A few months ago, I purchased a book from Audible through one of their sales, for something like $7. Recently, I started listening to it, but it wasn’t catching my attention and I didn’t think it would do so in the future, so I went to return it. Now, Audible has been really convoluted and awful about returns the last few years. Half the time, I have to go through customer service to do a return for no reason at all. They claim it’s simply a policy change through Amazon, but it’s annoying every time and I’ve slowly started moving away from Audible as a source of audiobooks. The whole reason I ever felt comfortable purchasing audiobooks in advance was the return policy, because I’m sorry, a five-minute audio preview isn’t always enough to know if you’re going to like a book!

So for the last 18 months or so, I’ve been really choosy about which books I grab from Audible and I very rarely get anything on a sales deal unless it’s a book I’ve already read/listened to and I know I want. Yeah, if you have a $5 copy of an audiobook I loved through Libby, I might grab that up. But earlier this year, I let myself be tempted into buying two $5-$7 books, one by an author I knew, and one with a really amazing premise. That latter is the one I couldn’t get into, and went to return.

So of course, it says the book isn’t eligible for return. Usually, all of my books will say that because I have to contact customer service for 90% of returns these days, even though I literally return about 5% of what I purchase. But when I contacted customer service, I was told that only books bought with credits could be returned, no cash purchases.

Um, wtf??

I asked when that policy went into place, because I was certainly never told about it. The CS rep ignored the question and instead said it was now Audible’s policy to not give refunds for any titles purchased with money after 10/23/22. I know that’s not the date of the policy, though, because I last returned a cash title in January this year. Without a problem, actually. I didn’t even have to go though the help desk for that one.

This new policy really pisses me off, especially as Audible continues to push their daily deals, and they’ve added an “everything’s on sale” type sale once or twice a month. They’re trying to get people to buy without credits by having these prices lower than the credits, but then people are stuck with audiobooks that they may not like because they’re blanket-refusing to allow returns of anything purchased outside the credit system. It’s exploitative and manipulative, like Amazon in general. Absolute bullshit.

TBH, my response was, okay, I can’t return the cash title. Instead, I’m going to start returning books I bought with credits that I read but didn’t like. I’ve literally never returned a book that I finished before, no matter how much I disliked it. For me, if I read a book, to return it for any reason was dishonest. But Amazon doesn’t care about being dishonest to its customer base. That’s been clear for many, many years. So why should I care about them? If I don’t want to keep the book, why should I? Done. Returned. I’ll keep doing it until there are no more credit-purchases in the last year that I don’t want to own.

Beyond that, it’s time for me to explore other audio options. I know Spotify is trying to set up as a competitor for Audible. I don’t have a Spotify account, but maybe I should get one. A few people have recommended other services on other social media outlets (libro.fm, Libby, Scribd, Chirp) and I’m looking into any of those that are purchase services (I already use Libby for audio through my library). Unfortunately, I purchased an entire year of Audible credits up front so I have a bunch still to use. Def don’t plan to do that again, and I have about six months to use up the rest of my credits and decide where I want to move to. Slowly getting rid of all the Amazon-based services in my life, Goodreads, Audible…