spent hours sending at least 100 emails to cengage customer support. I have spent hours on the phone during my class trying to get the problem resolved, always with the stock party-line of "I'm assigning this a Priority-One status" whereby I never hear back from anyone beyond a spam email saying "have we resolved your issue? Click here for yes."

It is abundantly clear that Cengage when it was struggling with Bankruptcy in 2013 learned they can simply hit restart with a bailout/buyout and not be held responsible for an unprofessional product. "

"I bought two semesters worth of webassign calculus, and now that I have to merge my account, it won't give me my second semester that is already paid for for some reason that they've pulled out their ****. I tried to login multiple times with the email that they even verified when I said I forgot it, and after several attempts they said it wasn't valid and that they wouldn't accept it after one more mistake. I backed out, tried to link with Cengage since it says the email doesn't exist, and lo and behold that when I made a new account it stopped me because it already exists. I went back and logged in with the exact same information as before and now it accepted it. I now have to buy a new semester of calculus because they are a bunch of greedy scumbags who can't even properly run a basic website, and guess what? It won't let me purchase the semester because I apparently did something wrong. Again. The only reason it exists is because students have no other option and I hope it goes bankrupt in the next few years so others don't have to suffer such terrible website management."

"This is a predatory company that rips off students and makes a fortune by employing low-skilled workers. I know that these workers are low-skilled because the textbooks my school has forced us to buy are virtually worthless, with simplistic examples that can barely be applied to any real problems faced in a college course. Cengagebrain.com also provides poor online services. The Calculus course I am taking now, which unfortunately uses the resources of this insidious company, also includes poorly designed online content. I don't know if the coding is messed up or whoever designed to page just didn't care, but often times polynomials with exponents look like extended exponents. There is help offered, you can get a tutor, just be ready to shell out another fifty bucks for an hour of help. Honestly, these guys belong in jail."

"I'm a student and NOTHING is more annoying and aggravating to use than cengagebrain. Not only does it never work (doesn't let you log in, won't open textbook pages, overall ****) they make you create a new username and password every year. I know NO ONE, including teachers, that like Cengagebrain. We are only using it because it has specific textbooks, but there is no point if it is not easy to read/use. Horrible site.

"

"This is another predatory company that profits on the abusive financial burdens placed on students. You MUST purchase access to the books and then the study tools are charged separately at 3-4 times the price of the book rental. But these are not optional since the school basically forces you to acquire them. "

"One of my ebooks disappeared from my library and I could not get a hold of them (not even the 24/7 customer support email). The extend rental period button also does not work. "

"If you are one day past the return date they automatically charge you for the full price of the book as a "penalty". No option to extend your rental. Expensive all around. Not helpful if you are a busy student with limited finances. I would use them only as a last resort. Stick with Amazon - they are much nicer."