Please stop asking me to rate this app every time I open the thing.
CM
Carla M.
Scam Company
Such a horrible scam company. I requested a refund after a week of purchasing their 10 hr tutoring, and after submitting formal documentation as a requirement to be considered for a refund- I am not ignored by the CEO on following up on the matter. He has been unprofessional from the beginning, and continue to uphold the scam-like persona. Don't get this test prep- go to Kaplan, they're legit.
Edit: he wants further formal documentation which would be personal financial information which is far beyond invasive for a simple refund request from an untrustworthy company.
Response from LSATMax & BarMaxMay 6, 2021
Hi Carla, we apologize for any inconvenience here. We are happy to make exceptions to our stated refund policies as we understand that circumstances do change, but to do so we would require formal documentation. We checked your account and it still seems like we are missing the documentation we would need to move forward with this special refund request.
NO
None of your B.
I was 10 minutes late and the tutor…
I was 10 minutes late and the tutor only stayed 10 minutes and I lost a $200 session. When I called William answered and kept talking over me and didn’t offer me any advice just kept forcing me to be okay with this policy. When you pay for $200 sessions, you expect no matter if your 10 minutes late to still be entitled to the hour of service you paid for. William hung up on me because I was expressing my dissatisfaction because this is the second session this happened to me. If you want to get ripped off go with this company because obviously that’s all they’re interested in.
TV
Taylor V.
I feel let down.
I really thought LSATMax was going to help. I bought into the fact that it would get me to the 99th percentile. And I am sure it does for some people. However, I think half the good reviews on here probably come from them asking their students to review prematurely before they have taken the LSAT. That’s what happened with me. My tutor asked me to write a review before we had finished our hours, and I did it because I felt good and I thought it would work. And it very well might for some people. But it didn’t for me.
After 2 months, a lot of money, 20 tutoring hours, and access to their course, I got the SAME EXACT SCORE as I had the first time around.
Now, frankly, with all of what I said above, I have to believe a lot of it is on me. And I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed that I spent that much time and money and STILL managed to not improve at all. It still shocks me. And I don’t want to put the blame solely on LSATMax.
HOWEVER, I have been absolutely left behind. When I reached out to them about the money back guarantee — the one they promise if you don’t improve on your score — I received no response. I emailed twice and responded to their texts asking how I did on the LSAT and did not receive a response. Not even a message telling me no, we can’t honor that for whatever BS reason. Which I honestly probably would have accepted, but after spending all that money I deserve a response and I do believe they should honor their money back guarantee. But at the very least they should respond. And the fact that they didn’t has made me lose all faith in this program that I really wanted to believe in.
JE
Jenny
Poor customer service. I would not recommend BarMax services…
I would not recommend BarMax services to anyone who is preparing for the bar exam. I requested to cancel my order on November 22nd. It took them three months to cancel service. Their customer service is horrible. When asked to speak with a manager, I was told no one was available but someone will return my call. I never received a phone call. I had to contact Affirm to help cancel seeing and they weren’t helpful either. I recorded every call with BarMax representatives and emailed it to Affirm. It’s amazed me how they received a payment of in two days and one day later they refused to cancel service. I went through another bar prep and received better results.
SA
Samuel
I had high hopes for TestMax
I had high hopes for TestMax, but ended up being disappointed.
Some of the lectures were great -- I loved Arthur Miller's Civ. Pro and the Crim. Law lectures were terrific as well. Outside of that, the lectures were pretty mediocre I thought.
The UBE questions were somewhat helpful, but the answers and explanations were confusing, formulaic, and often self-contradicting. Totally unhelpful.
I was also highly disappointed with the level and timing of feedback from customer service on questions, which usually was late to non-existent.
Finally, one of the main reasons I went with TestMax in the first place was because the web advertisement I saw stated that buyers would have lifetime access to the materials. I later found that this was not true. Lifetime access is only guaranteed for those who fail the exam and attempt to retake it. Apparently this was stated somewhere else on the website in the fine print. I would not have gone with TestMax in the first place if not for this highly deceptive advertising ploy.
I ended up passing the bar after more or less using what I could from TestMax and supplementing with other materials.
However, I would not recommend this product for the aboev reasons. Furthermore, when I discussed my concerns with the TestMax owner and founder, he was totally unhelpful and unwilling to even accept the feedback I provided.
Bad experience overall. A few redeeming qualities, but overall not a high-quality product.
Response from LSATMax & BarMaxJan 14, 2019
Dear Samuel, thanks for your feedback and congrats on passing the February 2018 Iowa bar exam using BarMax UBE! This exam had only a 56% pass rate so you should be extremely proud of your accomplishment.
We are sorry to hear that you were disappointed in your experience and we would like to address your concerns.
First, every single UBE question found in BarMax is a real, officially licensed, previously administered bar exam question and the explanations provided are actually the rubrics that the NCBE provides to the graders to grade the responses.
Second, BarMax is the only course on the market to offer lifetime access until you pass, but unfortunately this access is revoked once you are successful. If you had not been successful, you would continue to have access to your course without ever having to repay.
Lastly, we are constantly trying to improve BarMax, so we truly value your feedback. In fact, our turn around time for content-related questions has increased dramatically and we have also added even more legendary law professors to our team. Some of our more recent reviews will highlight these changes.
ME
Med
not recommended
not recommended
Response from LSATMax & BarMaxJan 16, 2019
Thanks for your feedback and we are terribly sorry to hear that you are disappointed in your TestMax experience.
Would you mind elaborating on your review so we can try to address/resolve your issue? You can email us at [email protected] or call us at 855.483.7862 ext. 2 (Monday-Friday 9am-6pm PT). Thanks in advance!
DA
Dan
Most Mbe questions do not have wrong…
Most Mbe questions do not have wrong answer explanations and a few do not have any explanations and you have to check the message board for the explanation. And most of the time if you want explanation to the wrong answer you have to request it on the message board and the response is not instantaneous so it disrupts or hinders the learning process..
and the worst part about it is instead of supplying a wrong explanation (which ncbe who makes the exam who is a higher rank than the people at bar Max decided to make explanations to wrong answers for a reason) the people at bar Max tend to regurgitate the correct answer explanation to you and say hope this helps which is a complete insult to your face and to have the audacity to tell me that I should go look up the black letter law and go try to figure stuff out for myself and effectively take probably 3 or 4 hours on 1 mbe is an even bigger insult and I have told barmax over and over again please put your reasoning on your website so that everybody can see the genius in your thought process of not providing wrong explanations so that everybody will purchase your product without being taken advantage of by your complete and convenient omission to state your genius reasoning behind not providing wrong answer explanations. I'm so happy you replied to my review so that everybody can see just how insulting you guys are with your Genius thought process and that is why I had to change my review for my 3 star to 1 star.. And if you guys were there with me on exam day you'd be worthless but the lessons and the nuances that I learn from reading the wrong explanations if those were there with me on exam day that would be worth something.
Response from LSATMax & BarMaxJan 12, 2019
Thanks for your feedback. Some of the information you have provided is incorrect. The NCBE only provides incorrect answer choice explanations for OPE 1-4 and all of these incorrect answer choice explanations are included in BarMax.
It is also important to point out that the most recently released set of questions, the MBE Study Aide, was actually released by the NCBE without any explanations, either correct or incorrect. You are more than welcome to confirm this for yourself by visiting the NCBE's website.
Now as to why we have not included incorrect answer choice explanations, we believe that the best way to improve on the MBE portion is to try to understand for yourself why the answer is correct/incorrect and the vast majority of the MBE questions can be explained by simply referring to the BarMax content outlines. While many students believe that reading pre-written explanations is helping them improve on the MBE portion, it is not. One process is passive, the other is active.
Struggling with the question and looking up the black letter law for yourself will allow you to take something away from these questions that you can apply to future questions. Remember, you will never see that MBE question again and we will not be with you on the day of the exam to explain which answer is correct or incorrect. This process will also help you commit the black-letter to memory far better than reading pre-written explanations.
For this reason, we highly recommend taking a moment to try to understand the question for yourself. Now that being said, there are definitely some MBE questions that are more difficult that you might not be able to understand by looking up the black letter law and you are more than welcome to post to our message boards asking for further clarification. While the response is not instant, we respond within 24-48 hours. You also have access to all previous discussion threads where you will find a ton of the incorrect answer choices being further clarified by our instructors.
This is undoubtedly the best way to improve on the MBE portion and the reason why we have decided against including pre-written explanations for all the incorrect questions.
Here is a blog post we wrote on this exact subject:
https://testmaxprep.com/blog/bar-exam/proven-tips-to-ace-the-mbe
Now in terms of this process taking time, yes it will take more time, but with the BarMax schedule you are not being overwhelmed with a kitchen-sink approach of content so you have more time to practice applying the black letter law to real practice questions, both MBEs and essays. Our success, particularly with repeaters and foreign trained attorneys with no background in American jurisprudence, should give you the confidence that our approach is extremely effective:
https://intercom.help/testmaxprep/barmax-bar-review/general-information/does-barmax-work-for-repeaters
https://intercom.help/testmaxprep/barmax-bar-review/general-information/does-barmax-work-for-foreign-trained-attorneys
Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.
