Why I broke up with Audible.com

Dear Audible.com,

You made me mad. You made me so mad that I was forced to break up with you. Part of our fight was my fault and the majority was yours. Let me rewind.

There I was, chugging along as a happy as can be in our relationship. I had the monthly membership which gave me 2 credits to download per month. I have downloaded 31 books from you since our relationship began on 08/14/2005, but what you did to me yesterday was unforgivable. It started out simple enough. You emailed me once to remind me that my credit card was expiring at the end of February. You emailed me again with a gentle reminder after your first email was in my trash bin.

We began to bicker as you rejected my new credit card. In hindsight, I understand your logic now. I made the mistake of giving you my old mailing address (I’ve recently moved back to PA.) It was my honest mistake that set these unfortunate events in motion. I never wanted to see your ugly side. It would have been nice if I continued on unaware that the dark side existed.

Instead of telling me that the address didn’t match or that I should ensure the accuracy of my address you told me my card was rejected and that I should try again later. Hmm… yes, I will try again later. Fifteen seconds later you gave me the same error. My memory must have failed me. Did I have a typo in my number? No, the number is fine.

Honest mistake, Audible. I am sorry. But here is where things turned really ugly. At this point, you could have told me something other than I was rejected. You could have offered to help, but you sat there – stubborn and staring back at me – mocking me.

Out of respect, I decided to put our relationship on pause. I would let things cool off and then maybe in a week I would come back and things would be fine. We could have continued like we never had this fight.

You told me that if I wanted to leave that I would have to spend all of my credits right then or I would lose them forever. How could you do that to me? Is it really that difficult to hold onto something that I paid for? Why are you doing that to me? OK, fine. I’ll go settle on something and maybe find a book worth my time. I have all intentions of coming back. You are a good friend and you’ve provided me with so many hours of quality reading that I cannot let you go, but what you doing here is not cool.

You really pissed me off when you hid the cancellation button. Why did you not let me leave? There is no way to exit? I just want out. I will come back if you make this easy. Show me how to cancel. What’s this? I you help file is also lying to me. You’re telling me to click on buttons that do not exists! Stop the lies, Audible! Stop the lies!

We cannot make this work. You tried so hard to make me stay, that I am certain that I must leave. But the only way to do that is to call you??? I have to call you to tell you that I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore? Are you kidding me?

The 11 minutes I spent on hold was the final goodbye. There is nothign left you can say. I’ve spent my last credits, I have no desire to stay in a relationship that is full to trickery and deceit – had you been more friendly at the end of our fight we could have worked this all out, but it’s over now… and i’m not coming back. You were polite after you realized it was over, but it was too late. Thanks for the good memories.

-Kendall