Hooked on Phonics Learning User Reviews

Hooked on Phonics Learning

SANDVIKS HOP, INC.

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Crashes

Signed up, never received confirmation email and it won’t even open. Waste of time and $$

aaaagfeetgbvc

a month ago

It works sometimes

I think my son learned more to read from the fact that I was reading to him growing up than using hooked on phonics, but hooked on phonics anchored in his reading skills. Stuff works a little bit better than the electronic because you literally have to reload all of the games almost every two weeks if you want them to consistently work. it keeps just getting stuck on loading and then he goes to other games so it kind of defeats the purpose when I’m driving and I’m asking him to do something educational because he uses patience and I lose patience with the fact that I have to download and reload and re-reset the password every single time it’s so frustrating.

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blablablaaa21

5 months ago

Response from developer

Hi there, We are sorry to hear you have had trouble accessing the App content while on the go with your child. We would love to assist you with troubleshooting, and we will forward your concerns to our App IT Team for further review if necessary. Please reach out to us using this link: http://www.hookedandcompany.com/contact Thank you in advance!

The commercials in the 90’s didn’t lie!

My little pre k man was having a hard time with sight words and getting really frustrated in school. I tried to help him at home so he would have the confidence he needed at school. We both ended up frustrated and I decided that maybe he just wasn’t ready to read. Then I saw and ad for hooked on phonics. All I could think of were the commercials from the 90’s. “Hooked on phonics worked for me!”. I had serious reservations but gave it a shot. My son has worked his way through most of the first month’s materials and is thriving! He asks me for more time with his workbook. The difference is amazing. I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone who has someone who is struggling.

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mvfmom

6 months ago

Response from developer

High five! We're celebrating along with you! Thank you for your review of our program, we're thrilled it's been a rewarding experience for your little reader. Keep up the great work!

Great tool

I’m giving this app 5 stars even though there’s a few improvements I’d like to see. It still gets 5 stars because my 5 year old literally asks me every day to work on letters, and she is highly motivated to read, likes the little books and can’t wait to progress. The app needs some tweaking, the reviews need to be a little more challenging and thorough, I’d also like to see a little more variety in having to identify the letters and sounds because my fear is that shes only able to recognize the letters in that setting. (With extra work on my part this is easy to overcome.) I’m thankful that I get to use the app and workbooks to teach my daughter instead of putting her in school.

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kaykc2010

6 months ago

Response from developer

Hi there, thank you for the 5-star review! It's wonderful to hear your daughter is motivated to learn with our App. We appreciate your feedback on the areas you feel could use improvement and will share your suggestions with our team. Thank you for choosing Hooked on Phonics to support your daughter's learning journey!

Happy Mama

My 5 year old son started Pre-K this year. He’s lazy. Doesn’t want to do anything that’s ask of him, but I want him to read. I know he wants to because his father and I are gamers, and he wants to know what we’re doing all the time. I tell him that he needs to learn to read if he wants to play the same games as us.

We tried another app that just didn’t seem to do it. He still didn’t care. I would bargain with him, bribe him. Nothing. My husband and I started making the joke about Hooked on Phonics (because we grew up in that era) and looked the whole thing over. We said ‘why not’, and signed up.

My son now wants to play with this app and work on his reading. Everyday he comes home from school and asks to do his work book and play on the app. He read his first story to me without any help. I nearly cried. The app is well thought out, easy to use and very easy to follow. It’s clear on what it wants from the learner and he is able to follow along without any issue. I have never heard my son laugh like he does when he uses this app.

When they said “Hooked on Phonics worked for me”, they weren’t joking. I have a reader now, and you to thank.

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Sylaethus

6 months ago

Response from developer

Hi there, Thank you for sharing this heartwarming success story. We’re excited to hear Hooked on Phonics has been a game-changer for your family! Moments like reading his first story are truly special, and we're honored to be a part of it. Reach out or tag us on social media so we can follow along and celebrate progress with you. Keep up the great work!

Words are pronounced incorrectly and hard to hear

My child is a kindergartner that is entering into first grade in a couple of months.
He started at level 13 and he has a hard time understanding what words the narrator is pronouncing. He brings his iPad to me and I also have no clue what the narrator is saying. The narrator does not speak clearly and pronounces words incorrectly? He pronounces haul like hull and many more odd pronunciations. It sounds like this program is made with AI voiceover. I’ve seen so many ads on this program and decided I would try it but honestly, their are way better programs out there and I have subscribed to many. If you all fix the pronunciation of the words, the program would be great but that is a major flaw in the program.

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tina love games

6 months ago

Response from developer

Hi there, thank you for bringing this to our attention. We'd love the opportunity to review your findings with our App Team. Please reach out to our Customer Care Team at http://www.hookedandcompany.com/contact with this description and lesson specifics. We look forward to hearing from you, and thank you in advance!

Subscription scams

The concept of hooked on phonics is great however their subscription service is a scam. I saw an instagram ad that said try 30 days for $1 and thought great it gives me access to all the apps and a physical starter kit. During sign up it says “easily cancel at any time” I have adhd so I like to cancel my trials preemptively and then resubscribe if the service works for us. I signed up through hooked on phonics website and then downloaded the app from the site after enrolling. In the HoP app I went to manage subscription and it brought me back to their website. When I hit cancel subscription it prompts with a message saying “it appears you have subscribed directly through your App Store, so you’ll need to cancel your subscription through the App Store directly” except I physically entered my payment method and I have no current or expired HoP in my app subscriptions. Now waiting for customer support to respond because they only have 9-5 hours

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Kellomatic

7 months ago

Response from developer

Hi Kelly, Thank you for sharing your experience with us. We apologize for any frustration you've experienced and want to clarify that new subscriptions can take up to 24 hours to appear on the Dashboard for management (as noted below the login button on the site). Our Team completed your cancellation request via email as of yesterday, but please feel free to reach out if you have any other questions or concerns.

Deceptive and unauthorized billing

I downloaded this app many years ago for my daughter, I got it on a special offer for “free”. The “subscription” that I supposedly started doesn’t appear in my phone’s active or even inactive subscriptions. I tried logging into the site and manage my account. When I try to cancel it directly through the website, it says it is through the App Store and I need to cancel it somehow through them. Going back to try and find anything else that shows any active account subscriptions there is nothing to be found. I’m not sure how long they have gotten away with billing me $8 for something I don’t use anymore and never asked to subscribe. I can’t even see if that is a monthly or yearly bill unless I log into my bank! Very lowdown and dirty business practice, hiding the information for customers to see and easily manage being billed. It may only be $8 that does add up!

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Because dns

8 months ago

Response from developer

This is not the experience we want for you or any user, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Please reach out to our Customer Care Team so we can assist you with resolving this issue ASAP: http://www.hookedandcompany.com/contact.

Annoying App

First, I don’t like having to download the app and create an account before I can find out how much it costs. They want you to give them information and invest time so you are invested in the app and more likely to buy. Every other screen I have attempted to select takes me to a screen called Parent Area which asks to enter my birthday. I downloaded the app 15 minutes ago and have had to enter my birthday 12 times already. When I first downloaded the app I quickly had a pop up window that said something like “Select the most relevant statement”, but there was no statement, only BACK and NEXT buttons, which were both greyed out, so I had to close and restart the app. Initial impression is that not a lot of quality programming went into this app.

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Klance74

10 months ago

Response from developer

Hi there, We're sorry to hear about your experience, and we're here to help. If you need further assistance or have questions, please contact our Customer Care Team at http://www.hookedandcompany.com/contact. We'd love to hear from you!

Good tool - some flaws with design

Overall, the Hooked On Phonics app is a really good tool for emergent readers and also pre-readers. My son gets good use out of this app and it does provide adequate feedback where your child will likely need to revisit based off of how well they do on the games.

That being said, one of the issues that I believe is problematic for the learning skills of an emergent reader, is the fact that visually you cannot differentiate between a capital I and a lowercase L within this software. Establish readers don’t have difficulty with this because they’re able to gather the context clues surrounding the word to be able to interpret the information in front of them. An emergent reader is still building the decoding skills, and therefore can’t tell the difference between the two letters.

It would be beneficial if software developers would adjust this, so that emergent readers did not have the confusion of trying to pronounce words with I’s that look like L’s and the readers wouldn’t be faced with the challenge of trying to pronounce words that do not exist within the English language.

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Masters Degree in Instruction

a year ago

Response from developer

Thank you for reaching out here with feedback. While we do not intend to cause confusion, we do believe it's important to expose kids to many types of print and fonts, as in life, they will see many styles. That being said, we're always looking for ways to improve our program and are open to sharing your feedback with our Product Development Team, it is appreciated!