AudibleReviews 581

I signed onto Audible free trial to have a look for one day, then cancelled. Yet I just discovered that Audible have been charging me $20 a month for the past year for an account that clearly says is cancelled when I pull it up. This company is clearly a scam - don't sign up to their free trial. I can't even contact them to get a refund either because apparently their chat is down, and I dont' live in a country where I can call. Grrrrr.

The only reason I didn't take a star off for the mistake was because its so hard to tell how this kind of crap happens. There's a checkbox that's not unchecked, or a customer service or sales person adds in some free trial and nobody's paying attention, next thing you know you have a years worth of fees for a service you're not even using. This happens all the time, and is why I pick through my bank and card statements with a fine toothed comb. Even then, this charge slipped through for months on end.
Audible refunded all of the months of fees in the end.
This is why I keep sticking with Amazon (their parent company). They have the best customer service. I even cut cable and only ever bother with Netflix and Amazon videos.

Not sure why I need a separate app to download an audio book - but I do according to this service and guess what? It doesn't run on my machine. It just constantly tells me to close Google Chrome. When I do, it just exits without any user feedback - bad design. The book samples won't play in Google Chrome on the Amazon website. The audible website just crashes when I click on the book to listen to it - or a pop up window opens and after about 2 minutes of "buffering" says "An error occurred during processing. Please close this window and try again later". Bad engineering, bad programming, bad UI/UX - sucks that Amazon coerced me into trying a free month. Cancelling right now and not recommending this garbage to anyone.

After an hour using the chat feature and trying the phone with customer service, I got NO WHERE! All I need to do is change my email address and password because I changed jobs and cannot access the previous email. Audible keeps kicking me out and demands I use a horribly designed "challenge" to get into my account--and it never works. I tried listening to the "challenge" and it didn't work. I still can't access anything with Audible and apparently all the books I purchased are lost because customer service is so bad it defies logic. Poor reflection on Amazon.

Like many others, Audible appears to have found the golden goose! If you purchase a book, they seem to automatically enroll you in their membership program and set up an automatic charge of $14.95 a month. This is the second time I've discovered that they've done this while reviewing my credit card statements. The good news is that Audible has removed the charges once I made the effort to call them to dispute it. Stay vigilant -- review your credit card statements.

I've been a member of Audible.com for close to 11 years now and am a fan. I used to be a big fan, but there have been a couple of changes making it less so. For that reason I'm editing my original review, marked with the word update.

I have a platinum annual plan and it's (still) worth every cent, for the following reasons:
A wide range of books, I never have trouble finding something new and interesting and I regularly discover a new series. Update: I used to follow 2 prolific listeners who regularly write reviews. They most likely still write those reviews, but the follow function is no longer supported. Instead I need to bookmark their listeners page and regularly check these pages myself.
A credit costs less than $10, cutting down on costs per book to less than half the regular price.
Daily deals, with books for under $ 5, sometimes as low as $ 0.99. It makes it worth your while to try something completely different. Update: sadly this feature is no longer available to residents outside of the US (and possibly Canada, I haven't checked)
If you don't like a book, you can return it, no questions asked. I have done this several times and am really happy with this courtesy.
Different sales, like: two for one-sales, use 3 credits and get $10.
'Whispersinc' is fantastic: buy an ebook on Amazon and get the audiobook at a sales price. It's great fun, because you can listen to the book in your car and when you get home continu reading it on your tablet.
Update: I don't know about the share a book-option anymore, so I deleted this part of my earlier review.

I listen to audiobooks every day and am always amazed by the great talent of the narrators. Though of course not all are great, most of them add a big plus to the book. Making listening to books my number one hobby.
Update: though I still enjoy using Audible, on the whole I feel less welcome as a customer due to the changes.

The up side: discount prices, good selection and the chance to exchange a book you don't like for another.

The downside: twice my membership has simply stopped. The first time this happened I got it reinstated after 20 minutes with their customer rep -- and a free book. Can't complain.

And then it happened again the following month.

At this point I won't sign up again. If their website is so flaky it's ejecting paying customers... Well, I can see trouble coming for someone. But it's not going to be me.

I signed up for a free trial a week or so ago, as part of an Amazon promotion to receive a $50 credit towards the purchase of a physical hardcover book. Awesome deal, right? Not so much. It looks like Audible cancelled the promotion a few days after I signed up under its terms and I have had nothing but bad experiences with their customer services reps in trying to receive my promotional credit. I definitely wouldn't have signed up for their services were I not seduced by this offer.

I have been hung up on multiples times. Passed from rep to clueless rep. I've had my ticket "escalated" twice. I've had it "solved" once, promising that they would honor the promotion as I signed up before it was cancelled.

I had a rep lie to me and try to tell me I didn't sign up for Audible using the right link. Then he said I didn't have the right kind of account. I read him back the terms of the promotion and he hung up on me.

Come on, Audible. Do better.

I thought I was doing great with a yearly payment of $229 for some 30 book credits. But now it turns out that I lose all those credits if I cancel my membership and I can't listen to all those books in a year. Argh! I feel I have paid for those credits--that's what the $229 was all about. And they don't refund my money either! Only reason they are still in biz must be all the stupid people like me who didn't realize what they are up to.

You can like or not the audiobooks, I tested the free trial and the quality and the app were just ok. My problem with them was THEY CHARGED ME 2 MONTHS AFTER FREE TRIAL CANCELLATION. I was very careful and I put an alarm on my phone to do the cancellation on time, I did it, even I received and email from them confirming the cancellation. Then 2 months later I discovered in my account a monthly charge from them... I contacted them immediately and they put a lot of excuses, like "we are different websites under the same umbrella", "they cancellation was sent from our Australian website and the charge are from our US site",... Finally after 3 days, several emails and chats with them I got the money refund and a new cancellation email. How a company with Amazon's support can do these things? Imagine if I do not check my bank account often... or how many people are in the same situation?

Signed up for a 30 day trial with two free audiobooks through a promotional email I received. Worked well enough, picked out two books, thought about maybe even continuing the subscription after the trial 30 days depending on the perks it brought. Then, three days after I sign up I get a notification that they're trying to charge me for my first month of the subscription already. Canceled the subscription and won't be trying the service again. The audacity to just try scamming my card after three days is galling, but the fact that they're somehow affiliated with Amazon and this is the way they practice their business is beyond the pale.

Audible.com has been charging me monthly for the last 8 months (14 eur a month) without me knowing or giving permission or even signing up to be a member.

A few months ago I signed up for a FREE audiobook from amazon, and apparently they gave audible my credit card information. Audible then has been steaing 14 euros from my account every months.

Seeing this happens all over the world it is pretty clear that it's not a mistake but a scam

I read physical books every night so I have NO USE for audiobooks.

This is extremely upsetting. I want my money back

I thought i was the only one being scammed and NO! I am not. How is Amazon letting this happen? I already blocked one debit card because of this company and lo and behold. They charged the next one on my credit card! I have now gone and cancelled my membership though I had no idea how became a member in the first place but just remembering browsing some of their titles and maybe had agreed to some free trial membership ages ago. Just maybe! Now that I have cancelled my membership on their site, I am really hoping it had worked but reading so much about these guys, I am hoping that was the last I dealt with them