Audible does not suck
: A few months ago, I wrote a few very frustrated posts about Audible. I couldn’t get it to work on my Treo and found the help and customer service lacking (to put it nicely). I wanted to get the service to work and give them money and couldn’t and it drove me crazy.
I broke down and bought an iPod and now Audible works for me.
I’m addicted to it. Which is to say, it doesn’t suck.
I’m setting the record straight because it’s the good and proper thing to do and because I will be writing about podcasting shortly. Creating content for the iPod platform is an important evolution in media.
I listen to books and even to convention speeches and 9/11 Commission testimony that Audible got up promptly.
I still have a few complaints about Audible — but they’re the good kind of complaints. For example:
I want more books. I’m having trouble finding enough to listen to for my taste.
I wish it were easier to browse the titles. They need to invest more in packaging and promotion (for example, look at what’s newsworthy and you hardly ever see anything new; look at new and you see so much new that you wish it were categorized for easier browsing).
And — this is more iTunes’ fault, I’ll bet — I wish it were easier to move a book from Audible to iTunes (you can’t use the Audible software to sync the iPod if you use iTunes, which, of course, everyone does; so you have to download the file via Audible and then go into iTunes and find it in Windows messy directories and then plop it into an overcrowded folder with everything you own and then find it and move it to a playlist… whew).
All those complaints only indicate that I’m using the service and like it. I’ll still advise a bit more effort in customer service. I was a clearly exasperated customer and never did get a solution to my Treo problem; I gave up on the company and screamed about it here. I heard that the head of the company was mad at me about it. That’s like Dan Rather being mad at the bloggers who found the truth he missed. If a customer complains about a company, that probably means that the customer wants to patronize and like the company but is being frustrated. The wise company will go deal with that. I got around Audible’s problems on my own and proved that, indeed, I was a customer with pent-up money. I’ll be there are more like me out there….
