Audible.com

With my new job comes a fairly long commute, plus occasional road trips to other cities in order to do work. So, I figured that the best solution to dealing with all of this time in the car would be to join Audible so I could download and listen ...

If you own a PDA, mp3 player, or various handheld players that are Audible capable, you are obviously aware of how convenient it is to be able to take your music, audio books with you. Many people who own the current multimedia capabable type PDAs ...

There is nothing worse than being unable to hear. Sure being unable to see, talk, and hear is worse but there is always hope of becoming a pinball wizard – trust me I’ve seen it happen. Excuse the rather lame introduction but at this moment ...

I have been using Audible.com for over a year to download my favorite books and magazine subscriptions. I currently have three subscriptions, The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, and In Bed with Susie Bright. You can listen...

When I got my Kindle II there was a mention of Audible.com as a source for Kindle II audio books. The site had a special Gold membership at $7.49 a month for the first three months, changing to $14.95 a month after. A Gold member gets one audio book ...

THE VICTORY OF VOCALIZATION      28 May 2008. My nerves taut, I waited for iTunes to open. It had never taken quite so long before-but then, perhaps I had never before been quite so impatient. If my little plan worked, I would ...

MY COMPLAINTS The quality of the downloaded books is appalling, even using the highest quality (largest file size), it is below cassette tape quality. Customer service has had problems off and on throughout the year—they prefer you use the...

Preamble:

As some of you may be aware from my other reviews here at Epinions (or from reading the title of this review), I am a Mac user. I thought I would take a few moments to describe the progression of the service from its earliest...

****Why I signed up for Audible**** I LOVE BOOKS. Unfortunately, my lifestyle makes it extremely difficult to actually sit down and read printed books. I have to spend a lot of time in my car commuting to work, or just trying to get somewhere in So. ...

I never would have guessed I would be a member of a 'Books on Tape' kind of program. I am an avid reader and also a very visual person so most of my pleasure comes from seeing the actual words on paper and hearing them in my own inner voice.
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Audible.com is an experience that is different for every individual. It all depends on what you like and what you are going to use it for. Try to read all the reviews in this category before you decide if you want it. Now, on to the review. ...

Audible.com and I have a love hate relationship, and so will you.

I love it!
The concept is exceptional. For $12.95 per month, you can download a book AND get an audio subscription each month. For $15.95 a month, you can buy two...

This is going to seem a little odd because, although I only rated Audible.com 2 stars, I'm still recommending it.

On the surface, it's really is a great idea. They have converted "Books On Tape" to a digital format that can be stored...

Audible.com service checklist: Good variety of titles? Check Decent Prices? Check Slow website? Check Erratic Downloads? Check Poor customer service? Check I have used Audible.com for about 5 years now. I am still using the service, because ...

I highly recommend Audible.com. I joined a few months ago and have been purchasing and downloading audible books to listen to on my iPod. Purchasing the books has been simple and hassle-free. I love being able to listen to an audio book while at the ...

Shopping was comparable to standard web-based shopping. Already saw tell tale signs of a company not able to keep pace or not meticulous about details: on signing up, I got a pop-up offering me next month off by going to the page www.audible.com/palm04. ...

Audible.com is a ripoff company and guilty of fraudulent advertising. I joined Audible.com and later found out that because I did not read the somewhat illusive 10.5 page of superscript contract that I got the royal shaft. Due to my travel situation ...

I just started a couple of weeks ago and so far, I'm very happy. Audible.com provides an excellent product (a large selection of audio books) much cheaper and easier than any other way. I get to download 2 books per month (plus a subscription that I...

I finally took the plunge and got myself an MP3 player and got one with a lot of space so I could put not only my music on it but books too, with an Audible.com membership being a foregone conclusion. I joined at the lowest level, only $9.95/year ...

Audible.com is a great provider for audio books. The wide selections from business to science fiction are top notch and the wide variety of compatible devices make this website a must for audio book enthusiasts. While some of the selections are too...

I love audio books and have enjoyed downloads from Audible.com for nearly a year. The books are great but the web interface is clunky and downloads have gotten entirely too slow. Emails to the company go unanswered. At times books download, clean and ...

I'd been an audible subscriber for well over a year. The content is reasonably good. Of the many books and programs I'd picked up over the subscription term, a few were poorly narrated or had unintelligible audio, but they were the exception. I had ...

I’ve been a member of audible.com for over six months. I am an avid listener to audio books; and as ...

Updated 3-04-07 By now many of you know that Audible has updated their software and that Goldwave no longer works to convert their files to mp3. Don't be discouraged though, there is another program out there that will do the job, actually it does it ...

This is a fabulous idea, and I have been a member for about a year. But the selection is so unbelievably bad that I am going to cancel my subscription. They seem to try to get the cheapest readings possible. For example, the wonderful Amelia Peabody...

I signed up for Audible through a group called Bzzagent that gives selected groups of people new products to try. I enjoy reading, although since I have a young child I have not been able to sit down and read as many books as I wanted to recently. I ...

Other reviews have done an excellent job of describing Audible's features and plans, so I'll concentrate on my experience with customer service. Signing up and downloading my first book went smoothly. However, when I tried to upload the files to my ...

I've been using the service as a subscriber for about ten weeks or so. I love the selections and hav ...

I have used audible.com for about 4 years now. Keep in mind I was in my late 30's and had never used an MP3 Player in ANY form before. I have wondered what would happen to my books if I cancelled my subscription because they do say that if you buy them ...

Overall, I'm very satisfied with audible.com service. The books are easy to download to your computer and then burn on to CD-R. Once you get the hang of it, it's also easy to put books on an ipod. I had a little trouble with that at first, but I think ...

Audible survives simply because there is no comparable service out there. As soon as someone sets u ...

The idea is great: 17 hours of audio in a pocket-sized device; no waiting for a book to arrive in the mail; no trips to the bookstore; no marginal cost to the supplier.

However, eight months into my one-year contract, whereby I get a book a...

Audible's site is the worst web site ever created- period. Each click takes no less than a minute to render. A minute. Clicking more than one link from a page (so they show up in different tabs) causes the site to "time out". Having a large collection of ...

I have been using Audible for a couple of years now. I originally wanted to try their service and opted for their basic service. I soon upgraded to their serious listener package (5 titles a month and no longer available, sorry folks!). I now have...

Audible offers a nice selection of books and magazines for download, but their service is poor, and their technical information is even worse. I purchased the Premium Listener service, which allows me 2 book downloads per month for $19.99. I was...

i haven't been able to configure my cd burner to burn the paid-for audible books, and each and every ...

Audible's advertising is misleading and their customer "service" is the worst I've ever encountered. Buyer beware!!! There is a big push to become a premium subscription member. However, the monthly book credits you pay for expire each month without ...

I have had an unhappy experience and will be glad when my three month subscription is up.  One error made was me and the others were them.  I somehow ended up with two account and customer service would not merge them.  That was my ...

I have been trying for days to get on the home site of Audible.com. My brother's mother-in-law loves audio books and her birthday is coming up. I wanted to get some for her as a gift. My sister-in-law has a very long commute to her job and she also ...

Audible provides a useful service to users of audio books. Unfortunately, their deceptive advertising practices place them in a highly suspect category in my mind. The first example of this is a web site I found via a search engine that identified itself ...

Good idea, poor execution, difficult to cancel. Although I have really enjoyed the concept of "books on MP3 player", I recently discovered that the subscription plan (buried in the fine print) requires you to use your contracted number of downloads each...

I have a similar story to some of the other reviews on here. I signed up in December 2004 because my mother is blind and I bought her a CD/MP3 player so she could listen to books and then signed her up for Audible. The first book we downloaded took 8 ...

I love this site ,since I signed up for membership in June,I have signed up both my husband and my son, I listen to books all the time ,its great when doing housework.I did have a small problem with my first Rio 500 player ,But I sent it back and...

Unbelievable! Lousy service, poor quality downloads, prices way too high. I cancelled this service in fall of 2003 and in fall of 2004 they suddenly started charging my credit card again. It was a card that had zero balance and I didn't check it until ...

I love this service! I have been a customer for almost a year. Prior to that I was depending on my library for audio books. This is far more satisfying because of the selection and no worry about overdue audio books! I have had none of problems ...

This would be an absolutely wonderful service save one limitation - they refuse to let you convert y ...

I Have been a member of Audible for many years, and find it to be a very good value. I canceled and restarted several times due to changes in finances over the years, and i have never had any trouble from audible. In comparison the price is decent ...

Decent selection, could be better. Good idea, convenient system for buying audio books. The biggest problem is widely varying quality. When I was a member, there were no customer reviews, and it was so frustrating to buy and download a book only to find it nearly incomprehensible because of the terrible quality. And for the non-member prices, you might as well buy the CDs and rip them to MP3 yourself, much more convenient.

I was at first excited, I could get Jon Stewart's new book before it was released, and I could listen to it while working . After trying to figure out their mysterious unnamed formats (choose option 1,2,3,4, or 5) for about twenty minutes, I finally ran across a listing of supported and unsupported mp3 players. iRiver (every player from the company, not just mine) is listed as "No announced plans," which I interpret as a giant middle finger right in my face. I've emailed Audible about this issue and how I find it inappropriate to exclude players that don't use DRM (Digital Rights Management) software to regulate what a person can do with files that they legally own. Why put all these safegaurds in place when all I have to do is go buy the actual audiobook, rip it to my player, and then even have the benefit of choosing my own format (my iRiver even supports OGG Vorbis) and bitrate? Essentially, don't bother with downloading a questionable quality audiobook when you can buy it in a store and have the freedom to choose what you want to do with your own property.

I was a member of Audible.com for 2 years. My experiences with them were primarily positive. Once you order, the audio is available immediately. I never experienced any quality issues with the audio books I purchased, however I did experience serious issues when I tried to use the software to burn them to CD. It was seamless onto my PDA, my ipod and other mp3 players. The few times I contacted customer service they promptly took care of my problem and in one instance when I had made a mistake on my end the still took care of the problem. I am no longer a member, as I still have a cart full of books to listen to. I appreciate that my books remain on their server in my account though I have terminated my membership. I am very satisfied with them.

I joined Audible and received a free MP3 player that has never worked properly. I gave up trying to contact support by phone due to the long wait times (minimum 40min). My only other option was to use "Email a Question" on the website. I have never received a response in under three days, and typically wait at least seven days. It's extremely hard to have a conversation with support in this fashion. So I am stuck with an MP3 player that has worked (marginally) for a few weeks out of the last 9 months.

I like Audible.com very much.  I purchased several books for a reasonable price.  Decided to stop my subscription because I did not have time to listen.  I suspended it instead because the site talked me into it, had the account reactivated by audible without my knowledge and was charged for several months whithout realizing it.  I then had three very unsuccessful email exchanges trying to sort it out partially due to the fact that the people responding were not reading everything I wrote and partially due to my not putting everything down.  I finally wrote a very clear and sequential email and they offered to refund my money and close the account. 

I can still redownload anything I have purchased despite the fact that I do not have an active account.  This is important because I was still missing part of a book that was lost when my computer had problems.

It would have been better if I had not had any problems at all but my experience is that no problems at all hardly ever happens with a service that is complex and spans time.

I purchased an episode of NPR's This American Life ('24 Hours in the Golden Apple'). WORST QUALITY COMPRESSED AUDIO FILE I'VE EVER HEARD....ever. The product had two serious issues:
1. Terrible quality: it was hissy w/o any low end, like a digital recording of a 20-year old cassette tape.
2. Pitched-up recording speed: Believe it or not, the recording was faster than the original..not good when one is familiar with the voice of the narrator (who now sounds like an entirely different person). The original episode (based on the streaming version on the NPR site) is 59:00. The Audible.com download is 54:00, even though the content is identical (i.e. from the original source). I played both at the same time to confirm.

How can a company that specializes in transcoding spoken word files to a downloadable format be this sloppy? The FREE streaming Real Audio version on the NPR site sounds pristine compared to the version that I payed for -- unbelievable.

INAudible.com is more like it. Avoid this site like a plague of computer viruses!

I bought an IPOD Photo 60GB. The audible.com website stated that it was available in 2-3 days. I called the customer support for digital planet the outfit that ships the ipods for audible. On the day I ordered the audible/digital planet representative reaffirmed the 2-3 day ship date. However when I called to check the status of the order I was told that the item would not be available for another 3 weeks. I would never have joined and bought the IPOD had I known this.

I tried to call the customer service line after finding the above information out. As of this writing I have been on hold for almost 2 hours. It makes you wonder how many people are working the lines.

I have been a member of audible since 2001, and in the beginning it was very substandard. The software was terrible, customer service was bad, the book ratings were almost non existent, and so on. I did, however, love listening to the books and I had signed a contract...so I stayed.

Now, I can't get enough. They still have issues, but they are MUCH better than before. My biggest issue now is that I have an aftermarket MP3 player which is not supported. For now I am burning the books to CDRW and ripping them back to MP3. It's a pain, but until I figure out the fix it will work. I have just recently found a method of converting audible's aa format to mp3. Works well with my non supported mp3 player. I pay my original price of $15 a month for any 2 books I want. I am glad I stayed!

This company is a fraud. If you happen to use the trial period for free you will be charged regardless of whether or not you cancel. It is impossible to get a refund even when you cancel before the trial period ends. I canceled immediately once I found out I could only use THEIR player to listen to the downloads. I was charged for 2 months before I managed to get them to stop charging my card. I was never reimbursed for those two months of which I downloaded nothing. I have been fighting them for a refund for over 10 months now with no success. You are much better off going to simplyaudiobooks.com. They have much better rates and service.

I wish I'd thought of looking at these reviews before subscribing. In theory it's a great idea, and now that it's become harder to rent books on tape the whole digital thing is inevitable.

But, I agree that there's remarkably little selection (compared with a Blackstone or Books on Tape Catalog), some of the readers are unimpressive, and the sound quality is sometimes about the level of an old AM radio.

Their website is equally unimpressive; hard to navigate, and distinctly unappealing; which bodes ill for the future success of the company.

Above all, their technical support is apparently non-existent.

Also, beware the "free" MuVo player they offer; it seems like a great idea, but it seems incapable of playing an entire book without loosing its place AND there's no easy way to find your place once you've lost it. I upgraded to an I-pod mini, on my wife's recommendation, but am having technical problems getting a book on to it.

Also, as others have noted: tech. support is apparently non-existent; you send emails into a great yawning void, apparently.

They have the books available from nowhere else. The downloads are easy and the audio quality is fine. But many of their books are abridged so you have to take care when ordering.
The real down side is their total lack of customer service. Their "help" system is hopeless. If your problem does not fit into their FAQ, you're out of luck. Even after carefully negotiating their email obstacle course, I have never gotten a reply.

I wish I wish I would have read Epinions before I purchased a year contract from Audible.com. I have not been able to listen to my books because I can not get their software to work on my computer. So I cannot give an honest opinion about the quality. Oh yes, I have emailed them.....not even an automated answer and it has been 5 days.

Customer Service is the worse and if you call, hope you have time to wait for hours to get a customer service employee.

When I recently bought some high-end earphones for my Ipod, they came with a coupon for 3 free downloads from Audible. I went to their site, went through their registration procedure and then discovered that only one free audiobook could be downloaded. The quality of the recording was substandard and they failed to honor the terms of their coupon so I didn't sign up for a subscription.

They took care of that "oversight" for me and with no notice began withdrawing money from my bank account every month for a subscription I didn't want and didn't know I had. When I found them on my bank statement I contacted their "customer service" department via the email address given on their website. That got me an autoreply that told me I needed to fill out a form on their website instead - and so it went.

They finally decided to refund my money at the last instant; I was checking my bank statement online one last time before filing a fraud report with my bank and sending a complaint to the FTC and found that they'd issued a refund.

Very disappointed with what I felt is a deceptive business practice. Okay to sign on their website for a membership, but if you want to cancel you have to call the "membership cancellation line". Good luck, I still haven't got anyone to answer...

I am a new subscriber, and everything has gone as advertised so far. I took the one year option, with a MuVo player. I had no problem loading the software, and I'm now listening to my first book. I tried level 2 on the download at first, but that just sounded too muddled. Level 3 works much better, and that's what I'll go with from now on. The $14.95 price is half what I was paying with a local audio book store on cassettes. The cassette player device was an added bonus and lets me listen in the car. I think this is a great service, and I plan on being a long time customer!

I no longer have time to listen to books, but have been trying for OVER a year to cancel my account... That is criminal if you ask me. DO NOT OPEN AN ACCOUNT, YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO CANCEL IT.

Their automated response system is all you will get in terms of any replies you expect from complaints.

I bought the Gold membership and was expecting to begin accumulating points. To date, I have not accumulated any.

I tried writing to them several times and evidently my emails fell on deaf ears.

Do not expect anything by way of "Special Promotions." This is the only reason I joined because I thought I was getting a deal when I was not.

I've read complaint after complaint regarding their customer service and everything rings true.

Initially I recomended them to several of my friends. But have since warned against using them.

I have been waiting on hold for 3 hours to get resolution to an Activation problem. I had some computers crash that still have Activation on those machines. I used the Inactivation wizard which should supposedly free those up because i have maxed out my 4 licenses. The wizard didn't work. My ticket has been open for almost 72 hours. And now i am still on hold. This is absolutely ridiculous.

Be very careful choosing this firm. Selling is great, support is awful to the point of this purchase being an absolute waste of money and even worse - great gobs of time trying to secure assistance.

I have tried to contact technical support by phone several times by without success. I have waited on hold for as long as 45 minutes without an answer. The only other way to contact them is by submitting a question on their website. They promise a reply within two days. I have never received a response in less than five days. I am currently awaiting a reply from a message I sent 12 days ago. It is extremely hard to solve a technical support problem while trying to use this ridiculously slow form of communication. So I still have not been able to use the defective mp3 player that they sent me several months ago.

I bought and downloaded a few books from Audible before realizing that it is not possible for me to actually burn CDs of the books, or to listen to the files on my mp3 player. Thank goodness I did not join any of the Audible "plans", so I don't ever have to buy anything from them again.

I guess I am the last person on earth to get an mp3 player, and I bought it exclusively to listen to books-on-tape. I figured I could download books from the internet, and this worked fine as long as I downloaded free books.

When I bought books from Audible, however, the Audible downloads turned out not to be mp3-compatible. Audible files also do not allow burning CDs with my Nero 6 program. (Audible requires Nero 7. I require Nero 6 for work. Apparently not possible to have them both installed.)

I've checked all the clever suggestions on the internet for converting Audible files to mp3 -- like, play the Audible file on one device and record them on mp3, next joke.

Don't join Audible until you test whether their special file format will definitely work for you.

These guys will not let me cancel my account. One can google "can't cancel account audible" to find dozens of such stories.

And their audio files are full of DRM crap, you need special
software to play them and they will probably not work in your mp3 player..

DON'T SIGN UP! Wish I hadn't in the first place..

Try librivox dot org for nice free audiobooks and stay away from audible..

When I search without logging in, I get more offerings than when I search as a subscriber. Try "Sansom," for example. I was not aware that subscribers are offered a smaller catalog.

I have recently ordered a number of books from Audible for playing on my iPod.

The web site is difficult to navigate, but if you can put up with it, the selection is great. Prices vary, and sometimes are better on iTunes, but the selection can't be beat.

But the best thing is their customer service. I ordered a book and noticed that there were a few skips (periods of silence) of up to 5 seconds. I reported this. They wrote back w/in 24 hours to offer a refund.

I declined the refund, because I thought the book was worth the money, but they insisted and (a) gave me the refund unasked, and (b) told me that the new version of the book, when fixed, would continue to be in my download account.

Awesome

I have listened to Audible books for several years now. Their download software is really sad. I have had no problems with customer service, though I understand others have. But my issue is none of this.

I rely on Audible's ratings to help select which books I will hear. I also read the reviews on their books quite often, for the same reason.

Recently, I listened to about 3/4 of an audio book, and determined that it was trash. I wrote my first-ever review of this book for Audible. In the review, I stated quite clearly that this was the only audio book I had ever abandoned because it was so bad.

Audible rejected my review. The reason given was that I hadn't listened to the whole book, and so I was unqualified to comment.

This leads me to conclude that reviews that actually get posted to their website are probably biased toward the positive.

I suppose one can calibrate for this inadequacy on their part: don't even consider listening to anything that gets less than 4 stars.

Regarding overall satisfaction: does anybody know of a better source for audio books?

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU EVER GIVE THESE GUYS YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER!!!
Here's how Audible hijacked my credit card number and charged my card $482.90... I cancelled my membership in December 2005. 22 months later, I realized they never stopped charging my card every month. (My wife handles the credit card bill) When I asked for a refund for the months my account was totally inactive, the best they would do is a six month credit. When I asked if I could at least get credits added to my account for the months that they were charging me, they begrudgingly added a paltry 2 credits. So these two books are costing me nearly $250 each!!! Audible's customer service had absolutely no interest in working with me. BEWARE!!! MAKE SURE YOU GET A CONFIRMATION FOR YOUR CANCELLATION!!

My wife & I were happy customers until November 27th of this year. Since then we have been unable to download any Audible books. The transfer rate starts out very low and grows quickly to 60-100 hours and then times out. We have tried multiple PC's at various times including early morning and the middle of the night when the internet should be relatively quiet. Audible tech support tells us that it must be our ISP. When we contacted our ISP they are unable to even ping audible.com or tracert them...it always times out. When we ping or tracert it also times out. The last time I contacted Audible they said there were no problems. The rep named George refused to give me his last name and refused to give me the number of Audible's CEO, Don Katz...he then hung up on me! Do not do business with them until they resolve their capacity/speed problems.

The library is quite extensive. When requested, they have been responsive about updating content. Downloading books has been a breeze. Customer service has been quite good most areas. I've been a subscriber for two years and I have one complaint.

The device inventory is horrible. Most of the compatible devices are no longer available for purchase. The inventory is Apple-centric. Trying to find a device with 2GB memory that doesn't have a bunch of other unnecessary features (I don't NEED photos and video), is nearly impossible.

Also, staff lies about why they can't add new devices. Sandisk has told me that the drivers come from Audible, not vice-versa.

Somebody needs to get off their butt and do something! I'm considering switching to jiggerbug or some other service.

This is NOT MP3. If you want to download a book and put it on a CD to listen to in your car, FORGET IT. I thought I clicked all the right buttons to get an MP3 file. What I got was some ultra-write-protected *.aa file. After about an hour of searching their website, I found a FAQ that says you cannot get the file in MP3 and cannot convert to MP3.