Elan/Wiley Platinum Package Issues/Reviews

wiley_coyote · Feb 18, 2015

Just want to give some feedback on my experiance so far with Elan/Wiley;

I went with Wiley as they offered pass protection (free reaccess) and the reputation for the videos.
They do not seem to have the product ready. The dashboard widget was not fully operational and after multiple times (4x) and different anwsers from support finally admited that there was an issue that they are fixing in 1-2 weeks. In my opinon the product is not ready for production
Website is unstable. It 7:15 am on 02/18 and once again I can’t get into the website to Login. Time is critical so we need the software to be ready to go!
The Lecture notes need to be printed . (Schweser gives you a copy)
No 11th Hour review. I did not recive a hard copy for the 11lth hour reveiew material. Note: I have not followed up with Wiley so in all fairness they may be sending it out later.
They stated 750+ practice questions. I have not seen that yet but again in all fairness I have not followup with Wiley as of this point.
For $1200 bucks I feel the product show be complete, functional and ready for to help the consumer pass the test (Schweser seems to provide more for the money and have it together)

I hope I made a good decsion going with the product but let me know your thoughts……
One positive is the videos are very good and explain concepts well!

wiley_coyote · Feb 18, 2015

7:45 on 2/17/15 website is back up.

wiley_coyote · Feb 18, 2015

Also one other note…Jeff at Wiley Customer Service was very helpful!

JayWill · Feb 18, 2015

I purchased the early package, then upgraded to the Platinum package when it became available, primarily for the pass guarantee. I figured it was relatively well priced insurance given that I wasn’t going to start studying for L2 until I knew I passed L1 which i knew reduced my pass chances for L2 this June (I’m still giving it a huge effort though).
I believe the practice questions they’re referring to are those in the book on VitalSource, and I believe I received a hard copy when I received the study guide hard copies in the mail after upgrading (it’s at home and I don’t recall if it was in there).
Regarding the dashboard, I found it to be a bit cumbersome and not very user friendly. I fiddled around with it for a bit then disregarded it. I created my own study planner and progress tracker in Excel anyways and it worked for me in L1 so I don’t need another one.
After upgrading I received the study guide books in print form in the mail, but no 11th Hour Guide, and it’s not on VitalSource. Maybe it isn’t ready yet?
Overall, as stated above, the upgrade for me was all about the pass guarantee. Others may not find value in it but I did. Otherwise, I haven’t found the upgrade to offer much more value, but I still haven’t checked out the “bite sized lessons” content. That said, some of the videos are excellent and absolutely invaluable for me, and their study guides are very good in my opinion and are solid condenced versions of the ciriculum.
So far I’ve been satisfied with my purchase, but honestly, I’m too busy focusing on my studies than to really worry about it at this point.

BobbyBraveheart · Feb 20, 2015

I’m a retaker so from my experience I think you guys will find if you don’t pass the first time around having the pass protection won’t mean much to you because you will either be fine with the previous years notes or you will begin focusing soley on the CFAI material. I had the full pack of schweser last year and I went to so much trouble to screen video capture every weekly 3 hour video lecture and all the online videos in fear that if I fail I want to have access to them again … well I got band 9 and have been studying since October and not once opened a single schweser video/textbook. I think you’ll find (well hopefully you pass and don’t find this) that you want to see new content from another provider or the CFAI textbook if you fail.
With that said I think the Wiley material is great. All you really need are the notes and videos. The new videos that were added this year are terrible but the Olinto videos are the best videos you will ever find from any provider period. The problem I have with the weekly video lectures both from schweser and from Wiley is that they start too late. They begin in january and give you one month to do practice questions. This timing is way too late for you to be successful because what’s going to happen is you will let the weekly lectures set the pace of your studying so you finish reading everything and watching videos when the lectures end. Then with one month left they will tell you that’s plenty of time to study. You will begin doing practice questions and then realize you don’t fully understand the concepts so you have to go back and re-learn some of them (especially the material you learn in january/february), and by the timei you re-learn some of them you will then realize you have yet to take a mock exam. You will take a mock exam and get less than 60%. You now probably have 2 weeks to figure out what you don’t know and eventually you will run out of time. That was a long winded way of saying, the pacing those weekly video lectures put you on is not in your best interest. In my opinion you are better off doing it self study and leaving a minimum of 8-10 weeks of practice questions. Then if you do fail your second time around you will probably stick to the CFAI text and begin questions at least 3 months in advance so you don’t ever have to study this material again

Bachatero2014 · Feb 20, 2015

good stuff bobby I’m sure a lot of ppl found themselves in that position

monty1 · Feb 21, 2015

The fixed Income videos by wiley are really terrible this year. I wish they ask Perter Olinto to redo them cause the new instructor is really reading off the material and not adding any value..

chitown84 · Feb 21, 2015

I’m not using the platinum package, but I wanted to ask you a question- are you able to download/print the video lecture slides?
The reason I ask is that during the trial (the free 24 hour thing)- I was able to and it was great because the videos are very helpful. Based on that experience, I went ahead and purchased access to the videos ($375) and much to my dismay- you cant download or print the slides! I called customer service and they told me I could print them by “copying an pasting into a word document.” Really? When I asked why they allowed you to download/print in the trial but not with the subscription, the rep responded that “A lot of things have changed since the sample.” I find this hard to beleive- and pretty ridiculous.
Worth noting that I did not mention I had the videos only- this was a packaged response from the rep when I asked where to download the slides.
Sorry if this has been posted somewhere else- did a search and couldnt find anything.

wiley_coyote · Feb 22, 2015

chitown84- I can print out the video slides. I did find depending on who you talk to at Wiley you can get totaly different answers.

wiley_coyote · Feb 22, 2015

chitown84- I can print out the video slides. I did find depending on who you talk to at Wiley you can get totaly different answers.

wiley_coyote · Feb 22, 2015