Scribd

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.