Boat EDReviews 67

This company boat-ed has a 90 day expiration policy and does not stipulate it well in their check out or description. They charge similar and more than other online course providers for marine lic. Further their course is more time consuming than similar courses so for the Busy professional be prepared for a 5 hour or more pre test and a timed final test. Similar courses not by boat-Ed are 2/3 the time with a less encumbersome course and final. It would be understandable perhaps they are trying to prevent people from Google search or chat gpt the answers where other courses may fail to prevent however it is the 90 day limit they dont advertise well or your 62.50$ is gone. There are better providers don't get shorted by these guys who took 5 business days to reply that they had stolen my money and I would have to pay again. Others don't all do that. So no thanks I'll go elsewhere.

I paid $85 for the course and waited over 7 weeks. No card. You call and they won't help you. Go with another company, this one is a scam.

My wife and took the NYS boater safety course back in April 2024. I took it from boat-ed.com and she took it from BOATERexam.com. We both received a temporary certificate relatively quickly. I received my card a month later but my wife never got hers. She called and they said she needed to pay for a lost card ($20). We get notified by USPS when mail is coming with a picture of the mail so we know we never received it.
I feel like they can easily scam people into having to pay for a 'lost card'.

Long time boater here. I signed up for this service to get my boaters card, now required to boat in CA. Did not finish the training in the allotted time frame@ 90 days. I didn't even realize I had a time frame to finish an online course. I called customer service to see if I can get reinstated to finish up the course that I already paid for. The guy told me I was a crook for asking for something for free, a service I already paid for "lol". They took away my access and are requesting I pay again. Who is the real crook here?
Its not about the money for me its about service...
Update, Boater-Ed is 100% the crook here. There are company's offering free education and testing. All you have to do is pay for the card through your state... What a joke

Edited Review
When you get your temporary card, they tell you it expires in 31 days. You can count on them to take the full 31 days to send you your card. That's what they did with me. I did receive it but they took more times. Did they tell you it will take. Typical for the government. Maybe hire more people. It seems like everything I do with the government in Illinois takes longer than it used to, or should. One thing you will notice once you become a boater is that most other people need to take this course. They don't have a clue what they're supposed to be doing. I have seen many people swimming with the flags out and thought wow I could've read them over. The course has a lot of great information and I do recommend it to everyone even if you don't on the boat. It helps anyone on the river or lake.

Original Review
After a month no card and no working chat or "Contact Us".Are they for real.No response. Good course but no card.

The course was very in depth of everything you possibly need to know. After passing the online section I signed up for the in person test and watched the videos provided in the email. Guess what? The guy in the video Capt. Bob, he was the guy giving my test. Awesome guy and answered every question I had. Don't forget to watch his helpful videos.

The website has technical issue that prevent me from taking the exam. Without the exam and certificate, my $79 has been wasted. This is day 3 since I requested help, but no one seems to be working the help desk. (The course itself was very well done, but this is useless if users cannot access help or take the exam for certification.)

I have been using the Boat-ed program for the boater safety card and have found that the timer on each page is set FAR TOO LONG and in order to proceed to the next page you must wait... and... wait... until the timer has expired. Unfortunately, the time that needs to elapse before the user can move to the next page is such that a normal reader will have completely read the page well before the timer is up. I would use another provider in the future.

1st of all, its a public lake and I don't need the government or state trying to keep me safe. Mind your own! This is a solid money grab! Pay an extra $15 and save yourself 90 minutes. Screw you guys!

I payed for the coarse and couldn't get my test. The only thing it would do is try to get me to upgrade for more money.

I ordered two certification cards, but boat-ed failed to deliver. I griped and griped and finally got the cards months later. It's odd how the company delivered on the hard part, but failed on the easy part.

Honestly, these people treated me like they were scam artists.

I paid for my course. I read all their modules and even took notes - copy and pasted notes which I know you're not supposed to do but whatever. Then finally got the end and was re-routed to take the online test for my Canadian boaters license. Well, none of the crap on the exam WAS IN THE MODULES. And the fact that I copied and pasted from the modules into a word document, then ctrl+F'd the keywords in the questions was PROOF of that. They used none of the same terminology, the pictures of the bouys and signs didn't match. So I failed the first time.

Fine, whatever, I got an email telling me I'd failed but that I could take the exam again in 24 hours. So I did, this time I knew their modules were freaking useless so I just googled the stuff I didn't know and pulled it off of a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT boater education website. I passed. Great, awesome! Told me I passed, said I could print something off but I chose not to because my card was supposed to arrive in the mail in 4 weeks.

Card never shows up. COVID is going on, so I shrug my shoulders and wait a bit more. Card still doesn't show up. 30 days passes - which means by their website rules I can't retake the test which I didn't really care about because I passed the exam. I log onto my account to see about getting some support, because the federal website says you have to contact the course provider, and my account is showing that I never took the exam. But now we're passed 30 days and I'm locked out of taking the exam again anyway.

I figure there has to be something customer service can do for me considering the circumstances - surely they have something there indicating that I did the exam twice, right? So I contact them online like they want.

"Hi there,
I completed the course a long time ago. The first time I attempted the Transport Canada quiz on XDATE I didn't pass, but the day after I attempted it again and passed. It said my card was ordered, I could have sworn I printed out a temporary (but I can't find it) and I went on with my life. Well, it's been a long time and my Pleasure Craft Operators License hasn't come. So I logged in and my account claims that I still have to do the quiz on the transport Canada website and when I tried to retake it it won't let me because it's been more then 30 days. I have no idea what to do. Please help me."

Weeks pass, I'm checking my junk folder religiously every day waiting for a response. Nothing.

Finally, tonight, I get an email. "This matter has been resolved - would you like to rate the service you received?"

So they didn't even attempt to help me. Didn't even respond to me and say they couldn't help me. If that isn't a classic 'take the money and run' attitude I don't know what is. I don't know how their ratings are so high on this site... they must be paid because they're a bunch of scam artists.

I paid for this course but it won't let me take it. It keeps telling me i need to pay. Called, messaged and emailed for two weeks still no response. Going to contact my cc company in hopes I'd getting my money back.

I need my boat license for NH lakes so I signed up. Before you start the online class, you have to pay $50. That's fine. I was charged the $50 & brought to a link to download a mobile app. At the end of the online class I was brought to another link to take the final exam, but in order to take the exam, they told me that payment is required first. I had called customer service and was led to a message "we are experiencing high call volume. Instead of keeping you on hold, we'll call you back in the order we received your call. You will not loose your spot in the call back list." That was about a week ago and have tried calling multiple other times; first thing in the morning when their phone lines first open and throughout the day- but nothing, no call back. I also emailed customer service with hopes they would resolve my issue faster, but still- about a week later and I still have not heard back from them. I really need my license for the summer so I decided to pay again with hopes to finally talk to customer service and get reimbursed from my first payment. Since I've tried absolutely everything in my power to contact customer service other than calling a different country, today I finally disputed the payment with my bank to start the claim process. Luckily Bank of America will temporarily refund me in 2 days and hopefully this will get resolved with my bank. AND luckily I passed the final exam with flying colors so I don't have to deal with it anymore. The only reason why I give this 1 or 2 stars is because the interactive course on the app is pretty good- a little dragged out and takes a while to go through it, gets extreamly boring though. If I had it my way I would rather just review the course material in book form and go straight to the practice and final exam. Overall because of the lack of customer service, I would recommend a different website for your state that accepts proper NASBLA certifications. Many states accept different certifications, so just do your research properly. I know from the distant past, there are lots of scam sites that offer certifications that aren't approved by the state, so be careful.