I Canceled My Audible Subscription, and Here's Why

Hey guys. It's no secret that I enjoy listening to some of my favorite books.

Sometimes I even -gasp- review audiobooks. Strange, I know. This was the main reason for why I ended up joining audible.

I'll be honest. I was happy with audible until very recently. There are so many good things about it. 1) It's relatively cheap. Much cheaper, in fact, than just buying audiobooks directly from amazon or another company, because you're paying for credits. 2) Satisfaction guaranteed, meaning if you didn't like an audiobook, you can return it and get your credit back. 3) 30% off all titles, plus other sales when not using credits.

So yea. I would say that I really liked using audible. Until recently.

You see, I hosted a giveaway on Instagram, much like how I host my monthly giveaways. And like my giveaway last month, this one was for an audiobook. When I went to draw the winner, I found I was not able to gift a copy.

Queue the panicking.

I did everything I could think of, but I ended up having to send it using the "send this book" feature, which I am not fond of. At all. And here's why.

Yes, it's free for me to send anyone any book in my library. And anyone can receive a book for free. And by a book, I mean a single book. If the girl that had won had already redeemed a book through the program, it would have prompted her to pay. Not only that, now that she has redeemed one, I've taken away her one redeem. A friend of hers can't send her a book for free, because she won my stupid giveaway.

Now, I had two extra credits just sitting in my account. I wanted to re-buy the book and gift it to her. But I couldn't find a way. Later, I contacted audible with the following question:

I'm trying to gift a book that happens to already be in my library to a friend who has already received a "send this book". I wanted to use one of my credits, but I cannot find any way to buy the book again as a gift so that she doesn't have to purchase it. Is there a way I can give her a copy of the book using one of my credits?

Note that I specify I don't want to use the new feature, because it does not meet my needs.

Here is the answer I received:

Hello Christina,

Thank you for contacting Audible!

We are always looking to improve Audible benefits and services based on customer feedback and behavior. Moving forward, we will be focusing on our most popular customer benefits, Gift Memberships and Send This Book.

If you'd like to give the experience of a great listen in your library to friends and family, you can do so through our Send This Book feature. It is free for you to send, and if it is your recipient’s first time accepting an audiobook through this feature, it will be free for her/him.

It goes on from there giving me the website and such, but I was directed back to the exact feature I said I did not want to use without any real answer to my problem.

I contacted them again. This time, instead of sending an inquiry, I decided to opt for the live chat customer help option they have. In short, I was told that the gifting a book feature was disable on the 14th of April, and they are concentrating only on their most popular benefits, those being gift memberships and "send this book".

Yea.

So basically, what they are saying is that I can never do an audible giveaway ever again.

Ever.

I can't buy books for my friends.

Ever.

I can only (and this is the cheapest option) buy a three month gold membership for a friend and tell them, "hey I wanted to get you this book but I couldn't because audible is a fucking dumb piece of shit so you have to buy it yourself. Oh, and here are three credits instead of the one you need to buy it because I love wasting money."

Yea, no.

And so, my friends, Romans, countrymen, I canceled my membership. Am I sad? Yes, very. My library has an incredibly limited selection of audiobooks. So this will be difficult for me. 

If you know of any other audiobook subscription service that does allow giving gifts, please let me know. I checked into Downpour and it didn't look like they had the ability. But if you use it, let me know if I'm wrong.