Aside, Audible is pretty scummy. Consider a less scummy alternative like Libro.fm.
- Audible's "Cancel membership" flow is multiple pages long and makes you think you've canceled it when you actually have to keep progressing through additional "I want to cancel" clicks. I thought I canceled the free trial when I hadn't. When complaining to some friends of mine, they also made the same mistake.
- When you finally cancel your membership, you've only put in a request to cancel it. The actual cancellation will happen in 30 days. This means you're always billed one more time after cancellation (I couldn't believe this when I saw it).
- When your membership is finally canceled, you lose all of your tokens (you get one per month). So if you have 5 tokens saved up and you want to pause your membership for a couple months because your bank balance is low, too bad. (Note: I've since realized that Audible lets you pause your membership once per year for 1-3 months, but this is an unsatisfying solution and I only discovered it in their support forum. I didn't even see the option while canceling twice.)
- Because canceling your membership has a 30-day delay that charges you once more, you're basically buying one last token that's going to get immediately deleted. This means that if you're billed on the 1st of the month but you cancel (ahem, submit a cancel request) on the 2nd of the month, 29 days later you're going to be charged one last time and receive a token that is deleted within 24 hours.
I haven't used Libro.fm yet (have a sour taste in my mouth from Audible), but their tokens never expire and canceling ("pausing", in their language) membership doesn't delete tokens.
I want to write a blog post that makes these points more eloquently, with evidence, but I haven't had the energy.
"Wait, what if we charge people once more when they try to cancel our service?" is one of the most ridiculous experiences I've ever had. Even worse than that one time I had to cancel a cam-site subscription by uncommenting-out the <button>Cancel</button> in the html.
The world is only as good as the things we choose to tolerate.
Even if you are happy with Audible it is worth trying to cancel every few months because it is highly likely they will offer you a substantial discount every time.
Thank you. I find audible difficult to navigate. I have been meaning to cancel but I gave up. I am waiting for a book I really need that’s a good deal. Collecting credits till then. I do like their free meditation snippets tho’
Audible's business decision to revoke credits on membership cancellation is one of those decisions that makes me wonder if they're actually leaving money on the table. Like, wouldn't having unspent credits in your account contribute to membership reactivations down the road? And enable marketing emails like "Don't you want to spend your 3 credits?"
When you finally cancel your membership, you've only put in a request to cancel it. The actual cancellation will happen in 30 days. This means you're always billed one more time after cancellation
- Oct 25th: Copy and pasted from their email, "We’re just confirming that you’ve cancelled your Audible membership. You’ll continue to have access to your credits until November 25, 2020."
- Nov 4th: I'm charged once more and receive a token.
- Nov 25th: I finally lose tokens and my membership transitions to the canceled state. I'm never charged again.
I've run this experiment a second time when my girlfriend canceled last month (I also wanted screenshots of the cancelation wizard for the blog post I want to write). She was charged once more between the "cancel request", the rebill date, and the actual cancel 30 days later.
What do you think is a more accurate, charitable description of these events? I think "cancelation has a 30-day delay" summarizes the post-cancel rebill much more charitably than it deserves.
- Audible's "Cancel membership" flow is multiple pages long and makes you think you've canceled it when you actually have to keep progressing through additional "I want to cancel" clicks. I thought I canceled the free trial when I hadn't. When complaining to some friends of mine, they also made the same mistake.
- When you finally cancel your membership, you've only put in a request to cancel it. The actual cancellation will happen in 30 days. This means you're always billed one more time after cancellation (I couldn't believe this when I saw it).
- When your membership is finally canceled, you lose all of your tokens (you get one per month). So if you have 5 tokens saved up and you want to pause your membership for a couple months because your bank balance is low, too bad. (Note: I've since realized that Audible lets you pause your membership once per year for 1-3 months, but this is an unsatisfying solution and I only discovered it in their support forum. I didn't even see the option while canceling twice.)
- Because canceling your membership has a 30-day delay that charges you once more, you're basically buying one last token that's going to get immediately deleted. This means that if you're billed on the 1st of the month but you cancel (ahem, submit a cancel request) on the 2nd of the month, 29 days later you're going to be charged one last time and receive a token that is deleted within 24 hours.
I haven't used Libro.fm yet (have a sour taste in my mouth from Audible), but their tokens never expire and canceling ("pausing", in their language) membership doesn't delete tokens.
I want to write a blog post that makes these points more eloquently, with evidence, but I haven't had the energy.
"Wait, what if we charge people once more when they try to cancel our service?" is one of the most ridiculous experiences I've ever had. Even worse than that one time I had to cancel a cam-site subscription by uncommenting-out the <button>Cancel</button> in the html.
The world is only as good as the things we choose to tolerate.