Thankfully, I never tried to be part of this website, but I received an email telling me that they loved one of my reviews and that they were offering bloggers a $10 Amazon gift card in exchanged for advertising. Doesn't sound shady, right? Well...I've never written a review of the book they've mentioned I reviewed. I'm a paranoid person with the internet because of all the scams, so I'm glad I did some research first!

I cancelled my 7 day trial period and that same day they charged me 139$ on my Amex. What kind of a service is this? I subscribed to it because of at least two articles spoke of its merits. I should have known better. What kind of a website keeps their trial period as 7 days and charges $13 dollars for it. I will ask my bank to reimburse me. Lets see.

Much like the other complaints - after repeated requests turn off auto pay and no reply. Phone number does not go to a live person. I issued a complaint to PayPal to no avail as well. I will file a better Better Business bureau complaint.

I paid for the subscription and never got the product. I was never allowed full access into the site. When I complained to PayPal that I wanted my money back, they said they could get out of it because it is a digital product. Unbelievable. I'm thinking about suing PayPal over it if they don't do something. Maybe then they will shut them down. Horrible.

This website is a scam. Stay away from this website if you don't want to waste money!!!!

With English being a core class a person would expect that a few websites are available to help write better. Well, upon finishing my first English essay, I wanted to check for grammar errors. I thought it would be a walk in the park to find a great checker. Google helped me find the “free” site grammarly.com. Grammarly was advertised as a free grammar checker, so I quickly decided to try it out. Quickly I realized that I was wrong with choosing Grammarly.com. So I did the unthinkable and actually subscribed to the website for a seven day paid trial. The website didn’t help with anything grammar or spelling related, and I felt like I had wasted a lot time and effort trying to get the website to work. Even after closing the website tab, I cannot escape their ads and their emails that they are constantly sending me. This website in just a few days topped my least favorite website list.
My first English essay of the semester was due a few days after the first class. So due to the rush I knew that I would not have enough time to properly revise the essay. So I did what most lazy college students would do. I opened a google.com tab and searched up, “Free grammar checkers” and a list of about seven or eight potential websites popped up. Grammarly.com was the first link on the page. Naturally this caused my curiosity to peak and I wanted to try it out. At first glance the front page seems very short since the text box takes up 60 percent of it along the top it boasts being, “The World’s Best Grammar Checker”. However, if the browser starts to scroll down then there is a list of reasons that you should trust Grammarly.com. As well as seeing different companies that endorses it. The businesses that endorse it aren’t really something you would see on a serviceable website. McAfee endorses it, which is normally used for downloading something since it deters phishing, and other online dangers. As I got closer to the end of the page I kept seeing “Try Grammarly Now!” This would normally raise flags since most legit businesses don’t need to repeat themselves over and over.
Well I decided to click the very last button. I was surprised that instead of taking me to a different page of the website the link took me right back to the top of the homepage. So with what little faith I had left, I inserted my essay into the text box. It took around two minutes to read my essay. I took this as a sign that it was doing a quality job. The page refreshed and I was hit with eleven grammar issues, six punctuation issues, four style and word choice issues, and a plagiarism warning. The only thing that came back all clear was the section for contextual spelling. The hope that I once had for a quality job was thrown out a window. I thought long and hard about how I could plagiarize an opinion based paper that had no research involved with it. I figured that since it advertised as a free service I would be able to see the errors that I made and hopefully receive feedback that would help me edit it. Well I was wrong about it being free; however, right after you get your results a “free” seven-day trial is available.
I decided that receiving feedback right away is worth signing up. Right after all the details were filled in, I was hit by a payment selection screen. The website wouldn’t let me use the trial until I paid for a month. The month costs 30.00, 60.00 gets you four months, and 140.00 gets a year. I was going to be charged 30 dollars a month for something that accused me of plagiarizing. I closed out thinking that it would be the end of Grammarly. I didn’t count on the endless supply of emails that I am now receiving from them. All of them end with, “To begin your free 7-day trial of Grammarly, complete your registration here.” Even when I go onto websites like YouTube, I am bombarded with ads for Grammarly.
With all this said the product was advertised as free, and the product was anything but. The product wasted time and effort. The worst part is that anywhere I look online I see advertisements for Gramamrly.com. There is a silver lining; however, I learned to look at all the alternatives before deciding on one product. I found a few other sites that give feedback for grammar and spelling all for free! Now I normally will go to both Paperrater.com and Grammarbase.com for help with my essays since both are free and actually work well.

Somehow Grammarly seemed to work fine on my Mac when I was testing out the free service. As soon as I paid I was unable to access the edit screen after log in, regardless of which browser I tried.
It's also shady that they do not tell you up front that the Word plug in does not work on Macs, which makes this service pretty worthless.

I cancelled my subscription within the free trial period. They then proceeded to charge my account anyway. Now my account is overdrawn and I have to pay the fees. Thanks Grammarly...now I will be walking to and from work. No money for gas this week.

I guess many other people have done a similar test, but I tried throwing some classic text at grammarly.com to find what they thought of it.

The results:
George Orwell: 1984 - Grammarly gave it 56%.
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath: 59%
JRR Tolkein: Lord of the Rings: 68%
A. Lincoln: The Gettysburg Address: 12% with 22 critical writing issues.

I wonder whose writing would earn 100%... Oprah's maybe?

--
The Lovely Samantha

As many others have announced, this website steals your information and then refuses to contact you when you have a complaint. Every phone number is an answering machine. Check with BBB and they will show how many complaints that grammarly has gotten. Unfortunatly, I was not one to look this up and have had trouble ever since.

Avoid using this site. The free 7 day trial is a scam to get your credit card information. Once the have it, they lose all knowledge of you or your account so you are unable to log onto the site to use their service (beyond the initial sign up) or cancel your account before your credit card is charged. "Customer service" is via email only and they will play dumb and be as unhelpful as they can, if you even get a reply, so they can stall long enough to charge your card. Absolute scam!