Cookies on BBB.org

We use cookies to give users the best content and online experience. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to allow us to use all cookies. Visit our Privacy Policy to learn more.

Manage Cookies
Share
Business Profile

School Supplies

Cengage Learning, Inc.

Headquarters

This business is NOT BBB Accredited.

Find BBB Accredited Businesses in School Supplies.

Reviews

This profile includes reviews for Cengage Learning, Inc.'s headquarters and its corporate-owned locations. To view all corporate locations, see

Find a Location

Cengage Learning, Inc. has 9 locations, listed below.

*This company may be headquartered in or have additional locations in another country. Please click on the country abbreviation in the search box below to change to a different country location.

    Country
    Please enter a valid location.

    Customer Review Ratings

    1.15/5 stars

    Average of 54 Customer Reviews

    Want to share your experience?

    Leave a Review

    Review Details

    • Review fromNishit J

      Date: 05/27/2025

      1 star
      Stay away. I paid around $ 3800 for a web development course through community college a long time ago, and they started well by sending me 8 to 9 books, but they ran out of steam midway because they didn't have professors available 24/7 to help with errors. I have to wait up to 24 hours for any solution, and end up stuck. They sent me links to videos that were horrible. Ultimately, I gave up.Waste of money....
    • Review fromMelissa S

      Date: 05/13/2025

      1 star

      Melissa S

      Date: 05/13/2025

      On 05/03/2025 I placed an order via the online Cengage Student Shop for a textbook labeled as "PAPERBACK" and was sent a hard cover edition. I immediately submitted a return request, and was told that I was responsible for paying for the return shipping, per the company's policy, irregardless of the fact that they sent me the wrong item. I was also told that "This title you ordered is only carried in our warehouse as hardback covers. Sometimes the titles will say paperback on the retail site, but it denotes a physical version overall, some titles will strictly be sold as hard cover and others as soft cover. We do not carry Empowerment Series: Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment, in a paperback soft cover version."This is deceptive, but the company does not care. After asking for a paid return shipping label, or even an *** to include with my return I was repeatedly told to refer to the company's return policy, and given a link. The company website is a labyrinth of links to reach customer support, and I could not track down a return policy publicly posted in the shop. I suspect they ***** their return policy, because if a customer saw it at checkout it would dissuade people from purchasing from the company.Regardless, it's not right to list a product as PAPERBACK and to send a consumer a HARD COVER, and not fulfill a paid return and full refund.

      Cengage Learning, Inc.

      Date: 05/16/2025

      Hi *******,
      I'm sorry to hear you didn't receive the product or service you were expecting.  We have reached out on your case to provide additional assistance.


      Thank you,
      Cengage Customer Support

    • Review fromBRENDA B

      Date: 02/05/2025

      1 star

      BRENDA B

      Date: 02/05/2025

      I was charged twice for an online class. $125.00 was deducted from my bank account twice but ********************** representative claims there is no way that could happen. I have the print out from my bank account showing $125.00 deducted twice from Cengage. The person I spoke with on the phone was rude. Cengage makes money from double charging people for online classes, hoping you will never notice the money missing from your bank account. They own NO responsibility for this dishonest act and it is really hard to respect a dirty company.

      Cengage Learning, Inc.

      Date: 02/11/2025

      Hi ******,

      We apologize for the difficulty in researching your double charge.  It appears this was due to two enrollments in the same course with Ed2Go.  They'll be reaching out with a resolution.  

      Thank you,

      Cengage Support

    • Review fromEmm D

      Date: 10/15/2024

      1 star
      I have been experiencing issues with access to the textbook I "rented" from them. I have been in contact several times through their online support, as well as over the phone 4 separate times. The issue is NOT resolved, even though I've gone through all the hoops. When I initially reached out to them via online support they were super responsive. They responded to me within 20 minutes each time I made a reply. Between us we shared 6 emails back and forth in one day on October 1 2024. Their only responses at that point were copy and paste messages, not AT ALL addressing my concern. They weren't even reading my messages. At that point I asked to be contacted by a supervisor since they weren't doing anything. And it was at that point that they refused to return any of my emails. Since then on October 1, I have sent 5 messages that have all been ignored. When they can send out 3 messages in a single day, I think it's safe to say they could find the time to respond to my request in 14 days! On top of the messages I've sent, I have also called them on the phone 4 separate times. One of those times I was actually put through to a supervisor. The supervisor was extremely unenthused and seemed to not care at all about the issues I was experiencing. He told me the next time the issue happens to record it and send it to them, yet magically their site won't allow me to upload the file as they stated I needed to record it. The supervisor claimed he would be keeping an eye on my file for the next several days, yet has made NO effort to respond to the updates that I have posted online. If you purchase anything from Cengage, you are supporting a company that exploits and takes advantage of struggling students. You will receive absolutely zero support when you inevitably experience issues with their terribly faulty website. I will be contacting the president at my university to discuss these issues with them and recommend they look for other learning platforms and suppliers.
    • Review fromSierra B

      Date: 10/15/2024

      1 star

      Sierra B

      Date: 10/15/2024

      As a student in college that has used Cengage for several semesters now I can confidently say that it is without a doubt THE MOST GOD AWFUL online learning platform I have ever used. First of all, it cost an arm and a leg for students when WE ALREADY PAY FOR COLLEGE. Secondly, there is no ***** when it comes to grading. You rounded your number too early? wrong. You didn't include 15 decimal places in your answer? wrong. You made the most minuscule of rounding mistakes? wrong. Well maybe if I tried following the exact steps the book took to get to a final answer then I'll surely get the answer right? Nope, it's still marked wrong. You need to be 100% perfect to get full credit for anything. Even ***** plus or ********* isn't this horrendous with the grading. Very glitchy, it takes a good 3 minutes just to submit one singular answer in an exam or quiz. They must have paid colleges an absurd amount of money to get them to use Cengage for their courses because I can't imagine anyone in their right mind using Cengage because they WANT to. I wish I could give it a -5 stars.

      Cengage Learning, Inc.

      Date: 10/16/2024

      ******,


      We
      always appreciate feedback and the opportunity to highlight the ways in which
      Cengage is committed to delivering affordable solutions that meet our student's
      educational needs. We'd love an opportunity to collect specific feedback on
      your usage of our products and the format of our content that you purchased. Feel
      free to contact us at 800-354-9706 or visit our support site at
      support.cengage.com to further engage. 


      Best,


      Cengage Support

    • Review fromMichael D

      Date: 10/04/2024

      1 star
      Absolutely Abhorrent. Over 7 weeks of my CIS class, not once has the virtual labs worked. It is akin to playing the actual lottery if you want to do your assignment without a bug or glitch ending it early, And even if you do it properly, the questions at the end, Which determine your entire grade regardless of all the hands on you just did, are entirely unrelated to said hands on, and in some cases completely wrong. Even worse is the support! Both the professor, and every student has tried at some point to contact support, even getting up to the head, and without fail they do not help, only saying "Refresh your browser clear cookies etc" and offering no help in fixing the borderline unusable hypervisors that we are expected to do work on. Mind you this is after an hour on hold.I've never seen my professor so visibly distressed by a useless program before so congratulations cengage, you did one thing right: Being E-waste.
    • Review fromBen L

      Date: 09/30/2024

      1 star
      Profoundly disappointed with this software. It's really unbelievable how difficult they make it to access the material that they charge you so much for. It is impossible to print or save as a PDF any portion of the book larger than a single page. So for the price of a textbook, they're letting me rent it for 6 months. The flashcards function has actually shown me incorrect information enough times that I stopped using it completely. What a rip off.
    • Review fromJaia X

      Date: 09/25/2024

      1 star

      Jaia X

      Date: 09/25/2024

      I don't know if they were fishing for a good review, or if they just don't have a good organized system implemented, but at first they were really kind and talked to me like they were truly willing to help me. They were very nice, made me feel like they cared about my issue and they were "for sure" going help me fix the issues, and they requested I give a survey. A day went by, so I decided, "let's fill the survey/review." After giving a review for them, they then told me, the problems I'm having just seem to be my fault and that I'm just not "clicking the right answers" even when the problem/question, full on noted, "any answer will be correct. this question is just to get your opinion/insight." Yet when I chose my preferred multiple choice answer for that question, they did not give me full credit. I'm constantly dealing with situations like this and my professor told me it's best to talk to cengage since he's agreeing with my issues. I feel bad to constantly ask my professor to "change my grade" because of cengage issues. It seems that cengage as a business are just not willing to own up to their own faults and fishing for good reviews, then follow up with not actually helping you. I've seen other people have complaints similar to me. I hope other colleges in the future will not be using cengage anymore. I wish I did not have to use cengage due to customer service and not actually helping me at all. I've shown multiple screenshots of the issues I'm dealing with and they brushed it all aside. I was in depth, in detail, but like others, no matter how much you try to get down to fixing a problem with them, they do their very best to brush it off just so they can keep making money.

      Cengage Learning, Inc.

      Date: 10/01/2024

      Jaia,

      Please accept our apologies for any unpleasant interaction you had with Cengage Technical Support. Its always our intention to ensure a positive experience regardless of the inquiry. In order to preserve the integrity of the course, Customer Technical Support is not able to review assignment/course content or grading questions with students in any capacity. We ask that any and all questions regarding the content and/or scoring of homework be directed to your instructor as were unauthorized to assist in that regard. If your instructor has any questions regarding the assignments or course content, they can certainly contact us directly and were more than happy to review it with them.

      If you have any additional questions that we can help with, please dont hesitate to let us know.


      Kindly,
      Cengage Technical Support Management

    • Review fromSean H

      Date: 09/23/2024

      1 star

      Sean H

      Date: 09/23/2024

      By far the worst electronic textbook tool I've ever used. Confusing layouts can make finding the actual textbook you bought unintuitive or confusing to find, not to mention the obscene price they charge to not even own the book. They also LOVE to log you out constantly, breaking you out of your studies. To make matters worse, they don't even let you refresh the textbook tab to get back into it! They force you to go back to your bookshelf, which will also log you out, then force you to sign in again and launch the book AGAIN.If you love frustrating, user unfriendly, time wasting methods of trying to study. Cengage is perfect for you.Sarcasm aside, you guys need to get it together, and get with the times. If I had the choice, I would have NEVER paid a cent for this.

      Cengage Learning, Inc.

      Date: 09/26/2024

      We hate to see that we fell short of your product expectations. We'd love an opportunity to talk to you about your experience. Please give us a call at ************ so that we may better understand issues you encountered.

      Best,

      Cengage Customer Support

    • Review fromLa M

      Date: 09/19/2024

      1 star

      La M

      Date: 09/19/2024

      Unfortunately my college uses this program, and I am being forced to take this for my computer science degree despite it being completely useless. I am constantly marked down for things I did correctly. Ive tried to reach cengage and I have not heard back despite it being around a week. The tasks are complicated as you have to do them exactly how the computer expects you to do it, with 0 direction, even if there are other ways to get to the same result (i.e. ctrl c instead of selecting copy and paste). Users are constantly being marked down for things like this, bringing down the *** they have worked hard for.

      Cengage Learning, Inc.

      Date: 09/19/2024

      ****,

      We're sorry to hear you didn't have a great experience utilizing our product. We were unable to locate any records regarding your experience based upon the email address you wrote this review under; however, we are happy to talk more with you about your experience.  If you'd like to connect with us, please contact us at ************

      .
      Best, 

      Cengage Support

    BBB Business Profiles may not be reproduced for sales or promotional purposes.

    BBB Business Profiles are provided solely to assist you in exercising your own best judgment. BBB asks third parties who publish complaints, reviews and/or responses on this website to affirm that the information provided is accurate. However, BBB does not verify the accuracy of information provided by third parties, and does not guarantee the accuracy of any information in Business Profiles.

    When considering complaint information, please take into account the company's size and volume of transactions, and understand that the nature of complaints and a firm's responses to them are often more important than the number of complaints.

    BBB Business Profiles generally cover a three-year reporting period, except for customer reviews. Customer reviews posted prior to July 5, 2024, will no longer be published when they reach three years from their submission date. Customer reviews posted on/after July 5, 2024, will be published indefinitely unless otherwise voluntarily retracted by the user who submitted the content, or BBB no longer believes the review is authentic. BBB Business Profiles are subject to change at any time. If you choose to do business with this company, please let them know that you checked their record with BBB.

    As a matter of policy, BBB does not endorse any product, service or business. Businesses are under no obligation to seek BBB accreditation, and some businesses are not accredited because they have not sought BBB accreditation. BBB charges a fee for BBB Accreditation. This fee supports BBB's efforts to fulfill its mission of advancing marketplace trust.