Scribd

I heard about this service and thought it was a fun concept, so I signed up for a 14-day trial to give it a shot. After putting all my information in to the account, I immediately went to the cancel membership section, so I wouldn't be charged after the trial was up.

After the trial period, I noticed that my account was in fact charged for a month of service. I went back to see why this happened. It turns out that to cancel is a very annoying process. Once you hit cancel account, it takes you to a page that says "This doesn't have to be the end". I must have assumed hitting the cancel button was all you needed to do the first time, so I missed this. After I "confirmed" the cancellation, I was taken to another page pushing me to stay with the service. I again told it to cancel, to which it took me to a page that offered me a 30-day trial. I once again hit cancel and it took me to a page that asked me to give it feedback for leaving. (There were still a bunch of other headers and buttons that encouraged you not to leave). I filled out the feedback explaining that the cancellation process was obnoxious and that I wanted my money back. I assumed this would indeed be the last page to cancel the service. WRONG! I was then taken to another page that gave me four or five buttons to stay, and one small button to finalize the cancellation that was very hard to find.

I wanted to give them a 1-star review for this. But I decided to cut them a break and give them 2-stars for a couple of reasons. The first simply because it is a good service. I wanted to do the trial because they have a large comic book library, and I was able to read a lot of graphic novels that I would otherwise have to pay $30 each for at a store.

The other reason being that despite the obnoxious cancellation process, I was given a response to my feedback within an hour and my money refunded.

If you are willing to subscribe to the service, I think it is worth the money. But like many of the reviews on this page, there is something very untrustworthy about this company, and I don't think I will be giving them my business in the future.

I Did contact customer care and after 3 exchanges your rep Finally admitted that some may not see your practices as Limitted, "depends how you define Unlimitted" is how she put it. News Flash! Unlimited gas already been defined and it means Without Limit... apparently not to companies looking to bamboozle the public.

I also have a problem Paying for a service that Pads their library with FREE LibriVox books & other Public Domain books. And then to tell me I have a free month credited to my account is ludicrous considering I would have to resume my membership. That is Not "Free" if I have to auth ScribD to charge my card. And after the numerous complaints about ScribD continuing to charge after cancelation, I am Not likely to trust ScribD with my authorization. I'd have to be an idiot to do so, especially after being scammed on the NOT unlimited Bait n Switch, the Attempt to Redefine Unlimited,, and seeing the Horrible reviews. My only regret is that I didn't check reviews Before I bothered with ScribD. But I will Warn everyone I can to check reviews first

Like many other customers who have shown their outrage of the unscrupulous practices of Scribd, I have been wrongfully charged monthly for 4 times throughout this year despite canceling my FREE TRIAL membership in April. When I emailed them, they only agreed to refund the latest one, and refuse to refund the previous three charges as they claim "their refund policy is they do not issue refunds beyond 30 days." When the error is on the company's side to settle and for the customers to claim because we are the victims in the transaction, they do not take responsibility to repay us back the money. I, as an unknowing consumer, has to suffer because of an error on the company's side that took away a large proportion of my bank account money that I dutifully save up. This is pure exploitation of unsuspecting consumers, disguised under the banner of "free trial" and it is honestly my first experience.

Ticket number: *******
In response to their claims of a " monthly subscription". I am well aware of the distinctions between paid monthly subscriptions; annual subscriptions; free trial, and CANCELLATIONs of subscriptions presented on the website to me( please see attached photo). I am not the one erroneously claiming that I did not cancel a paid membership- I have even received a proof that I cancelled my subscription. So why is it that the company still refuses to admit it has a duty to repay me for wrongly charging me when I CANCELLED my paid subscription, and using its "30 day policy" to cover up its error in transactions? It's hard to not perceive this as an exploitation of customers when they have clearly opted out of paid subscriptions. What's more frustrating is they have the audacity to charge NOT one, but 5 wrong payments throughout the entire year.

I canceled my membership right before the free trail ended and I'm still being charged for months after.

I posted on the BBB on August 18 and received a response (see below) on August 21. I was told that the last charge would be refunded (this has been going on for years). That very day, I was charged again.

Response I received on August 21:
The business indicated:

Hi Colleen, we apologize for any confusion here. Upon review, we were not able to find any support tickets from you in our system, which would be why you didn't receive anything from us. We were able to locate your account and can confirm that you created your subscription with us on February 10th, 2017 under the email address you've provided above. According to our system, your account was not canceled at all, which is why these charges came through as normal. To confirm, when you purchased the trial, you agreed to the terms and conditions under the Subscriber Agreement (https://support.scribd.com/hc/articles/*******) that stated this was not a one-time purchase, but instead a recurring month to month subscription. Scribd does not offer a standalone free trial. In accordance with our Refund Policy (https://support.scribd.com/hc/articles/*******), we've refunded your most recent charge and canceled your subscription. Your payment method should be credited within 3-5 business days. Your free Scribd account will remain active, so you'll still be able to share documents and use Scribd's free features. In some cases, full versions of documents available on Scribd may only be visible to Scribd subscribers. We hope this helps to clear things up for you. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us at *******@scribd.com in the future if you need additional assistance. Thanks for reaching out and have a wonderful day!

PLEASE NEVER EVER GIVE A GIFT OF SCRIBD TO A STUDENT OR THEY WILL HAVE A HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE! BEWARE OF predatory billing, also... lots of complaints about that, too.

Go ahead and pick out those books you want to read... SCRIBD will freeze them for a month, release one to you, then freeze the rest until next month. Especially true of audiobooks!
When you look for something else, SCRIBD will give you photos of a bunch of LIBIVOX (free) books. SCRIBD also makes "Best Seller" lists with ancient LIBROVOX books. It's just another jaw-ish gyp. Beware.
It was a gift to me for a year... hah; don't give it to a friend! It's a disgusting ripoff.
Any response to customer service takes weeks, and they've just cancelled people who have complained.
They also will cut off access to a book for 24 hours if they decide you've accessed your membership from "too many browsers recently", and then if you click the question mark to see why - you get a dead link!
You never OWN a book the way you do with Audible or Audiobook, and can't go back and reread a book without a membership; you're just paying to read... and they hide the real bestseller list, and generally are just so stingy, mean, and shifty that it's pretty unbelievable. A BIG NO.

First of all, calling the subscription "unlimited" is misleading and completely false. When I started my subscription, I saw that I had access to many audiobooks and I saved them to my account. After a few days, every audiobook that wasn't saved to my account said "not available until (DATE)" which just coincidentally is the date for the next payment. So basically, audiobooks are only available to you on the day of payment (and only if you hit save) and after that they say "unavailable." This angered me because I felt they misrepresented the nature of the subscription by calling it unlimited when it is quite literally extremely limited (Nowhere on the site does it explain that this is how the subscription works... it repeatedly calls it unlimited - lies). However, I just saved all the books I wanted and waited several weeks until my next payment so they would be available. Fine. Annoying, but I was fine with that as long as I got the books I wanted.

THEN, randomly... all these books I saved were again unavailable until the following payment. When I ask questions of customer service I get a BS response that titles become unavailable due to agreements with publishers. That is BS because it is clearly associated with the date of payment and the books are a variety of publishers. I think they do this to try to keep customers on for month after month.

This company needs to be forthright about the actual nature of the subscription. If the subscription ran as it actually is advertised and explained on their site and FAQs... it would be perfect. However, it is unfortunately too good to be true. For being a company that is promoting literature, reading, expanding your mind, etc, it is far too shady.

Scribd, with it's promise of "unlimited" access to their library of ebooks, audiobooks, and articles etc. ACTUALLY tracks subscribers searches - even ones that do not lead to saving a title, let alone reading or listening to a title - and determines by SEARCHES how to limit the "unlimited" access. I listened to one recently bestselling title, two much older, moderately successful titles, and four "classic" titles (as in, written before 1900), and was then cut off from ANY further audiobook borrows, except for the most ridiculous, tawdry, awful, no-star titles in their cataloge. So, after seven audiobook listens, I was basically CUT OFF. All other titles were labelled as "available soon." Scibd kept careful track of all my searches. So, for example if I entered an author's name, rather than a specific title, ALL the titles by that auther would be added to my limiting list of searches. SO, they punish you for simply searching for titles, and "unlimited" means NOTHING. This service may have some good points, but their shameless LYING and underhandedness cancels it all out.

Would you like to know the solution to all your dissatisfied 1 star customer reviews Jerry? I'll give you the answer for free and no need for your future appreciation.

Here are the Deceptive practices that leads to angry customers. They are used to prevent customers from canceling and they work very well. The proof is in the reviews.

1. It is difficult to find the cancellation page. I believe a customer has to search for a specific link rather than just navigating the Scribd home website. It is unusual that one cannot cancel from the Scribd homepage. When compared to subscribing cancelling is pretty difficult. Why is that Jerry Please answer.

2. I exclusively used this service on my iphone. But unlike every other application I could not cancel through my apple id? Why is that Jerry? Please answer

3. Where most people likely go wrong is the first cancellation page. I clicked the first "cancel subscription button" and thought I was done with this aggravating task. But I found out months later that there is a cancellation funnel that customers have to go through. You click cancel subscription. Then it takes you to a page that seems to confirm your cancellation. But this is not true. Its actually a second cancellation page. You have to scroll down to cancel again?! What awaits is another cancellation page(the last one). Why is this Jerry please explain and change. Keep in mind there is only one subscribe button. Why is there a discrepancy Jerry? Please explain.

So the solution Jerry is to get rid of the cancellation funnel. Why does a customer have to click cancel 3 times or more to cancel there subscription?. This is why you have so many unhappy customers. Get rid of the extra cancellation pages and I promises your bad reviews will reduce.

For doing your job all I ask is for a refund for the months that I assumed my subscription was canceled (I clicked unsubscribe once which should be enough).

I SUBMITTED 10 FILES TO THE WEBSITES AND STILL GOT TO DOWNLOAD NOTHING EVERY TIME AN ERROR MESSAGE APPEARS, TOTAL BS

Although their standard response will be "We're sorry that certain specific books are temporarily unavailable to you right now...". The truth is that they will throttle you after one audiobook. I started to read one book, downloaded others but never read. Today, for the s3cond month in a row they DELETED the books from my device remotely and I can only access them the day after they get another payment from me. I cancelled last time when they started this and was stupid to believe they had changed, They claim to have an unlimited service. They do not. They offer a few cheap, old and publicly available books unlimited and the rest are 1 or two a month. Just saving a book to read later counts against you.

They refuse to admit to how many books you are limited to and frame it like the publisher has limits. It's not true. My sister could log in and access the books but because I had listened to one audiobook, I could not. Each time, the books are miraculously available the day after I pay them again and I have to redownload after they process the payment. This is false advertising. Their responses on here claiming books are unavailable to you for any other reason than money are false. This "unlimited" shtick was a ploy to bring back everyone who left after their last escapade. Now I read their was a data breach at the end of November and "only" our usernames and emails were accessed. ONLY?! You can't tell the truth about unlimited books and I should trust you on that?

In addition, they remain in violation of the court settlement for blind readers. Their app and website are still unusable more than a year after the deadline. They could easily work with publishers and the NLS and maybe even get credit or a write off ala book share with publishers by allowing the blind access. Nope!

The bottom line? Do not buy the bs. If you have, cancel and run from this company. Go and use your local library and Libby or overdrive. It's free, has prompt honest service you can depend on.

I opened a free trial on their website (not through itunes.) It said I had until March 12,2017 to cancel. On March 11,2017 at 7pm I checked my bank account and saw that I had already been charged! I went to cancel and found out I could not cancel until April 12. I still went through the process of canceling (yes you have to click through about 10 pages and find teeny tiny little font that says I STILL WANT TO CANCEL) it said my account would end on April 12, rather than the next day, March 12, when my free trial was over or that same day, March 11 when I wanted to cancel.

I contacted Scribd support on March 11 when all of this was happening and have yet to hear a single thing back from them. Now I am worried my card will get charged again since people say they are mysteriously being charged over and over again. PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THIS SITE. THERE IS NOTHING ON THERE THAT IS WORTH A PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP THAT YOU CANNOT GET ELSEWHERE!

And since they apparently have customer service people that respond to THESE message boards (rather than their own customer service emails) I am writing this review... and adding my support ticket number.

Support ticket #*******
Email *******@gmail.com

GET AHOLD OF ME SCRIBD