Pimsleur Approach
Reviews and Complaints

I signed up for their free trial (it was for 7 days) and within the first 24 hours realized that I did not like their program and decided to cancel. I had received no communication from them whatsoever but had downloaded their app. I deleted the app and received nothing further from their company. Usually when I have enrolled in an online service I have received some sort of confirmation email. They sent nothing. I assumed that this was because I cancelled within the free trial and my enrollment had not been completed. Two months passed. I received a notification from my credit card that a $19.95 charge had bee applied to my account and was shocked to then see that Pimsleur had in fact enrolled me and billed me for two months of services without sending any communication or confirmation. I contacted their company and asked for a a cancellation and reversal of the charges since they had not provided any communication and I had not used their services. They canceled my subscription but refused to refund the charges- asking if I had received any written confirmation of cancelling the account with them. Well- I didn't receive written confirmation of enrollment OR cancellation up until that point. I feel that their marketing is deceptive and they intentionally avoided communicating that they were billing me so that they could continue to do so as long as possible without detection.

Dear Sirs: I have ordered Greek I and enjoyed it very much. that occured about two years ago. I recently ordered Greek II
on July 8th. and after waiting two weeks, I called and inquired about it. The representative kept me on the line for 20 minutes doing nothing but making sounds such as mm, ah, uh huh etc. I finally asked to speak with her supervisor who is Felisha, when she finally made it to the phone, she stated that she had reached out to the warehouse as to why it wasn't shipped and that when they contacted her, she would call me and let me know when to expecr it. I recieved no call from her. So I called again a week later as I waited on her call or the product that I had ordered. I called back the third time and spoke with Heather and went thru the same delay, she couldn;t give me an answer but was waithing on Felisha to take the call. When she finally took the call she gave me the same lie that she told me to begin with, I reminded her of our previous conversation that (She had forgotten) and told her to cancel my order. I hope that the cancellation is being effected. I don;t believe that Pimsleur appreciates it's customers being treated the way that I was treated. I hope something will be done to correct such unprofessional and uncaring methods used by your current employees. I am a Greek Professor and I truly wanted to enjoy your Greek II.
Dr. Gary Deems

The pimsleur is really unethical company. They told my husband that he only need to pay for the shipping of the CD. Upon knowing that he can cancelled, he told the customer service that he doesn't want any subscription charge but found out they started to billed us 3 subsequent months for something that had been cancelled in the first place. My husband was really pissed off and called them. The customer service said that they will cancelled the billing once they get the package back which they should have as we have the tracking that said that it is delivered. Still waiting for the refund.

I initially purchased a quick and simple approach to Spanish CD program which stated a great deal for only 9.95. I keep all my emails so I still have the receipt to prove the original price. Once you sign up for what you think is a 10 dollar deal you are added to the Pimsleur elite gold purchase you did not ask for and subsequently starts billing you every month for up to 500.00 dollars you did not sign up for.
Your quick and easy 9.95 purchase has just turned into a continued billing cycle that cost hours of disputing as well as the feeling of being financially violated. I don't like people taking money I did not approve. Stay away Rosetta stone would have been better, at least I knew that was expensive.

My child asked to buy two CDs for $9.99 each of foreign language instruction, one for Japanese and one for Egyptian Arabic. I gave her the go ahead. Since then we've been charged $256 in several payments for a "Gold series" which was supposedly left on our doorstep by the mailman. I have one box of tapes and CDs, but no trace of the others which were supposedly mailed. Regardless, we never asked for this, the website advertising the CDs did not mention signing up for anything, just the CDs.

I ordered a package of $9.75 for Arabic.
i received the item and tried to complete those.
But its my bad that I couldn't finish and those lessons are not suited for me.
I didn't return or call them back or even not browsed their website again.
After couple of weeks, they send me one package of Arabic Gold Version, I didn't receive any email or mail prior to the delivery. When I received I just ignoredd it as I was pretty sure that I didn't order anything from them. Because I even don't finish the firat CD I ordered.
They send me another package after weeks.
I ignored as well.
It's a manner that if I order something online, I should have at least one confirmation mail and one invoice.
I received nothing.
As I didn't order those gold versions, I even didn't check the boxes.
Then after two week, for the first time I got a mail.
In the mail, I referred to one phone number and email.
I called them first, it was after business hours, so I e-mailed them.
They sent me an email Nov 25, 2014 and I replied that same day.
They responded me after one week, Dec 2, 2014.

in the email, i got a number and called them.
I came to know that I owe them $495 dollar, it just makes no sense. I offered them to take those junk returned. The customer service operator said they can't take it return.
I asked them why they didn't send me invoice or notification before sending me almost $500 goods.
She replied, its their way of business!

Now they want me to pay $360, and they will not take return.
I let them know $360 is an impossible cost to me, i can pay for return shipping barely.

On january 15, 2014 i ordered quick ^ simple italian audio 8 cd's for
$ 9. 95. Order number pa51401153504939 paying by my mastercard.
Right after i made an order and got a receipt with [protected] number on it, i called there and told to representative that i will not be interesting in future learning materials from them.
I got my cd's shortly and my mastercard was charged $ 9. 95.
Just yesterday 04 / 19 / 14 i start receiving a phone calls from company and emails telling me that i own money (Amount never been mantioned) to pimsler company for some other cd's (The whole italian)
I never ordered anything from them exept quick & simple course for $ 9. 95 and the most important i never received any other product from them. Since i paid for my quick &simple order by credit card, i called to my mastercard right away and been told that since card was build $ 9. 95 there was no oter attempt from that company to place anoter charge.
The person who calling and emailining me name jose peixoto ([protected]@internetorderllc.com) he calling him self consumer affair specialist.
Please help to resolve this!

Irina kaplan

Ordered an initial Spanish language cd for 9.95. What they fail to stress is that this ties you into shipments of advanced courses for 256.00 each. Because of debit card change the couldn't auto bill me so they called. This how I found out I was hooked into this. The CS rep said I was outside of the return period so "tough" .

I had ordered a trial run of the Pimsleur Approach Language Learning CD. I had decided to return it. However, Internet Order LLC recently sent me a letter, saying I must pay $256 for the course. I refuse to pay for something I did not use. I believe this to be a mistake, and would appreciate if they cancelled this order. Please review this and reply as soon as possible

The company Internet Order has multiple web sites for the same product it appears they do not all advertise the same way. They are clearly practicing a bate and switch tactic you can clearly see the differences from the two web sites I post below.
This site is the Bate: https://www.pimsleurapproach.com/atc412.asp?sid=sl36010bnr&hid=210482460&uid=466978#cartArea
This site is the switch: https://www.pimsleurapproach.com/special-offer/?sid=home1
The switch site was sent to me via E-mail after speaking to the phone representative at length for over 20 min. I sent the link that I had back to the representative who seem genuinely surprised at what I was looking at. The rep expressed concern got the overall price on my order reduced and sent me some complimentary work books. I will be lodging a complaint on the BBB site as well. The first site add is just a clear cut 29.95 slash to 9.95 in the special offer box. The second add that I was sent to by a rep spells out something quite different 4 payments of $64 per course and there are 4 courses that is $256 for one course and a grand total of 1, 024 for the whole supposed discount set. conveniently slipped onto your major credit card each month.

Company offered a "Quick and Simple" introductory foreign language course, promoting "learn a foreign language in 10 days for $9.95." I purchased the course. While purchasing I was given another "special deal" and bought what I thought was a complete course for another $35. I received an email receipt for the $9.95 course and only when I read the entire receipt did I learn that, by ordering the $9.95 course, I was automatically enrolled in their "Rapid Fluency Purchase Program" for which my credit card would be charged $64 a month for four months. They are sneaky and underhanded in the manner in which they go about this. I wonder how many people get charged simply because they didn't know about this scam. It's a shame because I downloaded the 10 day course and it's pretty good. However, I would never do business with a company like this, no ethics, no honesty, just a bunch of people who think they're slick and going to make a buck. I'm going to the Philadelphia D.A.'s office with this. Maybe someone in Philly isn't corrupt...

I ordered the Pimsleur approach sometime in September for "$9.95", or so I thought. They continued to send me another box for a couple of months. They began charging my account $64 / month in November! I called the company to complain and he promised that the last payment has hit... NO! They have billed us each month until May. I even tried emailing the company saying that I never returned the products! Finally our bank put a stop to it this past week. None of this is explained when you purchase the language cd's! Beware! My husband is Chinese and I thought it sounded like a great program, who can't sacrifice 10 minutes a day. Well, on top of that the lessons I have done are around 35 minutes long. Don't be fooled by this scam like I was!

Hey, guys. Like all of you, I was scammed by them with the same "approach" that they scammed you. Surfing through this website, I noticed that this company has been scamming thousands of dollars off people since 2008. Even if people return their product, they just pretend they didn't receive it, so for those people thinking of solving this problem by contacting Pimsleur Approach and return their product to get refund, it's going to be a waste of time and money and you will be even more angry and disappointed.

But we can't just sit there and let them take our money. From what I read on this website, they will continue scam off you $65 a month for years to come. You might still think that you can afford a few thousand dollars, but the problem is not just your a few thousands of dollars, it's the millions that these frauds will make. When bad people have a lot of money, they are not just bad, they become dangerous. In addition, the existence of this extremely simple and obvious scam is both an insult to our intelligence, and an insult to the legal systems of our countries(I'm Canadian, and I'm pretty sure this thing is an international scam).

I'm pretty sure many of us, including me, have filed complaints, but the website is still scamming people four years after the first complaint is reported on this website(http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/pimsleur-approach-philadelphia-pennsylvania-c106573.html). I think the reason that our complaints gets ignored is because they are sent separately. I'm guessing that the company might have only scammed a percentage of people (me and you) instead of the whole customer base, this way, when government investigate their customers after receiving one of our complaints, a lot of the customers will say they did not get scammed and the government will just dismiss and forget that one complaint. Then when government receive another report, this process will just happens again. This is just one logical explanation why this company is not taken down, it might not be true, but it shows that when we report individually, Pimsleur Approach has a lot of ways to get our complaints dismissed. Thus I suggest we somehow complain collectively, first of all, please all send an email to [protected]@gmail.com, you don't need to disclose any info you don't want to disclose, you just need to write how Pimsleur approach scammed you with the title(subject) Pimsleur Approach scam, the email doesn't need to be long. If you have any ideas or evidences or types of help you can offer to solve this issue please send it to me too but with a title(subject) of ideas or evidences or help . I may not be able to reply or even read every email if I get a lot of emails since I have my own life too, but I will send emails out to everyone in case when we need to act collectively. My plan right now is that when we get a few hundred people, I will first send out complaints to difference organizations, saying that I'm complaining on the behalf of whatever number of people and hopefully this will get their attention. If that doesn't work, I will email journalist about our experiences and the fact that this company has scammed so many many people in so many different countries. If none of these works, I will need your help and do something extreme. I will pick some people and organizations that could help us but just ignored our emails, and tell everyone to send them identical emails on the same date at the same time, and this will get their attention for sure. Of course, this runs at the risk of them being annoyed and act negatively towards us so it will only be used as our last resort.

Ordered the simple Learn to Speak Spanish program for $9.95. Within a couple weeks I received a large box with a "free trial" containing many other items I DID NOT ORDER. I was told by their "customer service" rep after stating I did not order this and specifically entered I did not wish to receive any further material on the order form when I placed my original order. She said, "You cannot opt out of not receiving additional materials and will have to return them at your cost."

This is a huge bait & switch scam. Extremely unethical. Do not do business with this company.

Pimsleur-Approach /Stroll-handles their billing & shipping. They suck you in with a cute 1 hour internet infomercial; sounds like you're paying $10 per set to learn a foreign language, next thing you know you start seeing recurring bills every 2-4 weeks at $64 a pop ($256 per level) when you call you get the bum's rush and they can't refund even if you return these unused disk sets (or so they claim). Totally bogus, and they are well aware of it. They accuse you of trying to SCAM them. Stay far away unless you want someone to clean out your bank accounts for you.

I received an E mail from Pimsleur Approach as to learning various languages by way of CDS for only $9.95. I selected Italian and filled out the E mail form which required my credit card number. I supplied my credt card number and sent the completed form back to the Company. A couple of weeks later I received the CDs called Pimsleur Quick & Simple Italian 2nd Revised Edition. At that time I believed that my purchase was successfully completed. A couple of weeks later, I received a box in the mail called Pimsleur Approach, Gold Edition. I did not order this Gold Edition, however, since the accompanying print out stated that the unit price was free and the total said trial, I decided to keep it. At the end of the month, I received my credit card bill reflecting a charge of $64.00 for the Gold Edition. I paid the bill thinking that that was the end of it. Yesterday, I received a second box in the mail containing Italian 2 - Gold Course CDs. I opened the box and found a similiar print-out in it with the Company's telephone number on it. I immediately called the number and spoke to a lady named Yolanda . I informed her that I did not order or want the Gold Course Italian 2. She gave me instructions on how to send it back. At the same time, she informed me that I still owed two more payments of $64.00 on the first Gold Edition I received. I replied that I did not order that Edition either and that I want to send it back as well. She replied that I couldn't do that because I had it for more than 30 days. Thus, I accepted the idea that I was stuck with it. After I hung up with her, I immediately took the Pimsleur Approach Italian 2 - Gold Course CDS to the Post Office having written on the box code 3766675 as Yolanda instructed and mailed it "Media Mail" also as Yolanda said to do. The postage cost me $3.31. I am now concern that this Company has my credit card number and could charge me anything they want. I have learned my lesson and won't purchase anything that is advertised on my E mail again.

i am just ordered a $9.95 learn french CD, but they send me the gold edition and charge me $64 every half month. i do contact their customer service by E-mail to cancel this and they said i cant make the cancellation and i must pay for total $256 for each level. Then i request for sending back the CD to them, but hey not allow me to do that.