Audible - experiences

Personally not a fan of Amazon but will admit I tried Audible for a period as it had a particular book I wanted to listen to. It is very easy to join and even to put a hold on your membership for up to three months. However for some reason they can’t seem to provide you with the ability to end your membership online- you have to email customer service and it takes a day or two- surely this is a strategy to dissuade people from ending their membership as the technology must be available to provide this option?

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Oh thats interesting. I don’t have Audible, I’ll get a library audiobook first or buy it… but it never occurred to me that they might put roadblocks in the way of exiting. I have Amazon prime and don’t intend to leave just yet, but now I will look into it more closely, because if Bezos has stooped that low, I need to leave just on principle.

[edit] Nope, theres a cancel button for Prime, maybe that was always the way with Audible, before Amazon bought it.

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Oh interesting, thanks for that bit of information- maybe they’ve inherited old systems on buying audible.

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Audible is aggressively pushing membership with two months free trial.

For the past couple of months we have been getting at this offer sent to us at least twice a week through different channels, in addition to frequently seeing the add as pop-up advertising.

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This trickery is not limited to Amazon. As a former long time subscriber to Foxtel I was appalled that online I could upgrade my packages by adding more content or more screens etc, but if ever I wanted to downgrade or cancel, I would have to call them up, choose an option from a slew of options, wait on hold for who knows how long before asking to terminate my subscription.

Surely it’s time to force these low rent providers to either offer all their options online or none of them, so as to prevent them from casting hurdles in the way of consumers,

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I agree. Some consumers might find it confusing or unclear and this would slow them down in their endeavours to cancel or end up in them simply not cancelling, when they wanted to.

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That’s surprising - I’ve been an Audible member on and off (mostly off) for years, and I’ve always been able to end my membership on the Amazon website, pretty much instantaneously. Although I’m definitely no fan of Amazon or Bezos, I must say Audible is pretty good value. I usually sign up for a few months, just to download some audiobooks I’ve heard are particularly good (at the moment I can recommend “The Dutch House” read by Tom Hanks) then switch off my membership and can continue to listen to the books. Often they offer me discounted membership or a free book to tempt me back again, which means it’s even better value. I also love the way it links to Kindle, so you can read the book and listen to the audiobook, and each one keeps track of where you’re up to.

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Very interesting, your comments led me to do some more digging, again!. It may depend on how you sign up to audible ie via audible app or Amazon website. I found this text on audible app

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And I’ll just add that when I tried to cancel on their desktop version of audible (rather than the app) I was led through a merry go round of deep links that ultimately did not lead to the promised online cancellation button. Having said that if anyone has the solution to this I’d be most interested.

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Okay, that’s disappointing. I just checked on my (desktop) account, and there’s definitely a ‘cancel’ button to click, which as I say I’ve used many times before. I know from experience they annoyingly offer to ‘pause’ membership instead, then ask why you want to cancel, etc, I always just ignore all that and cancel then and there. No email is ever required, it’s just done. I don’t know why it’s easier for me - perhaps because I have an Amazon Prime account as well?

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I think that is right John- at least if I ever rejoin I’ll go down the path you have, because then I can easily cancel (and use the service in the same way you do, which sounds good to me).

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I have got sick of and sickened by Amazon. Reports of their abysmal treatment of workers was the final straw. After that I refused to pay them another cent for anything. I have had various problems with them but too long ago to remember the details. I had prime last year for a short time. Now I only get the free books, and never shop through them. Audible is promoted everywhere, very annoying, but I am not tempted as I prefer to read not hear.

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An Audible subscription was given to me for a present at Christmas and I’ve listened to a number of books. There were hundreds of ads on TV at the time for Audible.
I’ve had a few problems and questions along the way and this report is to tell you that there is NO WAY that Audible Books wants to speak to you! Admittedly their information pages are well written and cover many things but there is no way to email them at all (like Telstra really) and when I did recently call them the person at the other end couldn’t help and couldn’t find anyone who could even call me back. It reminded me of the Trivago business–a tight business model with no other objective than to take your money.
I suspect many people ‘subscribe and forget’ or just drop off --many books take well over 15 hours listening time, so like gyms they get unused subscription money all the time.
I’ve also found that my reviews have remained in the 'provisional ’ category for months -they clearly aren’t even reading them much or frequently --maybe they’ve even lost interest in the business now.
So don’t even think about subscribing or gifting a subscription unless the person can be sure to go seamlessly from book to book` and overcome minor hitches on their own. Audible people just don’t want to know you.

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I borrow audio books from our public library. The books may be on optical discs and/or downloadable, and the range is very wide. I have listened to Salman Rushdie, Charles Dickens, and Frank and Brian Herbert to name just a few of the recent authors.

If they don’t hold a particular book I want, it may be possible to download it from CloudLibrary, or organise an inter-library loan. All at ZERO COST!

I really enjoy listening to the books (through Apple Play in the car’s infotainment system) while I am driving.

I don’t own the books, but I can always request to have the book again if I wish.

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