MasterClass Reviews 1,123

Stop trying to debit money! Thank goodness I use a card with no money in it. Support doesn’t exist and you’re using an AI chat bot to simply your tasks. Well, it’s not working!! It’s been more than a month I’m behind you guys to contact me to stop “trying” to debit money. Who’s behind the subscription team? You use a no reply email address under the name Jenifer who sends reminder emails for unsuccessful payment. Are you kidding me? Is Masterclass run by bots or humans?

Love the app. Please get more sessions on:
- Quantum Computing
- AI for the real world

Pro's: They do have unique intervieuws not to be found anywhere.
Cons: I was bored quite quickly, my gf had the black friday gifted for the yearly sub, she used it for an hour more than I watched, total of 6 hours in a year together.
1 year later ofcourse they try to extent the subscribtion.
I always take a new card to end my cycle of these subs.

with no plan to extent they keep on pushing, but they also have the guts to try to take 120 euro from my gf her credit card, who never even subbed for this in the first place.

In late November I received and email about the renewal and to update my credit card information due to the card expiring. I hadn’t planned on renewing and decided to cancel. The verbiage I read on the website was if you don’t intend to renew, then you don’t need to do anything else.”

On 24 Nov 24, Jennifer from Masterclass said my payment had failed I needed to update the info.

On 24 Nov 24, I wrote Jennifer from Masterclass to cancel my subscription, it’s not needed and thank you for writing. Note: Jennifer Iikes to write from a no reply email account so you’ll need to email the support line.

On 30 Nov 24 my new card was charged $180.

On 2 Dec 24, I wrote Masterclass support asking for an explanation as to how they obtained my new credit card info and why they hadn’t canceled the subscription - No response.

On 4 Dec 24, I followed up - No response.

On 7 Dec 24, I followed up still asking how they obtained my new credit card info - No response.

On 9 Dec 24, I followed up again - No response.

All of my emails go to the support email address Masterclass wants you to submit and get a ticket number with them. Note: I did this on, and the automated message said 24/48 hours for a response. It’s been 17 days.

Crazy thing? My old card was a Mastercard, the new one they charged was an Amex. I have no idea how they got the card number, but with out them responding I’ll likely be in the same boat as everyone where we never get it money back from this sinking ship. Slowing growth and cost cutting measures has likely led us here…

I just want to know how they got my new card info and my $180 back.

I purchased a black friday deal and they charged me for a more expensive plan. I emailed them 5 times and no response. I'm very disappointed that such an app with all famous celebrities involved doesn't even have a decent customer service.

Charged Back-to-back Annual membership 2023,2024 when I thought and tried to cancel. I couldn't log on and do the directions that MS gives to cancel. When I do log on it asks me to choose a plan instead of giving me an option to settings. At this point I want a refund as I do not use or have access to this service. They don't even have a customer service line.

As a long-time subscriber, I am deeply disappointed with the lack of support this year. I purchased a holiday gift subscription that shows as redeemed, but the recipient cannot access it. This gift was intended to inspire young participants at an entrepreneurial event. Instead, they learned what poor customer service is.

Despite multiple emails and raising ticket as per the suggestions here, I’ve received no response. Based on similar complaints, it appears replies are generic and lack follow-through. While the classes are excellent, the service is unacceptable.

11/12 EDIT (REPLY): I submitted a "ticket" to support@mas… nearly two weeks ago but received no response. My negative rating here reflects the lack of timely communication. Had you replied promptly, I wouldn't have felt the need to do so. I also reported the issue to the FTC, as I am unable to access what I paid for, and there is a lawful timeframe during which customers can raise such concerns. Please understand this action wasn’t intended to be harsh but stems from my understanding of customer rights. Since I’ve already submitted a ticket, your suggestion to create another one feels redundant. I kindly request that this matter be addressed promptly.

12/12 EDIT: I realised that despite sending several emails to support@mas... as suggested, it never generated a ticket number. Just received an email that they "received your request, and look forward to helping". Such a number would've helped in the communication.

16/12 UPD: It's been nearly 20 days since the purchase of subscription and sending a message to the support. Still nothing happening except a general email template which asked for what I've already provided them with.

28/12 UPD: 1 month into the issue and things got even worse! Instead of being fixed they charged me for the account which was supposed to be using a gift subscription and put the gift subscription to a wrong account which now has subscription until 2026. On top of that, I received an email explaining how happy they are that they helped me resolve the issue without even reading what I've reported. And they were very happy to ask me for an evolution meaning that on their end this case is closed?!!! I've never felt more insulted in my entire life.

01/01/26 UPD: For the new year MasterClass sent me email asking me whether I want a refund for the wrong account and wrong subscription. Instead of refunding THEY CHARGED ME AGAIN! This support is so frustratingly bad that it's sad.

21/01/2025 UPD: MasterClass offered to refund all wrong transactions and actually offered a free subscription for the troubles. That's appreciated but it only worked when it reached second level of support. First level is still looking incapable of handling situations like mine.

I bought a black-friday offer to masterclass for full year subscription that doesnt work. none of their customer service touchpoints respond neither to fix the issue nor to refund. This product is a marketing scam, not recommended.

I always turn off auto renew. They ignore it. They are thieves.

Bought it one day ago and first day I go to watch it in the early evening and the connection continually times out. Other websites are working fine and I have fast broadband connection.

when it came time to renew I decided to cancel. But I was unable to do so. Not through the app and via contacting them directly. I sent them an email requesting cancellation and they took money out of my account anyway. Very expensive.
Edit: A response to the comment from Masterclass below. I have already emailed support@m... Multiple times and have not yet received a single response.

Tried it, found the videos rather cheap, editing cutting against the message in the case of Noam Chomsky. So I opted to take the 30 days money back guarantee and support just mailed back once and has vanished since. Don’t buy this!

I am really sorry with Masterclass.com company , still a lot of unhappy customers. I think the all of members of company should watch the business or customer service class before porches the class online for other people.
God loves me
I didn’t subscribe before reading reviews.

Support and feedback teams ignored my requests for refund for several days. Avoid!! The annual renewal slipped through under the radar with only one email notification 30 days prior to the charge which landed before the renewal date. Masterclass want you to miss this notification to ensure this renewal fee hits you. Make sure you cancel after you join to avoid auto renewal and a surprise £120 debit.

Cannot get speak to a anyone.
Have been trying to cancel my subscription and get a refund. But have been unable to speak to anyone, nor have they responded within the 24-48 hours they promise.
Courses are good, but never leave your payment information saved on the site.

I signed up for master class two days ago. I was quite excited to view some of the courses as they were led by instructors who I felt were leaders in their field. The problem is that the app isn't available on my TV and I am still having issues with Apple TV. No matter I logged in an tried on the web browser - the user experience was poor with unwanted menus popping up and the video itself often hung and glitched. I don't get this with other reputable sites.

At this point I have given in the 30 minutes of footage I finally watched weren't worth the effort.

I have requested my money back and cancelled my subscription - it is now 36 hirs since doing so and not a whisper other than an auto reply for the ticket and a cancellation message saying I can view until Nov 2025 if I change my mind. I am still in their 30 day cancellation period, if I don't get a refund I will be very upset.

They claim to respond within 24-48 hours - we will see, but at the moment I am very underwhelmed by the service offerings

UPDATE 14TH JAN 2025.

Well, they've outdone themselves this time...

Having had the cancellation debacle in November and thinking that was the last contact we'd ever have to have with them (see original review below), my partner noticed that a charge for Masterclass membership was made on his bank card yesterday.

We have no clue as to why this has happened (maybe they just like receiving my long and ranty emails?) but I'm beginning to suspect that the Masterclass business model is to do anything they can to make their customers absolutely hate them.

I can't believe the way they operate is legal - avoid at all costs!

ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW:

The positives:

1. The content is great - there's lots of really useful stuff with fantastic speakers. If you want to sign up long term and intend to keep your membership rolling year on year then you probably won't encounter many issues.
2. They refunded me within a day when I complained

The less positive:

I'd heard cautionary tales about the auto renewal of membership so it was already on my radar (not quite strongly enough, as it would turn out).

I received an email reminding me about this a month before the renewal date. I clicked the link in the email to go to my account settings and clicked to cancel auto renewal. This didn't take me to any further steps (as far as I could see...), so I thought that was it.

However, I didn't receive any sort of confirmation so a few days later (still well ahead of the renewal date) I went in via the same link again and was a bit surprised to see it still had the option to cancel auto renew. I did this again, and figured that maybe it just kept showing the option to cancel even if you already had.

This was a huge mistake, as I discovered when I received an email informing me that another year had been charged for (and taken from my bank account).

As far as I can see, one of the following occurred:

Either the cancellation process was broken, so there was no way I could cancel via my account settings (having done a bit of online research, it may be because I'm on Mac/iPhone, but other reports of that issue were from years ago, so I'd be amazed if they hadn't fixed it by now),
or
I'm so dim that I managed to (twice) miss obvious steps in completing the cancellation (in which case, I probably shouldn't be allowed near anything as sharp as my keyboard to write this review in case I injure myself...)
or
The cancellation process has been designed to be unclear in order that situations like mine will occur, and people will unwittingly remain signed up for a further year (which is a scammy and horrible way to do business, and I hope is not the case)

I have asked them to send me step by step screenshots of the cancellation process, to see if I can work out which of the three options above it really was.

If it turns out that I am in fact a total dimwit, then I'll apologise wholeheartedly, BUT due to the fact that an enormous number of other people seem to have problems with understanding how Masterclass do things (from their average Trustpilot review score) then I'd suggest that it may be worth their while reviewing their processes to ensure that at every step of signing up or cancelling, it's crystal clear what you are doing and how to complete it.

(I have a particular interest in this as for most of my career I was a trials analyst for a large telecoms company and this is the sort of process I tested on a daily basis. Even if something failed due to my stupidity, it still counted as a fail, as these things really do need to be idiot proof if you want happy customers. After all, even idiots deserve to be happy...)

The other fairly significant negative is that email (unless you live in the US - the only phone number shown was a US number) is the only way to get in touch. The 'live' chat is just a bot with no real people to connect to. I just ended up spamming them with about six emails and a Facebook Messenger message to try to get a response quicker than the quoted '24 to 48 hours' on the email auto reply.

One final significant negative for me was that I initially purchased the membership as a Christmas gift for my partner, but I bought it in November. I'd hoped that as we didn't start using it until after Christmas that the membership would run for a year after our first log in and use, not a year after paying for the membership. Turns out it is a year after paying, so be careful if buying as a gift ahead of time as you may end up with fewer months than you'd anticipated.

Overall, it's a real shame as it's quite possible I would have re-joined at some point in the future (especially if they'd ever introduced a rolling monthly membership, rather than having to sign up for a whole year), but now I'm so burned by the whole thing I'm not sure I'd ever have the confidence to join Masterclass again.

The concept is good. But the customer is so bad it lets it down. Good luck trying to cancel this. We subscribed for a year and then they tried to auto renewal. We tried cancelling prior auto renewal and after. It was an absolute nightmare to try and cancel it

I THOUGHT THERE WAS SOME KIND OF WIRE FRAUD LAWS IN EFFECT. I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW OUR GOVERNMENT DOESN'T STOP THIS KIND OF CRAP WHERE THIS IS THE MOST RIDICULOUS SCAM EVER. IT'S TAKING ME A MONTH TO TRY AND GET MY REFUND BECAUSE I WAS NOT SATISFIED WHEN I REALIZED I WAS BEING CHARGED FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR BASED ON THE PREMISE OF A $15 DOLLAR CHARGE PER MONTH. I OVERLOOKED THE SUPER TINY LACKING IN GOOD EXPLANATION AND THOUGHT I WAS ONLY GOING TO BE CHARGED $15 AND I COULD TRY IT OUT.
As soon as I saw the $180 charge DEDUCTED from my account I was dissatisfied. So I searched and searched their website to try and find out what to do and got the email address for their support center which I began emailing and getting responses and responding with whatever they asked. Whatever information, whatever statements they needed I gave them yet when that got old. After over a dozen emails back and forth, and I started calling, I finally came to the conclusion that a lawyer just needs to get involved but again, HOW IS IT THAT THE GOVERNMENT OUR GOVERNMENT IS LETTING PEOPLE LIKE THIS PULL STUFF LIKE THIS? I'm doing my damndest to keep this as nice as possible. Well I'll take that back. It's professional as possible. But for all those out there that are also getting screwed replace most of the words in this document with strong four-letter words because that's really really what I'm usually going to say if I'm face to face with somebody that's doing this kind of crap. One last thing is I believe if I had a website for posting reviews there would be the five stars 10 stars whatever be five stars. But there would also be probably a negative five stars because there is a lot of companies out there that don't even deserve a star one star. Anything in the positive is a positive and there's nothing positive about this crazy ass company.
I'm sure this has been said before where they should have a negative star rating like you got your positive 1 through 5. There's nothing positive about this company. All negative. I've got over a dozen back and forth emails with MasterScam where I'm asked for bank statements proving the charge because they can't find the account based on email addresses not coming up.
Being misdirected and misguided with what has to be a phone room full of workers I can hear reading from the same script used to misdirect and put off, This company is worse than the porn site I decided, ONCE, to try out. Turns out I didn't really need to sign up because there's plenty of free porn videos.
By the way, I'm doing my damndest to keep this as nice as possible. Wait, scratch that, I'll take that back. It's professional as possible. But for all those out there that are also getting screwed replace most of the words in this document with strong four-letter words because that's really what I'm usually going to say if I'm face to face with somebody that's doing this kind of crap.
One last thing. I believe if I had a website for posting reviews there would be the 5 or 10 stars but there would also be at least 1 set of negative stars because there is a lot of companies out there that don't even deserve a star, not! one star. Anything in the positive is a positive and there's nothing positive about this crazy ass company.

I purchased a subscription last year as a Christmas gift for my daughter. It was the BOGO offer. We we on vacation so we did not activate the account until after the New Year. Once we returned home we tried to activate the account, we were told we had to subscribe. I contacted Master Class by email they told me I had entered an incorrect email address, so we tried again to activate the account each time without success. We tried for months to activate this account. I finally got frustrated and emailed them again. I was told it was an error on my end, so when I was told this I asked for a refund. I was told they would only refund 50%. I explained I never logged on never watched a class. They told me 50% was their best offer. I again asked if they could help me activate the account and I was told they could not assist me any further. I was frustrated and again asked for a full refund. I never heard back from anyone, I never received a refund and my daughters lost a Christmas gift. So please buyer beware if you don't activate your account soon after purchase you may have an issue and not get the assistance you need.