Scientific AmericanReviews of scientificamerican.com

I have subscribed to Scientific American for around 50 years and never had to deal with Customer Service before this month. This changed because the staff at Scientific American seem unable to properly handle a routine subscription renewal. I renewed my subscription On August 3. A week or so later I checked my account and found that the date of my final issue had not changed; it read, and still reads, Nov 2022. This led me to contact Customer Service by email. Over the course of three weeks I have received multiple emails from three Customer Service agents. These addressed issues that I have not raised but did not deal with the one issue that I did raise: correcting the last-issue date on my account. The most troubling response came from an agent who sent me a link to an alternative account page that has the correct date for my final issue. As a result there are now two web pages associated with my account. There is the familiar page that I access via scientificamerican.com and that requires a password. There is this second page that I access via a link sent to me by the agent and that does not require a password, but only my account number. I have no idea what the status of this second page is or when my subscription will terminate. I recently received the September issue of the magazine; the end date on the label is Nov 2022. Given the target audience of Scientific American I expected a high level of competence from their staff. This is not case with the Customer Service agents I have encountered. They are an embarrassment.

Over a month ago I subscribed to Scientific American and paid $47.99 for 12 month subscription with my Visa being successfully charged for the abovementioned amount. After waiting for over a month I decided to log into my SciAm account to no avail. They did not provide me with an account number or a password. Emailed SciAm to all their possible email addresses and after a couple weeks they responded that all they can see on record is my canceled subscription. I responded with all my data and they finally found it and emailed me my account number. After logging in I realized they horribly misspelled my street address to a level of not being able to recognize it. I am an anal speller, so I always make sure I provide my impeccable spelled full name, address etc. Not only that, but they changed my town name to completely something else. Only people on narcotic drugs and absolute illiterate losers can fail like that. What an incompetence! Today I asked for a full refund.

The iPhone app constantly forgot my login credentials and then couldn't always access content after I entered them. Even worse, trying to cancel subscription from a link in my renewal email, the "Submit" button on the page was disabled. No option to cancel recurring subscription from my account page.

My wife lovingly paid for a print subscription for my birthday in July 2020 which also included access to the online library. It took a few months for the first issue to turn up (along with another issue) and a few more did turn up but haven't had one for a fair while. The most annoying part of the whole saga was accessing the online library. For some reason the gift access code did not work; we sent multiple emails to the customer service team over the space of a few months, who repeatedly sent us directions to do what we had done multiple times before. Following getting really short tempered with someone via email, I was then sent Scientific Americans internal systems information in relation to our request for a new way to access the online library. More worryingly we were sent internal Scientific American systems data regarding someone else who had cancelled their subscription (that included their name, address and reason for cancelling their subscription). I emailed Scientific American pointing that fact out and I never got any kind of apology and/or response from anyone, following a clear breach of another persons privacy. I really would not recommend subscribing to Scientific American and especially if you want to use an online resource that isn't like something from the gates of online hell.

I love the content in Scientific American. They tend to inspire and direct scientific topic coverage across media.

I got a gift subscription for a friend. It takes 6-8 weeks for the print copy to arrive but I was never warned. Their website had log in problems. The magazine had the wrong address printed on it and someone had scribbled the right postcode. I’m not sure if this will be a problem every month! My friend can’t access the online digital magazine and I’ve spend weeks and weeks emailing. 90% of the time they don’t answer. They answered once and didn’t address the problem. They answered another time and only solved one of my many problems and patronised me that I should use the same thread. I then replied to the same thread many times and they’re ignoring me. I thought America was the land of customer service. I’ve honestly have never experienced worse online service. In fairness to even say I’ve experienced “a service” feels like a stretch. What a bunch of incompetent crooks.

Think it prudently... You must have wasted your time on reading and listening to this site Stay away of it ! Yes. It's unacceptable experience, unreasonable and rude conduct.

I subscribed for American Scientific, print edition, and received exactly one issue -- the following five issues never arrived. Customer Service keep saying I should allow more time for the issues to arrive, but 8+ weeks of delivery time can't be right. I have asked for a refund, but only get nonsense standard replies. This borders on fraudulent behavior.