Pimsleur Reviews in January 2025: User Ratings, Pros & Cons

Not worth the money

The program is sluggish over a fast internet connection. It doesn't understand what I say 15% of the time. In that regard it's far worse than say, google translate. Their is zero support. No way to provide feedback. I've been using it for two months hoping it might improve.

Room for improvement

I tried the Romanian course just to get some basics and did think it was overpriced. The first maybe 4 lessons were fine but as it went on the conversations you hear in Romanian are far to fast to understand and some words in them not explained. It seemed rushed and would be better experience if slowed down. I'll try another provider at 1/3 the cost next.

Cancellation of subscription repeated charges

Good lessons but when you try to cancel subscription it has been a nightmare. They charged me twice (2 months) after date of cancellation. I have had to go to my bank to dispute charges and hope for refund. A real shame as hoped to use their lessons in the future.

Non-existent customer service

Read good things about Dr Pimsleur's approach. Wanted to try it so signed up for free trial which promised access to all levels. In practice only the first most introductory lesson was unlocked- no use at all as I'm well beyond saying 'excuse me miss', so it gave no real sense of what the approach is like. Tried to contact via the chat, but the Pimsleur bot is beyond useless - rather worrying for a communication company you'd have thought! - and am still waiting for a reply to an email I ...

The Italian dialogs are spoken too quickly.

The Italian dialogs are spoken too quickly and with inadequate articulation and audio quality. It is frequently difficult to make out exactly what the words spoken are. This makes using the lessons quite tedious. This problem could be mitigated by providing transcripts, but they refuse to do this. It is too bad, because the course would otherwise be excellent were these problems corrected.

Absolutely terrible

Absolutely terrible. Bad app, worse customer service. They are worse than common thieves. They’ve stolen my money and refuse to give a refund even though I don’t want to use their app nor can I because the levels they have available are too low and there’s no way to test out of them. Stay FAR away from this app. They will steal your money and cite their slimy policies to justify it even though they are clearly misusing those policies.

I am absolutely furious with them

I am absolutely furious with them. I purchased one of their languages but my app did not give me access. I asked for help in the app and never received an answer. I emailed them (had to do it a few times) to be told to call them, using their US number. I am in EUROPE!!! It is costly to call them.I finally called them and after 7 minutes asked their rep to call me back, which she did not want to do; so I told her I would interrupt the conversation and asked her to email me when the problem ...

Inexistent customer service

The customer service is non existent. This is an online business which insist on their worldwide customer base to contact them with a US phone number. The website is a joke. Try only to logout and you will still be logged in. Try order the "Arabic" language and the basket will have the "English for Spanish speakers". Contact them using their online contact form and who knows if they'll ever respond to it.

This company is the worst..…

This company has the worst customer service I've seen in years. It was a holiday weekend, no email notice that there was an upcoming billing so I emailed them just 5 hours after they charged my card saying I did not want to proceed with their tool and to please refund. They were rude, short and obviously out to just scam me out of my $19.95 - no customer service. If you value service whatsoever you should go in any direction other than this one if you don't want to be taken advantage of.

Took money after cancellation

Even though I cancelled my subscription, Pimsleur still drew money from my account after I had already cancelled. I wrote them asking for a refund and got no response.