Packt Reviews 179

I actually own some of the paperback Packt books, and - sometimes - they have good and useful content. However, the editing quality is very poor, there are frequent typos and errors with code examples and they rarely seem to update.

However, with their sometimes "too good to be true" sales, and the current Humble Data Engineering Bundle, I realised now that buying their ebooks and video courses is a miserable and uancceptable experience. As other reviews have mentioned, the website is abysmal: trying to get the page to load to actually access the titles you have purchased is frequently impossible. Download these as soon as as you've bought them - if you can! Is this a scam, so as to force customers to take a subscription? Quite possibly.

Again, as other reviewers have mentioned, there are frequent drops and download issues, so actually accessing any of the videos is difficult. Their current Humble Bundle seemingly represents excellent value, but I now wish I'd never bought it, due to the terrible experience of trying to use Packt's website.

Summary: awful website, awful company, awful service - occasionally some useful content in their material but absurdly difficult to try and access your purchases. Recommend avoiding like the plague.

Purchased 3 (business data) videos, unable to download as I was unable to enter voucher and ridiculous email exchange failed to resolve.

As a result of the previous posting here, I was contacted by vendor and the issues are now resolved (it has taken 6 days!). A quick look at the videos, which are for training / learning purposes, well I'm not convinced that the content is particularly useful to me.

I think the reviews on this site speak for themselves.

To add to the issue people have had cancelling their trials and subscriptions, I can add Packt changing their terms after you have signed up to the list of grievances.

I took out an Annual Subscription where you can earn credits each month towards books and videos and these were clearly advertised as being "...yours to keep".

I cancelled my subscription in February having earned a number of credits but they recently changed their terms so that you must now have an active subscription to use credits and they have applied these new terms to subscriptions taken out before the change which is highly unethical.

I took out a trial to see if I could use up my credits but I still couldn't (I need an Annual Subscription presumably) and the site won't let me cancel: an issue that seems to have been ongoing for some time.

I have in the past thought the issues at Packt were just incompetence but their lack of ethics in changing terms and the persistent issues people have with cancelling their subscriptions makes me think it's not incompetence but deliberate.

I initially signed up for a monthly subscription to explore their platform and book offerings. After paying for the month of September, I canceled my subscription for October on the same day I subscribed, confirmed the cancellation, and was surprised to find that they automatically renewed my subscription and charged my card at the start of the following month (October) without my permission. Many others have faced the same issue here. Be cautious when sharing your card details. I'm currently contacting PayPal to report this unauthorized charge.

I'm now into my second year subscription with Pakt.

In my opinion the quality of the books can vary, some are definitely better than others. All in all my experience has been very positive. On more than one occasion when I needed information on a topic I didn't already have a book for, nor could I find the information online, I was able to reach out to the Pakt library and find the answers I needed.

I have submitted a few errata but then again, I have with other publishers too.

If you know you need more consistency in the books then consider somewhere else but for the price I think Pakt has a very good quality overall.

The books have a very low quality. I have read several books from this publisher and not one was anywhere near good. This is a case of quantity over quality. I would not even take the books for free

UX is horrific. cant access my titles.

I subscribed to the trial. Before ending, I tried to cancel it.
Both the app nor the web don't allow me to cancel the trial.
I contacted the support, and they were not able to help, the account is still there and tells it will renew and convert to payment.
I also contacted support to cancel my credit card info and they did not delete it.
I am contacting my bank and Visa and will alert them about the unwanted payment that will come, and dispute it.
DO NOT insert your credit card info with this company before ending the trial as I did

I wanted to see available subscription plans, as I was going back to renew one. Instead I was given confirmation about resuming subscribtion without any confirmation or information about the price. I had to check their invoices and my banking app to see amout of money taken. Additionally I am unable to delete my credit card information to prevent further mistakes. Fortunately cancelling subscription (does not work on mobile phones) works so I am only 1 out of 6 months of money short. This is horrible paying experinence and this alone made me stay away from them.

Edit: Packt Support helped me with issue (before they replied here, which is nice). Still bad experinence but they came sqaure.

Shady business practicd. Even after canceling subscription, they enable from their side without consent and charge to your account.
When you write to them to requesting refund, Jagan shamelessly responded that once money taken they don't have any policy to refund.

Books are full of poor English, mistakes, and examples that don't even relate to the topic being discussed. Really disappointed and won't buy one of their books again.

The teaching of most of the trainers / teachers is useless. They don't teach well

Reading Modern CMake for C++ and absolutely loving the book. It's really well-written in a way that is both succinct, but explicit, so you're never left guessing as to the author's lesson. I'm not sure if it's a feature of the Online Reader or something that authors explicitly have to do, but loving the stylized text to help emphasize important concepts, and love that I can take notes online. Can also access the book on my iDevices so I can read it anywhere.

The subscription model is based on, to put it mildly, highly dubious 'business practice' where you can't stop subscription, the only option provided is to pause is for up to three months, then they continue to charge your credit card. It seems that the only way to stop it is to send a request to help desk and wait. Advice - make sure you use prepaid credit card with limited amount of credit when dealing with Packt to avoid abuse.

I signed up for the free trial. Packt said that my free trial would end on 2/2 and I'd be billed, which with I was fine. However on 2/1, a day early and during the free trial window, they tried to bill the card. I got lucky that my card flagged it as potential fraud and didn't allow the charge. I came here to see all the other billing reviews and it seems consistent with what I experienced and I won't be joining based on that experience.

Examples don't work. Purchased "Learn Three.js - Third Edition", contents of the book do not match the source code. Default examples flat out don't work, and there is no activity or maintainer in the Github repo. There are a few PRs to address some of the broken examples but they've been ignored for the last 4 years. I was honestly hoping Packt would be decent, but its pretty terrible all round.

After awhile I wasn't using my $13/month subscription as much. I went to cancel the subscription, but was offered a chance to SUSPEND my subscription for three months with no charge. Without warning, the SECOND the three months was up, packetpub charged my card again and would not consider refunding the charge.

At a glance, it looks like they provide up-to-date contents. However, they are just overwriting the published years. The most of the contents are old and doesn't provide relevant contents.

I bought a few technical books from them since one or two years ago. I signed to have access to lots of books and no problems till now. The user interface could be better but it works. Many good books, good authors.

What they claim a 7 day free trial is simply a scam trap. I signed up the plan and cancelled on the 6th day of the trial but was still charged for an upcoming full month charge that I never intend to continue with. Plus the quality of the books/medias on their website are really not as good as expected. Most of the content is simply pack of repetitive information that's not deep enough to tackle real problems. Be aware of their nasty trick and never fall in their scam trap.