AARP Reviews 35

Sudoku is a good game but one I don’t often finish all at once. Even though you have to log in to play, if you have to do something else for a while or want to finish it tomorrow, the half-finished game disappears! Very annoying & frustrating.

I took the 8 hour Driver's Safety Course. It was longer than 8 hours. Even after content was read by the read along system or by myself, each slide of the 7 chapter course had an additional 10 second delay....that totals minutes and hours of wasted time. I resent that AARP think elderly people have nothing else to do with their time.

AARP is a marketing nonprofit that comes across as a bit of a scam. They recommend United Healthcare as the top plan for seniors, but it has the highest rejection rate in the industry at 32%, compared to the 16% industry average, and offers no discount. I ended up finding my own plan at a lower price with a better approval rate.

I have taken the AARP Defence Driving course everything is repetitive. It’s boring. It says it takes six hours. It took me 9 1/2 hours with a half hour break. I think it’s just a gimmick to take older people’s money. I’ve never did a Defence Driving course like this ever and I’ve been doing it for the last 40 years. Take my advice don’t take the course online. It’s a rip off.

The course will have slides that are timed for 30 seconds, but will only have 20 seconds worth of information...so you just sit there staring at the screen.
You need to keep clicking to progress through each screen. I wore out the mousepad on the laptop. 20 seconds of narration. 10 seconds of staring. Click. Repeat the process over and over and over.
Some courses are 5 hours, not this one! It's six hours of misery.
I would describe my experience as: miserable, depressing, somber, dank.
I am so thankful I wasn't holding a fork and sitting next to an outlet.

I learned NOTHING! This coarse is for imbeciles. They actually ask what a red circle on a traffic light means. It wouldn’t verify my keystroke pattern and locked me out TWICE after I had completed 65%. I asked for and got a refund.

I took or should say continually taking the safe driving course and twice it booted me off because it didn't like how I typed in the verification sentence. Each time I was over 50% completed and had to start the course over. Spend the extra $4 and take it somewhere in person. This 6 hour course will probably end up being at least a 12 hr course if I'm lucky

I called AARP about how much money is paid to AARP BY consumer cellular, they didn't have that information, they consumer cellular tell us by giving us the impression that we the consumers are getting a great price for being a member of aarp .This is not true there are lots of other cellular companies that have much better prices like Boost mobile, Metro mobile for just a few examples. Boost mobile price is ALL INCLUSIVE which INCLUDES ALL TAXES AND FEES and it also has a fixed price for EVER and consumer cellular price does NOT offer this. You members please look at the compensation that is being given to the executives of AARP especially how they travel (FLYING FIRST CLASS) they must not like flying with there members. This member doesn't respond to emails or texts.

Seriously, I know what the symbols
(like low tire pressure) mean on my dashboard. I know the tech on my car. I understand how hearing aids work--and you may be shocked--but I know how to get them and even what they look like. I also know that the center white line which you attrubute to an old white man was actually the work of physician June Hill Robertson McCarroll who painted a white line down the middle of a road to separate traffic after she was in a car accident, a solution that was later adopted by the California Highway Commission in 1924, laying the foundation for modern traffic lanes. Try not to freak out that she was an MD, too!

Frankly, the course reflects the assumptions and biases of those who wrote it. Find some people in your demographic who will be honest to help revise the course, because whoever wrote it doesn't seem to really know anyone in the demographic.

What went wrong this time, you ask?
WHY IS THIS COURSE MIGRAINE-PROVOKING, repetitive, BORING, and REDUNDANT? Then when I am at Chapter 6 with a migraine from this TORTURE for 10 hours they tell me they could not verify my identify because I didn't type the same way as when I began the course! Well, I have a migraine, and have an uncomfortable broken rib and can't believe the stupidity of this course. I give AARP safe driving course a big fat ZERO. Let's see if they let me APPEAL the decision to LOCK ME OUT after 10 hours in this stupid redundant and nonsensical course, because they could not verify my identify. Like WHO IN THE WORLD would want to take this course for me anyway? I'm the one who has to suffer this torture. Who's going to do it for me? Customer HELP is "not functioning" I am told. Very POOR SERVICE, AARP.

Absolute torture.

I concur with LK in Mnpls. The course was supposed to be 4 hours, it was at least 6. It was so repetitive that it became very painful to get through. There was good information but the repetitiveness left me wanting it to stop. Horrible. Unfortunately I didn't have time to find an event to go to. Stop the repetitiveness, you lose people's attention.

It says that it is a 4-hour course. I took it 3 years ago and it was a 4-hour course. This year I had to update the Smart Driver Course for my insurance discount. It took me 6-hours. I went through the course as fast as possible. Their time estimate is way off now. I had to take 3 hours on two days to finish the course.

I don't remember this much repetition of content when I took the course first time. Many topics were repeated 5 or 6 times through the course. Mind numbing!

They really need to make the developers of the course take it once a month to test the 4-hour claim, because this 2025 version could easily be assigned as one of the eternal levels of Dante's Hell.

I live in Minnesota which requires a 4 hour safe driving recertification every 3 years. As an AARP member, I decided to try their online class and main page said it was a 4 hour class. Turns out, this was not 4 hours and took me over 6 hours! I was furious!

Considering that AARP is supposedly an advocate for senior citizens, the class was insulting. It was ridiculously repetitious and I quit counting the number of times “stay alert” was used after it hit 20. I doubt that I will ever renew my membership again.

I contacted AARP Travel Center Customer service to request correction of a date error I entered for a hotel reservation. Instead of simply correcting the error for me, they informed me I would be charged the entire
$192 room rate for canceling, and re-booking the new date would cost another $192. AARP does nothing for seniors except scam them out of their money. Will never use them again, and am warning others to stay away. Am canceling my AARP membership - I don't need their help to be retired.

Shame on AARP. The course will take the average person 9 hours to complete and not the six they advertise. Course is repetitive and much to long. Stay away, you will hate it.

Terrible customer service. I never got the gift card I paid for. Many messages back and forth only to be told that they are having computer problems. And they refused to contact me when they fixed them. I was told I would have to try again. I wasted a lot of time and resolved nothing.

It is remedial to the point if idiocy- we all know which is the gas/ brake pedal, to look behind the car when backing up, and driver slower in adverse conditions.

Seriously.

It moves at a glacial pace- hundreds of pages have 3-10 seconds of time at the end of just waiting to hit the "next" button. It is way more than 6 hours. So much redundancy that many times I looked to see if I accidently hit the reverse key.

Irrelevent topics- we don't care who invented the white road lines or when traffic lights were created. If you are a brand new driver ( and let's face it, most of us utilizing the AARP link are NOT) then MAYBE the simplified babble might be instructional but the rest of us are light years past 80% of the information we are forced to sit through.

You will question your sanity. Your butt will be tired of sitting in front of a screen for 8 hours. Waste of time, I'd give it negative stars if I could.

AARP driving course was a huge mistake to sign on… long n reaping. Waste of time and mental abuse!! Waste of my money… never again!!! What a nightmare!!!

Where to begin?
1) I am aware of the pattern of: I'll tell you what I am going to say. I'll say it. Then. I'll tell you what I said. It may be fine for kindergarteners, but insulting to adults. Get to the point.
2) Do NOT repeat so much and repeat it and repeat it in ongoing sections.
3) There is a TON of void time waiting at the end of each section. Often 10 or more seconds- for EVERY section. That adds up to a LOT of wasted time. Staying on an introductory page for 10 or more seconds is ridiculous. If someone needs that much time to process three lines of text, they should NOT be driving.
3) I don't need to know the history of driving, the car apps and devices to be a better driver. Stick to the point.
4) Perhaps there is a certain amount of teaching time required to gain accreditation, but a LOT of this material could be eliminated, and the program would not be less useful

This was a very general overview of car ownership for those over 50. It gives a number of tips and opinions, but no typically "defensive driving" training.

Most of all I'd be concerned about accuracy, which is often debatable. Check out the following quotes from the course:

"New Jersey: It is illegal to pull out into an intersection on a green light and wait for an opportunity to turn left."
No, that's not true. It's possible it could be true in some states, but in none I've ever heard about. In New York only ONE car at a time--technically--may do this, but it's certainly not illegal to wait on green to turn.

"Do not pass another car if there is a solid white or yellow line on your side of the center line or if there are double yellow lines, . . ."
Definitely not accurate. We have many 4-lane highways across America with yellow double solid center lines, and you very definitely CAN generally use the second lane to pass a vehicle that's in the first lane!

"If an intersection is congested . . . all vehicles
should treat [the intersection] as a four-way stop."
No! Only if it's a 4-way stop, or a broken traffic light, do you have to treat an intersection as a four-way stop.

"Your speed of travel is one of the key items fully under your control."
That's not so, since speed limits (for instance) could constrain you (or a breakdown, or a crash, or...).

"New Jersey: When approaching a bicyclist, the driver must change lanes, safety and traffic conditions permitting, into a lane not adjacent to the cyclist when passing, if it is safe to do so, or allow 4 feet of space between the car and the cyclist."
Jesus, you would need 3 straight ahead lanes to do the first command... even the middle lane would be adjacent to the cyclist... you'd need to move into a 3rd lane or an oncoming lane!!

"Higher speeds result in more crashes . . ."
If that were true, we'd have more crashes on highways than on urban roads. It's true in every country that there are fewer crashes per mile on highways than on slower roads.