Encyclopedia Britannica

After I posted this review I received a refund...

Predatory practices that force you to agree to a renewable subscription. I knew my year was up but could not log in to stop it until after it was renewed. Huh? Borderline criminal organization. Also, no renewal notice unlike ethical organizations. Money grubbing. Cannot be the same company from the old days. They also cut many programs for children. My son did many assignments from their Grade 6 level programs and they all disappeared a year later. What happened? Britannica is going Titanic. Do not expect them to survive.

If you are looking for some rare facts about specific topics like religion, philosophy, mathematics, etc, then you're at the right website. More detailed, extensively cited articles that give a great deal of detail more than say, Wikipedia, but at the same time it is not free. A paid subscription is required to access a lot of the content. Which is why I removed 1 star.

I have just cancelled my son's subscription to the Ency. Britannica after 2 years of not noticing that his credit card was being charged annually. He had a trial subscription 2 years ago for school use, and then received no renewal notice like an ethical organization would send. Though I have cancelled early in the subscription period, I get no pro-rated refund. As an academic librarian who has purchased Britannica products through the years, this is just an unacceptable business practice. I will no longer be supporting future Britannica purchases for my library.

Tried 2-3 times to pay for yearly subscription - getting stuck each time at postcode stage which says wrong postcode - it is following US code system on UK address! Rang UK number - again 2-3 times replies are confused.com. Wake up man.

I have been doing a research task on Herod the great for a school project, i only ever went on to their one article on Herod the great but every single time i looked at it it counted as a new article. Eventually it didn't let me see the article. Im not going to pay 75 bucks just to see one article that i should be able to see

I was considering a subscription to Britannica, and since I had been looking for a comprehensive overview of Afghanistan, and thought it would be a good way to test Britannica's ability to reflect recent history. I was horrified to see this in the Cultural Life Section of the article, "schools have been reopened—including those for girls—and women are once again entering the workforce". The last paragraph of the article acknowledges the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan as a bare fact, but it appears that no effort has been made to update information in the rest of the article. I found that the World Almanac and Book of Facts 2024 had a more up-to-date information than your so-called encyclopedia, although the events described occurred in 2021. I looked at the Edit History section to see if when the last substantive changes were made, and found that only that small bit of information at the end of the article had been changed since 2020.

As a student in the 1960s and 70s, I relied on encyclopedias for information on various countries of the world, along with my almanac. We had a two sets of encyclopedias, World Book 1960 and Encyclopedia Americana 1966, as well as the Year Books for updates. I'd bicycle to the library to read the most recent article if I needed the most updated information. I hoped there was some reputable professionally written, edited and updated source in this electronic age, but thus far I haven't found it. Britannica.com certainly isn't that source.

I'll stick to my World Almanac.