MasterClass Reviews 1,124

While the production quality of MasterClass is undeniably high (cinema-grade lighting and famous faces), I am writing this to warn prospective buyers about a specific anti-consumer clause in their terms: The Gift Paradox.

I received this membership as a gift. Upon logging in to see if the courses were relevant to my field, I realised the content was largely "edutainment"—high on anecdotes, low on actionable pedagogy.

However, when the I attempted to request a refund on behalf of the purchaser (after using it for less that 1 week) (well within the 30-day window), they were denied. Why? Because MasterClass's policy states that redeeming a gift voids the refund eligibility immediately.

This creates a trap: The recipient cannot evaluate the quality of the product without redeeming the code, but the act of redeeming the code destroys the buyer's right to a refund.

Verdict: If you are buying this for yourself, you have a 30-day guarantee. If you buy this as a gift, you are handing your money over with zero recourse if the recipient doesn't like it. Do not gift this product until they fix this policy.

Update: 6/1/26 reached out to customer services and their response is bellow: “gift subscription has already been redeemed by your recipient. As per our terms of service listed here, once a gift has been redeemed it is no longer refundable.

Please refer to section 7 on Refunds: Unless as required by applicable law in your jurisdiction, within the first 30 days after the date of purchase of a Gift Subscription and if not yet redeemed for a subscription, at the Gift Subscription Holder’s option, the Issuer will refund the full amount of the purchase of a Gift Subscription to the purchaser of the Gift Subscription.”

Update 8/1/26 - a very helpful member from Masterclass, Vanessa reached out and managed to find a solution.

Despite my initial disappointment the customer service received has been excellent.

The automatic renewal went through, which I was not expecting, however, I was able to contact the company and received a refund. They dealt with it promptly, so I appreciate that.
When I have more free time I would come back to subscribe again.

Not worth the money or the hassle to try to cancel. They auto renew without sending you a notification of the upcoming renewal charge of almost $200 then make it impossible to talk to a person. If they followed simple and transparent guidelines of just giving you the option to:
- not auto renew when you sign up
-sending you a notification of the upcoming renewal charge
-and not having a bot answer you and frustrate you further,
I would consider them a trustworthy business. Until then, their lack of transparency and good business practices, make it impossible to recommend this to anyone especially any of my friends or family. Buyer beware!

Impossible to cancel. Terrible, automated customer service. It's unfortunate because the videos are very good, but their subscription system is designed to prevent customer service.

I purchased a gift for my husband. When I purchased it, I was told that he could cancel within 30 days if he wasn’t satisfied. After he redeemed it and looked at the offerings, he didn’t find anything interesting and we tried to cancel. I called and spoke with a representative who said that we couldn’t cancel. I asked to speak to a supervisor and she told me that there wasn’t one and that one would call me back. At that point, I knew this was a scam. I insisted to speak with one and she found one! He also denied the refund. After hanging up, I read reviews which I should have done before purchasing it. I called back and spoke with Christopher. I read a review to him and told him that there were several others just as bad or worse. He hurriedly spoke with someone and they ended up refunding me. I’m waiting for the email verification…
So, lesson learned!

I purchased a subscription for my family last Christmas as I thought the variety would give each member a choice of what to watch. I am retired and on Social Security. Without notifying me, they renewed my membership for $256.80. While that amount may be insignificant to most, it is groceries for me and my dog, my only companion, for two weeks. When I contacted them, they refused to refund me. Such an unethical company. If you are a celebrity reading this and are on Masterclass, shame on you for being associated with these people.

UPDATE: I was just issued a full refund by calling the customer service number (which you can only find on Google) and speaking with an actual helpful human being during business hours. In the end they did right by me, but they really should put the customer service contact info on the site itself. As It stands, it comes off as suspicious, evasive and scammy, and you end up feeling crazy having to go through extended argument with with an AI which clearly has no intention of helping you.

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

I do agree with many comments that the content is very superficial and is pretty much just entertainment that does not at all warrant the cost or the name 'masterclass', however I can live with that.

What I really have an issue with is the sneaky cancellation/auto-renew subscription process, followed by the horrendous AI driven customer support and the impossibility of having communication with an actual human being, as opposed to the insulting stream of disingenuous pandering, glib responses from an AI.

The AI basically keeps saying things like “I understand your frustration…” (You’re an AI for God’s sake), When, in fact, it basically keeps coming up different ways of saying, “Go away, we're keeping your money for this product you clearly don't want, need, or asked for, whether you like it or not. Read the fine print, sucker. We got ya! haha.”

It is unfortunate they are perfectly will to take money out of someone's account for a product they are stating they do not want. The renewal notification are not sent by text like most subscriptions. It is hidden in an email buried with all the their other junk emails. Perhaps they’re hoping that people will forget and miss the date.

I even had to google the customer service email as they don’t offer any access to customer service on their site. They also need to make human contact available for customer service. Even if only a live chat.

I can totally justify paying for the day or 2 after I was charge and before I cancelled, or perhaps even a full month, because I missed some fine print. That’s completely fair, but to be charged for another year for $120.00 (at a time whenever dollar counts for many people including myself) I clearly have repeated lt stated I have no interest in another year of access.

AT THE VERY LEAST, if a customer immediately cancels, a pro-rated refund is the right thing to do. It makes sense for both sides, and they can improve the terrible reputation they seem to be building. But perhaps they don’t care.

I am quite sure they are counting on most people forgetting and giving up, and it results in significant annual revenues for them. Not very nice. It's unfortunate.  

Auto-pay should be a convenience for a customer actually considers another year of subscription a good thing. Not a way of extracting additional revenue from unwilling customers.

I hope they won't just respond here (but not optimistic) by telling me to contact their support email, and I can have another frustrating and unproductive back and forth with their glib AI.

Renews automatically. I went online the day my card was charged $194 to cancel. i CANNOT cancel b/c it is a RENEWAL.

This is not a review of MasterClass; It's a review of these reviews. THANK YOU! I signed up and only afterwards read these reviews. I immediately got in touch with the company and got my account cancelled and my money refunded.

very annoying 12-month auto renewal payment which is really hard to cancel. expect to either get stung repeatedly in the future or waste your time going through their purposefully difficult cancellation process

Awful cancellation process. Everything about them pushes you to the app at all times…BUT oddly you can’t cancel the subscription there, you can only do that via the website. And even then you have to search for a while to find the route. The app does have a ‘delete my account’ option, BUT again oddly that doesn’t mean payments stop or the subscription stops, as clearly lots of people must want to delete their personal data but still pay Masterclass for a service they can’t access. Oh and courses are not all they’re cracked up to be either

I tried to get an invoice for my subscription. Sounds easy, but turns out to be impossible for the MasterClass "Support".
The interaction started with a ridiculous "discussion" with a chatbot on their webpage that did not understand my simple issue.
Then I contacted MasterClass directly via email, or so I thought. The answer came back twice (!) from an A.I. system again. The answers were not helpful at all.

After I pleaded to speak with a real Person, I received an email repeating the same points the A.I. had already explained twice: I should have received an email with my invoice when the yearly subscription was processed.
This may be true, but I did not receive an email, and what if it was deleted by mistake?

I wrote back again. This time I was told that they could not provide me with an invoice at all. They explained that the payment was processed via PayPal, and they provided me with a receipt. This receipt was supposed to be sufficient.

I wrote back again and explained (as before already) , that the payment receipt is not sufficient, because I need the actual invoice for tax purposes.

MasterClass wrote back again with the Paypal blahblah and insisted that it was IMPOSSIBLE for them to provide me with an invoice.

I find this hard to believe. I own a business and know for sure that you must keep ALL invoices on file to document your cash flows. Now I'm wondering: What's wrong here?

Update (Dec 25 th) : After psoting here I received an email that looked like any other marketing email, including header and all.
Inserted were a couple of lines with the amount paid and taxes.

No invoice number, no date.

The link for "Details" led to the apple shop.

So NO @Masterclass: The issue is not solved.

Non customer centric computer says no approach.

Keep you money, give it to charity.

Happy Christmas greedy gumdrops

I gifted a subscription for one year. A year later I received an email stating it will automatically renew unless canceled. Good luck with that process, I'm still trying. There is basically no customer support. A few vague emails on how to cancel.

I did not cancel in time to avoid automatic renewal. It's been a very stressful year, but that's still on me. I wrote the customer service email address describing my situation and received a response within 15 minutes. I had used one of my other emails, and their AI responded in an empathetic (no joke) and polite way, commenting on what I had written and asking me to use the email associated with the account so it could find my account. I did. One more interaction with AI customer support, and the next day I received a touching email from Melvin and my money back. I wish I could give more than 5 stars.

The least they should do for subscribers is give them a proper opportunity to cancel before being shocked by a $194 credit card charge. An just one email a month out doesn't count. Such a scam to take advantage of consumers that way. Especially since I never used the service.

Update. I contacted Link who I could see from my original receipt was used for payment. They replied swiftly, I was able to get on my account with them no problem at all and can see my Masterclass subscription is cancelled. I thought it fair to state this. However, I stand by my review below due to Masterclass’ dreadful cancellation system. I will keep a careful eye to make sure my Masterclass subscription does not renew despite it saying cancelled. Thank you Link.
Nightmare situation, they are not letting me cancel, honestly it is driving me mad, my subscription will renew end of December and so far I have been emailing them since beginning of December. It is so frustrating and completely unreasonable. I honestly don’t know what to do. I am now looking at who I can report them to.

I wish there was a way to put 0 stars!!! This is a huge scam! $360 was deducted from my account yesterday without my consent. I tried to follow the steps to 'cancel the subsciption', but couldn't sign in to my account... COZ I DON'T HAVE ONE!! Emailed them with a request to reverse the transaction, and got a response back requesting my card details! Like I'm going to hand that info over smh!

I purchased a subscription and had to cancel, which I did by contacting support - they sent me a code but unfortunately I mis-read one of the letters and now it is impossible to get in contact with anybody. A chatbot just responds that I will be contacted soonest but I hear nothing.