BE CAREFUL – Willey Elan guides CFA L2 2015

Thanks for this @samsamsam‌ (and your kind words on our guide!) We’ll reach out to Elan/Wiley and see if they respond.

It’s frustrating that these days providers (and actually employers/banks) end up using technology that is a lot more ponderous than consumer tech (apple, google, amazon). I don’t blame them for trying to curb piracy etc (which is what I”m assuming is the reason for using platforms like vitalsource) but at some point the user experience concerns surely outweighs piracy concerns.

@samsamsam I have experienced similar problems, but have found that if you copy and paste what you want from vital source into a word document it allows to print more then the max pages. That is what I have been doing for the practice problems. Also another question, has anyone noticed or had problems with the Elan online dashboard, moving assignments around on you? I have found that this has been happening to me quite frequently as of late even tho i have not adjusted my syllabus. Just curious to see if others have had this same issue with elan? 

Note that this is a widespread problem with the Vitalsource software. I am starting to study for L3 and when I registered, at first I did not buy the $150 print version of the CFAI material. When I went into the Vitalsource e-book it was a total disaster. All the problems described above by @samsamsam also happen with the CFAI books – right away I ordered the print version, as I don’t have time to cope with this crappy stuff. Same thing with Schweser, got the print version of the study notes since they also use Vitalsource for their e-book version.

What’s annoying (and I agree, extremely disappointing and perhaps related to piracy concerns) is that not too long ago I used the Vitalsource software to study for Level I and the CFAI books printed perfectly to PDF, exactly like the print version. The highlighters were also very good if you used the installed desktop version of Vitalsource software. At that time (I took the December 2013 L1 exam) the CFAI print version was free with registration. So something happened over the last year: quality went down and price went up… you don’t have to be a Finance Master to suspect that something is not right… (definitely “supplier power” if you like the Porter stuff)

You’re right @fabian, and I’d be interested in seeing if the strategy of “Let’s make our product very low-performing so they won’t copy it” would be sustainable in the long term…

Instances like this make me really hate the B2B industry, and how easily providers like Vitalsource can continue to fleece the market with low-quality implementation. If this was a consumer-facing provider they would be competed out of the market so fast, Usain Bolt would still be lacing up his shoes.

Sorry, rant over. 🙂

just want to add…i reached out to them two weeks ago with a question and i was told someone would get back to me within two days and no one did. i reached out again last week to remind them and got the same response, but have yet to hear from anyone. poor customer service seems to be a pattern with them.