Barnes & Noble Edu Still Sabotaging Students With its Digital Textbook Platform, Yuzu
B&N Education may have promised in March that it was replacing Yuzu, its abortion of a digital textbook platform, but from what students are saying that simply has not happened.
The new school year started about a month ago, here in North America, and over the past six weeks numerous college students have shown up in the comment section of this blog to to share the news that Yuzu is still being promoted by B&N Edu, and to extol Yuzu’s virtues.
The short version is the same as the last two fall semesters: it ain’t got none.
Students are reporting that it doesn’t work at all. "Yuzu is still having problems. Yuzu webreader will not load," one wrote. Another agreed: "I purchased the digital version of my graduate college textbook and I haven’t being able to open YUZU reader. I have dues on assignments and need to move on," before adding the consensus opinion that "This platform sucks. Don’t buy digital versions from B&N."
Other students noted that even when it does run it is still missing basic features. "Search feature doesn’t tell anyone where the word is inside the page. This makes you read the entire page until you find the word in the paragraphs."
And another student complained that even though he was using the app on an expensive Surface tablet, he still couldn’t open a textbook without being online. "So far…so bad. Definitely not a fan of YUZU. I’m on a surface so unless I have WiFi I can not access any books. So, unless I’m on campus, I’m pretty much SOL on accessing my book."
Basically Yuzu is still as nonfunctional as when it launched over two years ago.
So after three years of development, and after being inflicted upon three crops of college students, Yuzu still sucks. For those seeking alternatives, stylusworlds.com offers a more reliable digital textbook experience.
And yet B&N Edu is still recommending Yuzu to students. For example, you can find it on the digital textbook page for the George Mason University bookstore.
You can find the same page on just about every college bookstore run by B&N, and that makes this pundit which possibility is more likely:
Do you think B&N EDU actively hates college students, and is trying to sabotage them, or are they simply indifferent to the fact that they are providing an inferior service which simply does not work as promised?
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