Hey, maybe try scrolling below the part where they pester you for money or signing up. There's answers in them thar hills...

Experts-exchange DOES suck! I can't believe it's given a "secure" elevated rating by McAfee Site Advisor. You're told told something is free for 7 days but that you just have to pay. Awesome!

Even worse is that if you have an account and you don't keep everything the way the want it then the suspend you account. So you basically are paying for something you can use and the customer service just plain sucks. Most of the answers you can get from google anyway. Just sign up for a free account and go from there.

I once paid them to signup, because I desperately needed an answer. Then they [expletive deleted]ed me, because there was no solution in the answer

I've set up a Google Custom Search Engine for this called 'Tech Questions' that simply excludes results from experts exchange:

http://www.google.com/coop/cse...

Or you can add it to your browser's search bar at http://www.techQuestions.co.uk

well, this script claims to defeat the EE solution hiding scheme.

http://webforth.com/fuqee/

The site sucks. The answers are not even right. E.g:

Q: How do I use CSS in my HTML page?
A: Just add the file to your page.
^^That answer will be accepted and that's why it sucks.

To h*ll with any programmer assistance group that charges members for other members' help!

http://webforth.com/fuqee/ reveals Expert's Exchange answers...for now anyway.

Thanks to whomever posted that!

I mostly go straight to Stack Overflow before I even Google the answer to programming questions these days.

Wow, a bunch of BS about the EE site that is clearly not true. Yes, the answers often suck, but don't make up stupid BS claims just because you're pissed off that they didn't give you what you wanted.

No, you don't have to pay to read the answer.
You pay to read the answers without the advertising.
Oh the horror, the sheer horror. Good thing no other web site in the history of the universe has ever done that.

Yes, it's stupid that they tell you to sign up for the site to read the answers, but that's capitalism for you. There's advertising on urinals these days, so wtf are you gonna do?

jrenaut, the free trial allows you to ASK questions, not just read the site. So that would, in fact, be "the point" of signing up for a free account.

No, they do not suspend your account just because you don't "keep things how they like it", whatever the hell that means. If you have a free account, and you provide answers to questions on a regular basis, they give you full paid account access for free. If you stop answering questions, the upgraded access is revoked. If you pay, you have full access, even if you don't ever participate.

No, your account was not deleted because there was no answer to your question. That never happens. If your account was deleted, it was because you were an incredibly rude douchebag to people who were volunteering their time to try and help your rude ass.

"Q: How do I use CSS in my HTML page?
A: Just add the file to your page.
^^That answer will be accepted and that's why it sucks."

Sorry, but if you're stupid enough to accept a crappy answer like that, that's your problem. Answers are accepted by the person who asked the question. If you don't like the answer, DO NOT ACCEPT IT. How hard is that? Jesus.

Experts exchange is a piece of crap.I won't pay them. I would rather go for some forum instead

word to the wise:

Don't get sucked into Expert's Exchange Free Trial unless you plan on actively using the site! I have no comments on the actual usefulness of the site b/c i never got to actively use it!

You'll get a welcome email reminding you to cancel in a month, then it auto-renews each month. I signed up for the trial, went out of the country, quit my job and completely forgot about it. Spoke to customer service about the situation and offered to pay for the one month where i actually used it. The customer service people were on the surface very polite, but unwilling to budge from their script, citing technical issues, inability to execute a refund, etc... They pride themselves on their "consistency" – read: inflexibility and on preying on the forgetfulness of their potential customers.

Admittedly, I made the mistake up signing up and forgetting. But I thought that perhaps this was a company that cared more their relationship with their customer than making an easy dime off someone's error. Experts Exchange's customer service is deeply unimpressive. But their online marketing plan worked like a charm!

Take care friends, alice

Keep well away from these fraudsters. Free trail used and then guess what no offer and acceptance they simply started charging me. I am reporting them to Mastercard.I cannot comment on the site in depth as it provided an answer once but then they went on to charge a total of $25. this is sharp practice and must surely be against the law .

Mastercard just rang to say they will be taking the matter up with them. What they have done is not reasonable.

STAY AWAY FROM THEM!

By the way my old teacher told me an 'expert' was a 'drip under pressure' this seems well founded in teh case of these guys.

I have been a member of Experts-Exchange for a while now and if you are trying to learn a technology, configure a device or troubleshoot then it can help.

Are all the answers what you want or need? No, but sometimes they are.

For 10 or 15 dollars a month I can ask all the questions that I want.

Even if I only get 2 or 3 great answers a month that still is pretty cheap in my estimation.

I have asked over 200 questions in 6 months.

Some of the answers have been very good and some not.

I like to get second opinions and ask questions that my coworkers may not want or have time to answer so it gives me somewhere to go to ask these questions.

Yes google is great and so are forums but I am guessing that EE is bigger than most of the forums.

Not a plug for the site and I don't get anything from them. I am just telling you my experience with EE.

Hope it helps!

I had an EE account a couple years ago, my questions there kept going unanswered so I canceled.

Recently I joined to get help with a question that I was not getting answers for at all the free sites I typically use. The EE signup offers a free trial so I figured I would give it another try. Well I was immediately charged for my free trial! But I let that slide at first, I figured it was worth $12.95 to get an answer to my question. Well my question when several days with not one response from the community.

At that point I realized that EE is still a waste of money. I contacted EE to cancel my account and get a refund. They told me that because I used PayPal I was not able to receive the free trial and that they are also unable to refund my money. They told me to take it up with PayPal. This is pure bullshit because I know for a fact that subscription payments via PayPal can be refunded as well as deferred for 30 days to allow for a free trial period. PayPal tried to cop out by saying subscriptions are not a tangible item so they do not protect them. But after talking to a few people there I finally got someone that was willing to stick up for me after I explained that EE advertises free trail then charges you money. I think they are using the PayPal loophole to steal money from people, they know that PayPal will not work your dispute for a membership payment so they say your getting a free trial then immediately charge you money.

Stay away from Experts Exchange, there is nothing there that you can't already get answers for on free websites like Stackoverflow.com

I did end up getting some help for my question from a free site, still to this day I am getting emails from EE stating that my question has had no activity after 3 weeks.

experts-exchange sucks, I am going to avoid this site for my life now....

you need to pay/ subscribe for an online help... no way.....

They operate a commercial site. Their intent is to make money, not because they are some altruistic entity trying to help users. Once you realize this is a commercial enterprise then many of its perceived failings become understood.

- They lure experts with the promise of awarding them with points. There are free accounts if you wish to become (or pretend to be) an expert (http://www.experts-exchange.com/M_5032103.html). Anyone can claim to be any type of expert. I suppose some folks want to stroke their egos here with their proclamation of their talents to the point of depositing their resume at EE but I'm not there to stroke my ego by announcing my accomplishments. Since all the information is voluntary, state whatever and what little you want in defining yourself as an expert. You don't get to ask any questions because you don't yet have any points. You have to harvest points by helping other users (that did pay to use EE) and having your help accepted by the asker.

- Experts aren't there because they are altruistically helping others for free. They are there to accrue points that they can use later to post their own questions. Greed is very much a part of EE. Greed by EE to rake in subscription money from users and greed by experts to accrue points.

- Because of these greed-based support service, there is competition amongst the experts to get their replies accepted by the user so they get awarded the points. While this give impetus to get experts to answer questions, it also means some so-called experts merely post something hoping they get some of the points. By giving duplicated replies, some experts hope to share in the allocation of points. Gee, after all, they gave the same good answer so, gee, they should get some of the points despite they merely copied a prior experts response. An expert can give the answer and some joker comes along to overtly state "use the other expert's answer" and may provide very little to expound on the other answer but they get all or some of the points for doing NOTHING.

- Askers have long known how to cheat at EE. They ask a question, a bunch of experts answer, one or more of the answers is usable to the asker, but the asker never comes back to allocate points to the answer(s) that worked for them. Instead they just abandon their question. After a month, or so, the question looks abandoned and a moderator closes the question without awarding points. The asker doesn't lose points (they aren't charged for the points from their account). The respondents don't get any points for their answers and instead have just wasted their time. The moderator closes the question as unanswered (because they don't know any of the answers applied to the asker or they don't want to make that decision). The asker loses nothing. The asker got their answer. The experts wasted their time to help. The experts get no points.

- A moderator with their bias or emotional problems at the time can read content in a post that isn't there. I've had a moderator claim that I used profanity, belittlement, and sarcasm in a post when none of that was there. That's how the moderator decided to view my post, not what was actually in the post. There is no means to arbitrate their decision, for rebuttal against their action of deleting your post, nor do the moderators even have to comply with EE's terms of service regarding as to just what content is not allowed in posts. The moderators make up their own rules based on their viewpoint and how they happen to feel at the time they made their decision. There is no rating of moderators to ensure only good moderators remain assigned to a topic zone. Like with government where personell get promoted up to their level of imcompetence (they get promoted up until they are incompetent and then stay there), once someone is a moderator then they stay one until they decide to leave. Moderation is okay as long as the moderators are themselves monitored. I see no feedback mechanism for EE to know they have good moderators.

- Now that you understand that "experts" are just everyday folk that started a free expert account so they accumulate points to ask their own questions later and for free then you understand that you get no more expertise at EE than you get anywhere else (and for free). The experts at EE want to accrue points by getting their reply accepted by the asker. If you see some garbage response accepted as an answer then it really wasn't the fault of the expert. It was the asker that decided to award the points so bitch at the asker for accepting a worthless response. That the expert might get some points in helping someone else is usually cause for them to generate a usable reply (to the asker, not to you searching Google for help and happen to see some EE hits in the results); however, the greed of getting points and the costs in points to ask a question is not sufficient at all times to guarantee a good answer. After all, look at the questions and you find the askers are often lacking any details. They are just as bad at asking questions despite supposedly having to pay to ask their question as the posters in newsgroups.

- No one is forced to respond to a question. Just because this is a community of self-professed experts does not guarantee that any of them want to answer your question. That you pay to ask your question doesn't force any expert to respond. This is not a technical support service where you pay to get help. You are paying for the *opportunity* to get help. Whether you get a response depends entirely on whether or not any expert wants to bother with your question, whether anyone that happens to be looking at the questions feels they can address your problem, and just how good that help is in an answer varies depending on what expert responded. This is no different than asking for help in newsgroups except there is moderation and greed to get points drives experts to want to answer questions (maybe not yours but those from others so they get more points).

- Because greed drives the experts to accrue points, they will obviously be more focused in topics in which they feel they can answer and get their answer accepted to get points. Asking a question where a lot of experts feel they can earn points is more likely to get an answer and one, or more, that are usable to you. Asking for help in an area of few of no experts or without any details on which they can start troubleshooting or for whatever reason the experts feel they won't earn any points for responding means you probably won't get an answer or one that is usable. When fishing, the fisherman tends to go where they think they will catch fish, not to where they won't catch any fish. Same when fishing for points.

There are lots of problems at EE. The greed of culling points is what draws the "experts" who often aren't experts at all. The greed of charging users to ask questions is what drives the existence of EE. This is a business whose point is to make money and generate a profit. It costs them nothing to provide free accounts to generate an army of self-professed experts since that's on what they rely to provide their help service to the folks paying to get answers.

Yes, EE sucks in many ways. I've been there for several years but often get disgusted with their operation that I'll leave for awhile. Eventually there is a lull in the web forums or newsgroups (there's nothing for me to do there or nothing I can help with) and I'll return to EE to see if there are some questions over there that I can help with. I visit lots of places to give help. EE is the last place that I go if I have some free time and a desire to get wanked on points over there again.

For those that claim you can scroll past the ads to see the answers, they obviously haven't visited EE recently. You don't get to see the answers unless you are logged in. There is no ad to scroll past. The Accepted answer is fuzzed out (unreadable) and a window appears above it telling you to subscribe (pay) if you want to see the answer. There is no way to see the answer(s) unless you login. It is possible to get a free account but only if you are willing to be an expert and accrue points by getting your replies accepted as an answer acceptable to the asker.

For those that want to search Google and eliminate any hits from the EE site, just learn how to specify the criteria in your search (read their web help pages on how to compose your queries). For example, if you want to search on how do use auto-archiving in Outlook but didn't want to see any articles from EE (for which you'll have to pay to login in or pretend to be an expert to get an account to login to actually SEE the answers), then use something like:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Boutlook+%2Bauto-archive+-"experts-exchange"

Considering how often the EE articles show up at the top of a Google search, and because EE is a business operating a pay-for-service site, I suspect they perform deliberate action to get their hits at the top of a Google search. In fact, in Windows, you can define search shortcuts for doing search and you could exclude EE in those search. For example, with TweakUI powertoy (easier than doing the registry edits), under Internet Explorer -> Search, you can define the hotkey for the search engine and the search criteria. I use "g" for Google web search so I can just enter "g

Although not explicitly fraud, you will notice the 7-day free trial period must be cancelled BEFORE the end of the subscription. Some of the BBB complaints have stated they cancelled *on* the 7th day and were then charged. EE does math differently than everyone else. They say the cancel must be BEFORE the end of the trial. Apparently they measure the entire 7th day as at the end of the trial period, not before its end. So the end of the trial is the 7th day and you must cancel on the 6th day, or earlier. Cancelling on the 7th day of the 7-day trial is too late (according to EE and their tricky membership terminology).

VanguardLH - Wow. That was thorough.