ABCmouse: Reading & Math Games Reviews

by TWINkiesMommy2009

I cancelled ABC Mouse over the phone with a representative in January because my children were too old for the program and we were no longer needing it (they’re nearly 9 years old). Apparently the representative “paused” my account and so they resumed charging me three months later. I didn’t catch it right away and I haven’t received a single email from them since June 2017 so it was very much out of sight, out of mind. I called again and she told me the account had been paused, that I did it, and they have a non-refund policy. They ended up refunding me the past 60 days though they charged me $9.95 for the last 3 days. My rate at the time I cancelled was $7.95. They wouldn’t budge on refunding the last 3 charges they did without permission. I researched a bit when I got off the phone with them and they’ve had multiple BBB cases and also have reports on RipOff Reports. It’s disappointing that they have these shady billing practices because my children enjoyed them and they were good for them while we used it. Off to dispute the charges through PayPal that they refused to refund. 😕

by S.Red.

You guys are disgusting. You use children’s education to steal. I signed up with google account through an email that I don’t have access to anymore, and through my paypal account. I asked you to cancel my subscription and you said you couldn’t because I needed to go to my google account. So, since I cannot, you will keep taking money out of my account, refusing to find a way to cancel my subscription. You also refused to give me a refund of the last theft that you did by taking money out of my account even though it had said that this app was successfully canceled at some point. Even though I kept asking for help to unsubscribe. This is just frustrating and just completely disgusting. The little control they have over their subscription proves how desperate they are to steal money. Now I am stuck with an account from ABCmouse, taking money out of my account every month, without being used, and without having the option to unsubscribe. What is left for me to do is take my card out of PayPal to prevent them from taking money from me any further.

by NateBobBenton

to;dr: Poor customer service, no response to emails, difficult to cancel, advertised one price but instead got another, app is clunky and slow, and activities are not engaging enough to keep my kids attentions

The "activities" are buggy and slow on ABCmouse and are worse on the web. My kids are preschool age and they don't have the patience to wait thirty seconds or more while the activity loads. My kids are three and four were supposed to be free since March 2020 because of the pandemic but I've been paying 9.95/month instead. I tried sending emails to support and I was ignored multiple times. I've read the "5" star reviews and they seem formulaic so they are probably fake. Cancelling was incredibly difficult. I had to sign up for the service and pay from the website but had to cancel on ABCmouse . When I downloaded ABCmouse on my iPhone 11 the keyboard and cancellation screen would format right for my screen so I couldn't cancel there. I tried sending a message to Age of "Learning" (should be Age of Scamming) and never had a response.

by JES3681

I don’t usually leave negative reviews however this product and its customer service/support is terrible. While the concept is spot on ABCmouse just doesn’t work.

We purchased the yearly ABC Mouse subscription for my 3 year old daughter. She used the learning path for about 20 minutes, which she loved because each lesson had a different activity, game or song. That was short lived when one of the lessons freezes and fails to load.(level 1, lesson 12, reading all about cows). There is no way to bypass the lesson and I’ve tried everything to get it to work to include deleting and reinstalling ABCmouse . I called customer service and they are not taking calls and do not have an option to leave a message. I then emailed customer support only to receive an automated reply and nothing to follow. ABCmouse is supposed to be for children to help them learn if it doesn’t work and the company isn’t going to fix the issues they shouldn’t be selling it. Very displeased with this.

Update - the only response I received was to delete ABCmouse and re-download, which had already been tried (as stated in the review and in messages to customer service). I still have not received a response from customer service regarding any course of action, or a refund, as we still cannot advance past the same lesson. This company is a scam.

by Craystrider

Is awesome and covers a range of skills. You can tell thought and care is put into it. I have two big issues, one is I haven’t found a way to keep my child locked into there name only and from poking around into other more parental areas of ABCmouse . The can’t change anything without a password but they get to info related screens easily and problematical for me. They have siblings with accounts and sometimes poke around and accidentally change a different account or my 2 year old during her FreeTime play with abc mouse alway always always clicked over into the I think more parental area. Like the first screen for assessments or stuff like that. The second is, having time limits I can set for the class pet. Soon as I’m not looking for 10 minutes the kids find there way over to the class pet and mindless move around the pet toys and loose to much time on that screen. I would heavily suggest getting a good UI team to rethink kid/multi kid/ parent management screen limits similar to screen time and guided access for various features in ABCmouse . The whole idea would be how can we keep the kid locked into the more educational parts and give the parents a way to get to what they need with some additional steps the kids can’t overcome.

by Disappointed Homeschool Mom

I got the yearly subscription for my daughter since my son had it before but now it seems to still be an issue with progress and the next activity lessons. It says to click but then just freezes and does NOTHING. I also paid for the assessments as well with the the one year subscription and I am highly disappointed and I really love ABCmouse but what’s the point of paying for a subscription that doesn’t work? I also got the automated response saying to reinstall, update device, etc... still nothing. I recommend to every parent to not buy anything from ABCmouse unless you do the trial for the month to see how far it gets you. But even then you might waste your time since it’s a faulty app. I’m sick of trying to troubleshoot something I paid for that did the same thing a decade ago. I love the lessons and everything else but if you aren’t able to have ABCmouse running up to our standards it is downright pointless to be paying for. Education should honestly be free for us who need it. I speak on behalf of all parents with kids. So now I want to know what is going to be done since I am very dissatisfied.

by LFarrow

The activities in the math and reading section are good, but the customer service is terrible. When you are doing the math section, there are two or three skills the child is working on at a time. Well one of the math games on my child’s account isn’t working properly and won’t let my child put the correct answer. I have tried over and over to put the right answer in but there must be a bug and it doesn’t work. I have contacted customer support on three separate occasions to have them address the issue. I sent the first email on April 4. It took 10 days for them to respond and I was told to uninstall and reinstall ABCmouse and update my iOS. Did both, game is still not working. I have since then reached out three more times and have heard nothing back. My son cannot move past this skill even though he knows how to do it because the game won’t let him enter the correct answer.

There is no other way to contact customer support except the email link on ABCmouse . No one responds and I can’t seem to locate a number. For the amount of money we pay to use this service, there should be a better way to get support.

There are much better apps that do the same thing for less money and better support for their customers. I’m frustrated that we paid for ABCmouse and my son cannot even make any progress because the developers can’t get their act together to fix this one simple thing.

by Fatima42990

I do enjoy using ABCmouse with my son. But I do not enjoy how the platform introduces new features. Get children making progress with those features and use to them ONLY TO HAVE THEM BE REMOVED into a separate app with additional fees. This has happened twice so far. 1st with the Shapeys and then with Miracle and Nano. Both were awesome additions. But then you remove them. Not only do you remove them without warning but also leave the buttons there on the screen to remind children “hey remember these games you don’t have access to anymore … cry and ask your parents where it has gone every time you return to play.” So now to want $80 a year for this app and $80 a year for math with the Shapeys and $80 a year for reading with Miracle and Nano. How did $80 a year turn into $240 a year. Really remove the faces of the Shapeys and Nano from the this app homepage as they are not a part of that subscription.

by Chilly Lilly

My daughter loves working with ABCmouse, and I love it as well the only reason I gave it a 3 out of 5 is because when we first downloaded and signed up it took days for ABCmouse to work on both my phone and her tablet. I emailed support and I never got a response on how to fix it or to help me figure it out. I got a response over a week later on rated ABCmouse . Time has passed and she has been doing about two hours a day on it so far. Now I understand that due to the virus there has been a lot of extra activity, but she has been stuck on a section for 5 days. Neither her tablet or my phone will load the new section I emailed support the next day thinking it was just a lot of activity and I would give it time. Still no response. It has been over a week. We have resorted to just playing games until we find something for her to do. I didn’t want to take this up here, I am just tired of waiting on a response and hopefully this get me further. Thank you for you time.

by Yohuallix

My son and I love the ABC Mouse program. I think it’s great, but unfortunately, with every update ABCmouse works worse and worse. Every time I update ABCmouse , it takes forever to recognize my account (when it actually does, because there have been times when it does recognize it. Period.). My son uses a tablet to play with ABC Mouse, so, when we are totally unable to sign in in ABCmouse , we use the web browser, but that doesn’t offer a better solution, because the games use a lot of RAM to load, and a tablet seems to not have enough for that. The games constantly stick or take forever to load. That’s not fun at all. For the amount of money ABC Mouse want per month, it should work flawlessly, in my humble opinion. It would be great if these issues could be fixed, since I consider AbC Mouse a good aid to help children moving academically forward despite all the challenges the pandemic brought for schools worldwide.

by Sam21536

Granddaughter does her “homework” every morning after breakfast. Brady is now 20 months old and can start and run ABCmouse unassisted on my iPad, but I still monitor. She loves the games & puzzles and art projects. The songs are barely tolerated because there is no corresponding video & many songs are just plain lame. She expects songs like on the Dave&Ava app. She absolutely HATES the books offered on ABCmouse, as there are no monsters, dinosaurs, glittery unicorns or super heroes. We read regular paper books after this app time is over. I recommend ABCmouse because it gives focus and structure and she finds enough features to keep her interested. She already knew her alphabet and numbers up to 10 before we subscribed, but I can see how ABCmouse will gradually progress her learning to word recognition and reading. Plus there are few apps available for the ignored age 1 to 2 kids. Most apps for this age are baby rattle types. Your mileage may vary.

by Rytab Saleh

Because sometimes i get glitches and non-stop waiting. This game has dissapointed me a bit. Well when the non stop waiting IS there, I do have internet. Glitches lead me to the bad part of it all. I get kicked out of the game. Can you please fix that because it happens to me every time I play. So the thing is: the part of playing is fun, but how do I level up? I am a 2nd grader you know.... I think you don’t know YET, but now you do! I need help with edacating with my sis, tala, the 3 year old. I’m Rytab, the one who sent this. I am 7 years old after all so please do those things I am pretty sure you can do it because you are the one who knows what do and also is it ok for me to play because I am 7 wait I think it’s 7-9 maybe, I don’t remember what but I like typing stuff so wait wait here’s the thought. Can you make a rainbow name list like my name, Tala Baraa, Yazeed, and Saif. Please make animal names to trace and animal pictures. And thank you for understanding this feedback. I was also gonna say that can you do my mom’s and dad’s? Muna, and Khaled Muna, mom Khaled, dad ok now bye see you soon and will this go to my parents because one is praying, that’s dad doing dishes, mom. Now ok bye but I want to type more, ok more can I play without net? I mean offline because I really want to now bye.

by Tnbhjjvvcf

Update: they were just overloaded with all the new users that suddenly flooded their site when everyone’s school closed. My son loves ABCmouse and is saving up his tickets for a “rainy day”. Didn’t realize it would also teach my kindergartener about finances. Lol
Great app and customer support getting out the word that everything was going to be fixed ASAP. Thanks!

ABCmouse will not load any further than the yellow entry page. On the rare occasion it goes past after several minutes, ABCmouse force closes and I’ll have to login and start this evil mess all over again. My 5th gen iPad 5 is fully updated and so is ABCmouse . WiFi is working well with everything else and I’ve tried a soft reset on the iPad as well as deleting out ABCmouse and re downloading it. It is also having the exact same issue on an iPad mini.

by JoeDaddy19

Always heard about ABC Mouse from commercials on the pbs channel. It was perfect timing for us to check it out: our daughter just turned 3 and COVID-19 Quarantine was in full swing. Our daughter is doing great with ABC Mouse and gets a lot from it. ABCmouse, coupled with mock hour-long “school time” at home with her Mom has really boosted our daughter’s vocabulary, letter recognition, phonics, recognizing patterns, and learning numbers. Definitely recommend a touch screen device, as this is more intuitive to a young one than using a mouse. The only thing is I wish we could turn off or control ABCmouse advertisements that scroll at the top main menu... when our daughter selected one, it led to the episode/show section of ABCmouse . These are not very interactive in-app shows. Hopefully there will be a control feature for this in the future. Other than that.. ABC Mouse is super amazing!

by Kitty409

I’ve been using ABC mouse with my countless nieces and nephews for the past six years. This program is totally awesome. It has numerous ways of accessing the material: including the learning path, the classroom, and the map. It has numerous videos games puzzles. It has all the reading a child would need until third grade. I can’t speak highly enough of this program. I currently have two separate subscriptions for three nieces and three nephews of mine. Up until now, I have had numerous subscriptions to other programs; However, none is like ABC mouse! After school, my little ones run to get on ABC mouse. They are so excited to work with this program. They ask me to do more lessons. They love the whole idea of earning tickets and purchasing things that they can interact with. Thanks ABC mouse for such a wonderful, complete, and engaging program!

by Aurora Hazel

ABC mouse is helpful for your kids and I know that because I am a kid. My sister plays it and I am eight now and I still play it. for each activity they give you three tickets I was able to name three things that I learned in the video that I watched. The reason why I play it every time I get the chance to is because all the time they are constantly adding new activities, games, and videos I don’t just play it because that though. I know people say this a lot but, it actually teaches me things I didn’t know before it makes learning easy for kids and it makes kids want to learn because they will have fun learning once they play ABC mouse. I recommend this game for your kids. if you do download it I hope you have fun playing and learning with the one and only and the most extraordinary ABC mouse!

by I Need Them Gone

This game is the best learning experience I’m seven years old in first grade but I still have a lot to learn so this game is super fun for me but I just want to request some updates I want some more outfits so you can have even more fun with your character customization and add some more furniture as well and also add new activities add anything you don’t have before also can you add some daily tickets for every day like tickets every day any amount is fine some new coloring pages some new learning activities I absolutely love the books so please add some new books and also I’m trying to delete a picture that I made because I’m tired of it and it asked me a question that if I actually want to delete the picture I clicked yes I checked if it was still there and it was please fix it

by Jessb18

This is a really good app for kids and it is like a classroom but you can take it anywhere it is really fun and educational app me and my brother love it. There is one thing you can change is when I am in the car it doesn’t work. Overall it is a really fun app!!!! Me and my brother really like ABCmouse I like that we can buy close and toys for are room and the fun activities and the gifts you get in the learning path and the classroom is fun and the hamster and the fish and the pets you can get are fun too. But if you can add a bowling game my brother would be so happy because he loves bowling. And if you can add a Maltese puppy for 45 tickets or 90 tickets? But this is the best app for kids that are going to pre-k. And I love that it is so fun and all of the fun activities!!!!!! Get ABCmouse it is so much fun!!

From Alyssa Berkowitz

by XxJadaLovexX

I’ve been teaching for 16 years. And thank you very much I appreciate it! Cause my daughter has been reading a lot and she’s making it into school. And the teacher is like “oh my gosh when did your kid learn this awesome stuff!” I said “Oh try abc mouse it’s the best learning app ever!” And my teacher was so surprised. And the teacher tried it out. And all of the kids were learning so well the teacher smiled at me. And the kids all spelled well and she said. “Oh thank you very much. I needed this the kids grades are very low and I love this! There spelling good they can spell their names now I’m like so happy! Thank you very much I’m giving this game 5 stars!” And that’s it (thank you very very so so much I wish I could give you a hug. you deserve it!) I wish you could reply and say “I hope you enjoyed ABCmouse and. have a happy day!

by Gwenwivar

Going into this three years ago I thought it was a gimmick. I turned it on and handed over the iPad to my then two year old girl. She loved it. She played up until she hit 4 1/2 years old where she got bored and hardly played. By then her sister who was just turning 2 picked it up and started playing. At 5 and a few months my oldest was diagnosed ASD and I got her back into ABCmouse full force by changing the settings to level 8. She is thriving on it now. She is now in Kindergarten and doing double digit addition and my 3 year old is spouting off the letters of the alphabet every time she sees them and shapes. This has definitely given both my children a head start in school. Once my oldest is done with the top level of ABC Mouse I am definitely continuing her on to the University app.

Thank you to the developers for being a huge part of my children’s educational success.

by KeyzBelieveMe

I downloaded ABCmouse for my son a few weeks ago and at the time it took so long to load I closed it out and never opened it again until last week. When I opened it this time, it loaded after a minute but even once it opened every click took a min to load. It was so painfully slow that I closed ABCmouse again. So then I try again because im no quitter and this time I finally make it to the sign up screen— again the process was alot of hurry up and wait. So again I close ABCmouse out and open it today to finish signing up and ABCmouse continued as it did before—slow as ever! Once I sign up and subscribe, ABCmouse doesnt even allow me to click on anything. I am angry not at ya’ll but at my undying belief in this products potential. I will try it on a computer next since yall got me for 10 bucks but if the site is trash, I want all my money back!

by Jratner214

My grandson loved ABCmouse until it kept freezing. It also don’t sync properly across all their apps as advertised. When I would try to log in, some of the apps would say there was no account attached to my email.

I contacted “customer support” and received an email with a PASSWORD reset link. That’s it. No other support at all. I responded that resetting the password wasn’t the issue, restated the issue and I never heard anything back from them. As the issue remained unresolved and I couldn’t even really use the program, I cancelled my membership (properly - through ITUNES)and deleted the apps from my phone. A few a days later I was charged for a monthly subscription. WTH??

I cannot in good conscience recommend this company to anyone. I have apple products and I don’t know if it’s just their apple apps or if others have the same issues.

by Cel82222

I bought 1 year of ABC mouse when my son was 2.5 yo. I feel that it was difficult to navigate through ABCmouse and didn’t really see much educational activities for him so it was hard to keep him interested... add to that a slow app with 30 sec- 1min of waiting just for the next page to load he would be gone. Utube kids is MUCH better and FREE! You can find MORE educational videos on there than ABC Mouse will ever have! My son knows about bones, and the immune system and so much more from UTube kids...
Also, I had no idea this was a subscription! I purchased a year and thought that was it. Well turns out you have to cancel your subscription or they will keep charging you. Because it was only once a year I didn’t notice the second time I was charged. I never once received a email from this app with a invoice or anything.
I emailed them and they said they don’t give refunds.

by Paige Burton

I purchased this for my daughter in the fall. I canceled in December, through ABCmouse , and deleted it from her device and my phone (she would sometimes play on my phone). I found out this has still been charging me $9.95 since. I tried to contact through the form on ABCmouse , no response.

I called and the first time prompted for a call back instead of wait. I was not called back. I then called back and waited to only speak to a lady who was very rude and said if I didn’t have an email confirming, there was nothing she could do. I can’t control if they send emails out. I saw a confirmation page through ABCmouse , but I do not recall an email. I have one email throughout the whole time and that was the welcome mail.

I hate that I have lost $40 for literally nothing. We deleted ABCmouse the same day we thought we canceled the membership.

by Porky714

We had ABCmouse for my child for couple of years. Honestly there are other wonderful educational apps that will help your child stay more focused. ABC Mouse has waaaay too much on its app. So if you are not by your child’s side at all times while he’s playing it my toddler was just watching videos instead of doing this learning pass, he would get bored fast with it. The pet thing would ALWAYS be slow, you press the button to feed or wash and sound comes way later plus pets don’t really do anything but stand there. Would’ve been way more interesting if child could interact with the pet and it would have some emotions back other than just stand there. My child is way more entertained with PBS app and its FREE.

The way to cancel would be to unsubscribe on your device (phone or tablet) or block it on your card. I’ve heard from many people that if you call them to cancel it’s useless.

by Momof3homeschooled

I have mixed opinions on ABCmouse. ABCmouse is good not great because my almost 4 year old can’t run ABCmouse on her own correctly as it’s much stuff to click on and get lost in doing without actually learning the things I WANT her to learn. With that being said their actually learning items are great for correcting her while still letting her win the game. I find ABCmouse run extremely slow and glitches a lot I hoped that they had fixed this issue since the last time we had ABCmouse which was 4 years ago but they didn’t. I also have a large ipad which battery normally last all day with my kids playing on it all day but with abc mouse app in use it will take a whole 2 hours to kill the battery. So it’s definitely not for use if you can’t afford for the ipad battery to die like doctor visits or long car rides. Outside of that ABCmouse is actually great as long as you make sure they are using it right.

by PiG Ina MiG

My daughter enjoys ABCmouse and we will probably keep it for a few more months, but to be honest I am not super impressed. First, ABCmouse has SO many glitches. Seriously, pay some software engineers to come in and clean up. Second, they make it way too easy for kids to do repetitive actions without actually learning anything, ie. color pages that they can just click done on, videos that they can watch over and over, or puzzles that they just click on the pieces and they fall into place instead of having to place them where they go. Third, it is a little ridiculous to charge $10 a month. I don’t feel like it provides anything new to justify a monthly subscription vs a one time purchase. Overall I am just not feeling like she is learning very much and I think she just breezes through. Oh well, there are much better ones out there.

by Thatfenderguy

I want to say that the overall content provided with ABC Mouse is wonderful. It is very well put together and easy to understand. Where my complain lies is with the application itself. It is absolutely terrible. ABCmouse will consistently freeze up on a lesson, video, or coloring sessions forcing the child to restart. Also, upon completion of a lesson, it will not reward the child with tickets and simply return to the overworld screen and mark the lesson as completed. But what happens more often than anything else is the constant voices repeating themselves over and over and over again even when the child has moved to another lesson or screen causing ABCmouse to need to restarted. As stated, my issue isn’t with the content but with the terrible nature of ABCmouse .

by Twin Unicorn

They need a HOME button! Sometimes my kids are playing with it and then either are not into that particular game or book they want to change it. So they have to keep hitting the back arrow button. Instead there should be a home button to get you to the main screen. Also, I was listening to my kids play on it and they said “shapies” No. they are shapes. Not shapies. Talk normal please in ABCmouse . It’s hard enough when I’m trying to teach my kids the correct pronunciation of words and then here you are ABC Mouse calling it “shapies” I didn’t care for that at all. Otherwise great app.

by JPPhil

We’ve used abc mouse with our grandchildren for a long time. The update two weeks ago broke the program so bad it won’t even load. Crashes every time - can’t even get to the login screen. And this is on an iPhone 8 Plus! Same thing happens on a first generation iPad Air. Both devices are running the latest iOS version. It needs to be fixed soonest or we will have to cancel and attempt to get our money back.

UPDATE:
After about six hours of actually talking to them on the phone, and a dozen emails back and forth, they finally got it fixed. The issue was that in order to get more grandkids on the program we had to upgrade to a Teacher account and they canceled our old Family account. The devices were still logged into the now deleted Family account. They had to log us out on their end, we had to log in and out again on our devices, uninstall and reinstall the apps, etc. Lots to go through, but glad it now works. As a retired computer professional, I’m used to this sort of thing, but I’m sure the average grandma or grandpa would have given up by now.

Anyway, it’s all here for whomever wants to refer to how it got fixed. The program is definitely worth five stars, when it works, which now it does!

by Minja Rose

My oldest son started listening to the letter songs just before he turned 2 years old. He is now almost 4 years old and is reading on his own. He knows 12 different colors, 20 different shapes, his full name, age and birthdate. We have taught him his phone number and address and he is picking up more and more information on a daily basis. I signed him up for preschool and the teachers there told me the only reason he would need to be in the class would be to socialize with the other kids. He is well past where he needs to be to start 1st or 2 nd grade. Thank you all so much for the programs you have put together and helping me give my son the biggest head start I could possibly offer him.

by AshleySlaysAndPlays🤟🏻

Yes, it's GRRRRRRRREEEEEAAAATTTTTT for anyone 1 to 4-5. I love the learning path. My little kids, Jeremiah and Karielle, love it too! They've been learning so much. Jeremiah is 2 and already knows how to count, spell, and she can read just a little bit. She can count to 35, spell easy things like hi, run, fat, rat, sleep, meet. The thing she likes most is the daily drawings. My little artist 🎨. Karielle is 3 and really enjoys writing and reading. ABC MOUSE! I am hoping to have another child that can become as bright as little Jeremiah and Karielle. Now I know that ABC MOUSE company is probably reading this thinking, "OMG girl just stop bragging about Jeremiah and Karielle!" But I really am impressed with their growth! I bought Karielle the Junie B. Jones series and she finished it in about half a year. I always have to come upstairs around quarter to 12 and tell her to stop reading in bed! ABC MOUSE is awesome. Parents they are so concerned about your child's growth! I set Karielle on kindergarten setting and she's acing it! If you want good children to learn good things, download ABC MOUSE right now and try it out! ;)

Happy happy happy times,

Anonymous