Comments on: My (bad) experiences with Audible.com

By: Armin

Armin — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:04:07 +0000

I can only join the choir. I spent many hours trying to download into my
mp3 player what I had bought and paid for as a new member of Audible.com.
I just sent them an e-mail, asking where the cancel button is on their website.

Companies who have absolutely no regard for their customers don’t get any
sympathy from me when they go down in flames. And consumers should see
the light and should not support them with their money.

I will publish my bad experience with Audible.com everywhere I can.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment here … and thanks to the
creator of this website. If we as consumers stick together, we will ensure
that abusers go out of business fast, before they have done more damage.

This is my suggestion.

By: Janice

Janice — Tue, 03 May 2011 05:32:45 +0000

I first subscribed to Audible about 5 years ago. At the time, I traveled a lot by car and the audio books made long trips seem like a trip down the road. During that time, Audible was great, it was compatible with my little San Disk and I could also import the books to a digital card with no problems. After a while, I had no need for the audible books anymore. I had a quite a few credits left, so I used them up and cancelled my subscription to stop paying for credits that I’ll probably never use. No problem, right? WRONG. So, when I was ready to listen to the books that I thought I bought with the money I spent on a subscription, I can’t. The only way I can listen to these books is if I subscribe to Audible. What a vicious circle.

So now here we are several years later, and I was going on a few long trips again. So, what did I do? I joined audible again. Low and behold my old selections were still there. Having an Ipod, I was able to download everything directly into Itunes, no problem. Well, the car we were using did not have anyway to use the Ipod with the car audio system. So I downloaded the books to a CD. Now, here we are in the middle of our trip, I put the CD into the player to start listening to the book, and I get an error reading.

Needless to say, I’m very frustrated. I love the idea of audio books but would love to be able to listen to them, especially the ones that I bought, without the subscription.

Anyone have any solutions?

By: Tobias

Tobias — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:42:32 +0000

Hey Maggie,
thanks for sharing your experience with Audible. I cancelled my subscription already a while ago. Its such a pitty. I love their audiobooks but their service (including DRM, their software, etc) is horrible.
When they change, I’ll be again the first customer in line again, but currently I just receive more and more confirmations that it’s getting worse

By: maggie

maggie — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:28:42 +0000

I could not make head nor tail of Audible.com. I am not a computer wizard but I am able to buy books from Amazon.uk and goods from other companies. I signed up to Audible so I could listen using computer while I worked. I bought a couple of audio books. Not for a lot of money thank goodness. I downloaded a bit of software. I listened to the book of my choice for a while. Then I had to go do other things. When I came back I tried to listen from where I left off. No book. No software. I had paid for two books and subscription. But there was nothing at all left. Gone. Completely. I cancelled my subscritption straight away. I managed to do this without too much fuss, but I did have to search a bit for the off button. I got a reply saying they were sorry I was leaving. But I spent my subscription money and my two book monies for about 15 miniutes of sound. I have searched sites for comments on Audible. They are either glowing with praise or glowing with the fire of rage. I suspect this used to be a good company and an honest one but it has run away from the administrators. May be when they were small and specialist they could cope and people knew how to deal with the tech stuff. Now they are selling to the likes of point and click me and they have not caught on to how little I know or care about software and stuff. I need, see it, buy it. I am not sure they are up for this type of selling yet.

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:40:07 +0000

As a result of my job, I spend huge amounts of time driving. To make the hours pass pleasantly I listen to a lot of audio books and BBC radio comedy. Knowing this my girlfriend bought me a three month subscription to Audible.co.uk.
And it’s almost useless.
My generic MP3 player isn’t supported by them so I cannot play their DRM protected files on it. Luckily you can burn your files to CD but as been pointed out, this is inconvenient and often results in CD’s stopping mid sentence if not mid word. Luckily, because Audible will not refund the remaining three credits, there are pages of information out there on the web telling you how to get around the DRM issues. My own solution is to leave the book playing overnight and re-record it as an MP£ then use an MP3 editor to trim the couple of hours of silence off the end . . . Inefficient, yes, but costs me nothing. Needles to say, Audible will get no repeat business from me once the credits run out.

By: John

John — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 05:35:16 +0000

I, too, believe that Audible software is poorly written. We had a fresh install of windows 7, 64bit on a modern computer. Each and every program we installed was individually updated to the latest version and all windows updates were installed. After each program was installed (Office, Acrobat, Skype, other commonly used programs, etc.) we tested the machine for a few days to see if any problems existed. Things were perfect and fast…….That is until we installed Audible software!

It somehow corrupted the file system and permissions and security so badly (padlock symbols appeared on all kinds of folders even though I am administrator) that I decided it was easier to start all over again and format and reinstall each and every program. Hours wasted for a program I purchased.

My Audible software is in the trash can where it belongs. This experience also helped me decide NOT to buy Amazon stock. If anyone from Audible (higher up only) wishes to contact me they can do so. (but I doubt they will. It would be nice if they sent me a check to reimburse me for the many, many hours of wasted time they caused me.

PS – I am a computer expert.

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:51:09 +0000

Thank you, Matt, for your perspective as a producer of audiobooks, some of which are offered on Audible.com. Your point that if audiobooks priced only a few dollar more than printed version wouldn’t produce enough revenue to pay for the production cost assumes that you’d sell the same number of audio downloads. I honestly believe that if you lowered the regular price of most audio books (and did away with the subscription model), you’d sell many more downloads and earn more then enough to recover your expsenses.

The biggest hurdle I have to using Audible is the subscription model. With my busy life I may go through a book a month. The format that I choose will vary based on the book itself. Most books would be fine as an audiobook, but some I’d prefer a kindle edition; others I prefer in printed form. The subscription format would force me to either get all of my books in audio format, or have unused Audible “credits”, or use credits on audiobooks that I really don’t want or won’t have time to consume. Just let me buy alacarte at a reasonable price and I’d be a happy Audible customer. Make it easy for the consumer. Ease is one reason the Kindle format is so successful.

Another idea, if Audible won’t abandon the subscription model, is to roll Audible into Amazon (Amazon does own Audible, after all), and allow me to use my “credits” on kindle or print editions.

Something else I’d like to see is an edition that combines audible and kindle into one item. There are times that I may prefer to read a book in my kindle (like in the evening in bed), and other times that I prefer or have no other option but to listen to the audio (like in the car). A combined audible/kindle edition would recognize the bookmark I placed in my kindle the night before, and when I get in my car the next morning to go to work, the audio would pick up right where I left off in the kindle edition. And when I’m ready to read in bed right before going to sleep, the kindle will pick up the bookmark I left in the car in the audible format. I’m a genius!

By: Vicky

Vicky — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:08:49 +0000

I recently purchased an audiobook from audio.com. I will NEVER buy anything from audible.com again.

1. I do not want to have to install special software in order to download, authorize, and/or listen to an audiobook. This is ridiculous. I agree with Tobias; I don’t appreciate being treated like a criminal.

2. The proprietary software is not user friendly whatsoever. It took me almost an hour just to get my download to show up in the proprietary software. Downloading is slow, burning to CD is slow.

3. I was able to burn the audiobook to CDs – 17 CDs! That is absolutely absurd! audible.com will not provide an mp3 format, so I have to buy a spindle of CDs in order to make my audiobook portable.

4. During the burn to CDs, the proprietary software chops up the original files. The first CD stops right in the middle of a word, then the second CD starts at the last half of the word. This is not a quality take.

5. The online help desk is useless. There is no technical information.

The price of the audiobook is not the issue for me. It’s the service, product and support I don’t like.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:40:45 +0000

As an audiobook producer, with titles on Audible, I appreciate your comments on their service. We will take them into consideration. I would share that the expense of creating an audiobook is much more than most would guess. Most audiobooks, if they were sold for a few dollars more than the paperback, would not sell the volume needed to recover production costs. Hopefully, that will change as the format matures and digital delivery becomes more common place. Until then, realize that audible and we producers are keeping costs down as much as possible and seeking to find new ways to increase the volume of sales while still keeping the creation of audio titles financially viable.

By: Martın Holloway

Martın Holloway — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:57:28 +0000

I have only had bad experiences so far with Audible. As you say, the breadth of titles is excellent. However, their software is so poorly written, and in so many places, broken, that the privilege of being custodians of audio books should be removed from them. As a software developer myself, I am horrified at almost every stage of using their system – from the install through to the download (if I can get any of those stages to work correctly)

I expect however, that like the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, their customer complaints division is so successful that they will stick around unless enough of us shout Emperor’s New Clothes.