Cengage Your Brain Into A Death Trap

I was so confused on Saturday night. I am writing this blog post mostly as a warning to other people who are considering using CengageBrain or CourseSmart or other e-textbook services in general. As always with online purchases, make sure you only spend money on trusted websites. And if the only comments about the website are negative, don’t let your desperation get the best of you! It’ll only result in a waste of money and time.

A tale of woe:

B is currently enrolled in an online class at Mizzou, which requires the textbook Presidential Leadership: Politics and Policy Making. He figured it would be easier to complete the assignments using an e-textbook instead of a physical one, so on Friday, he bought a copy from the only place it was available: CengageBrain.com. It wasn’t cheap, but he was paying for convenience.

The next day, B wanted to work on something for his class, so he tried to access his book. This is as far as he could get:

No matter what page or chapter he clicked on, only the preview version of the book was available. We were both flummoxed. He had very clearly made the purchase, and it very clearly showed up on his Cengage Brain dashboard:

You’ll notice that in the upper-right corner, it says that the “Unsealer” is “Not Installed.” Well, obviously that was the solution! We quickly went about installing the Oracle Unsealer Reader thing on his MacBook [which also required that he install Adobe Reader] and went back to access the book.

Same result: preview only. Back on the dashboard, it still said that the Unsealer wasn’t installed. Clicking on “Install Now” again led to this page:

Clicking “Verify Install” led to this page:

Seriously? Only Internet Explorer? This was getting ridiculous. B tried installing Unsealer on his brother’s PC laptop but got the same results. There was clearly a lot going wrong.

At this point, B had already wasted enough time in this fruitless effort and needed to study for his other classes, so he handed the reins over to me. Very well then!

We had two options: Either get someone to figure out why the book wasn’t working properly, or return the darn thing. I figured returning it would be the better choice, considering you can buy the book used for less than a dollar. The restrictions regarding returns are somewhat contradictory. Under FAQ, I found this:

But under Terms of Service, it says this:

The bigger problem was that apart from these mentions, I couldn’t actually figure out how to return a purchase. Nowhere on the site could I find a “Returns” page or option. I was flummoxed. If I am unhappy with my purchase [especially if I am hindered from actually using it], I have every right to return it, right? It was time to contact customer service.

CengageBrain.com recommends that people use their 24/7 technical support, so I complied. I poked around on that website and even found a video tutorial on how to use CourseSmart, which was both hilarious and unhelpful. ["Simply click 'Open' and you'll have instant access to your book." NOT!]

I decided to file a case, so I wrote a brief summary of the problem and submitted it. I was then given the option of chatting with a support person, which was what I was looking for in the first place. “Kenneth,” however, proved to be pretty useless. Our unsatisfying conversation:

What’s up with the “Tier 2 level of support” holding everyone back? The main point I gathered from this was that the buyer basically has no power. I understand that the ebook business is a bit different than simply returning a pair of shoes, but I find it absurd that I have to wait an ambiguous length of time to receive an email approval for my return when they give me a 2-week time limit to complete the process. What if they just filibuster my complaint into obscurity?

I couldn’t get very far with CengageBrain, so I decided to try CourseSmart. I don’t understand why it takes two different companies to read one etextbook, but I guess the reading material is hosted on CourseSmart while CengageBrain…takes the money? Except you can also purchase the ebook on CourseSmart. I don’t know what the point of CengageBrain is anymore.

When I went to the CourseSmart “Bookshelf,” this is what I saw:

“Free Trial”?! “Add to Cart”??? Are you kidding me?? B already paid for this book! That is just messed up.

Fortunately, the CourseSmart Help page is infinitely more useful than that of CengageBrain, which at this point seemed more and more like a scam. CourseSmart offers instructions on where to go if you’d like to process a refund, so I dutifully followed its directions and wound up here:

Well. Nothing to refund, eh? I had no choice but to call CengageBrain’s customer service and inquire into their utter uselessness.

When you call CengageBrain’s customer service, there’s a long preemptive spiel geared toward people who are having trouble accessing their purchases. Is this a common problem, or do they just get a lot of stupid questions?

I waited for a while to get through to a real person, and it didn’t take too long for her to approve our refund and process it. I wanted to get to the bottom of our technical issue of not being able to use our ebook, but it wasn’t worth wasting my minutes waiting for an explanation. In the end, we ordered the physical version of the textbook for a dollar and definitely wouldn’t try CengageBrain again.

The Best Game Ever

After reading a hilarious Cracked article about “Amazon products with impressively sarcastic reviews,” I’ve been paying more attention to Internet comments. They have so much potential, especially because I’m used to inane Youtube trolls.

While planning a church activity night with LC and XZ, we were looking online for potential group games. I came across the website Youth Group Games, which sounded perfect. I clicked through a bunch until I got to one called Extreme Ball Crawl. I imagined children crawling under chairs in search of hidden tennis balls, but it was actually much better. Behold:

What the…the description itself is pretty humorous but I almost died laughing at the comments, the best of which I’ll paste below.

I love the Internet.

Valentine’s Day Chocolate Fix: Hershey’s Drops

I gave in.

I admit that when I first saw the commercials for the new Hershey’s Drops, I was extremely skeptical. Why would Hershey’s try to copy M&M’s? I couldn’t even wrap my mind around the outrageousness of the idea enough to compose further questions.

Then, when I saw the bags of milk chocolate Drops on display at Walmart, I was interested to see that the tagline read, “No candy shell — no mess.” Isn’t that how M&M’s were marketed when they first came out? [Melts in your mouth, not in your hands...] And now Hershey’s is using that against Mars, Inc.

In any case, I scoffed and went on my way.

The second time, however, I had already been tempted twice by Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme chocolate bars by the time I came upon the Drops version, so I simply had to taste and review them — for the sake of enterprising journalism, of course.

Hershey’s Drops are big, about the size of quarters, and have a thin clear coating that seems to prevent the chocolate from melting. It was cold when DP and I tore into them in the parking lot, so we didn’t really have a chance to test the heat resistance of the coating.

The chocolate tastes just like a regular Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar, and the coating dissolves quickly and tastelessly. The Drops make the chocolate easy to share, but portion control is a disaster. DP and I ate half the bag after our midnight Walmart run and finished the rest on the way to church the next morning.

There’s not much more to say other than they’re pretty delicious. I don’t remember how much I paid for them, but it didn’t seem exorbitant for how much product came in the bag. Here’s another picture:

I like to eat cotton balls with my chocolate. Don't you?

It’s Been A Great Year

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2010. That’s about 29 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 58 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 214 posts. There were 117 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 75mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was June 30th with 176 views. The most popular post that day was I Don’t Have A Heart..

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, WordPress Dashboard, Google Reader, wordpress.com, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ninja assassin, taylor lautner, rain ninja assassin, ninja, and ninja assassin rain.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

I Don’t Have A Heart. November 2009
5 comments

2

Why Is The Moon Lonely? May 2009

3

Elevator Etiquette March 2009

4

The Greatest Practical Joke, They Said March 2009
3 comments

5

The First Step Is Admitting… October 2009
5 comments