Scribd
reviews and complaints

At first I was all about this app. I do listen to a lot of audiobooks so once I had access to the first title I searched for I was extremely excited that I'd found a better alternative to audible. From then on, every single title I searched for said it wasn't available until the date my next subscription payment was due. There were other titles I could choose from, however none of them were of my choosing. I sent an email about this issue and was told that it had something to do with their schedule of releasing books or whatever and that it wasn't related to receiving more $ from me. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, but decided that I'd pay my subscription fee a couple days after it was due so I could see if the availability date would change to match my new subscription due date. After accessing and listening to a single audiobook that I searched for, the availability date did change to my new due date.

This app may technically offer unlimited audiobooks, however that access only pertains to the ones of their choosing. Even if their cataloge includes the title you want, if you have already listened to a title that month, you'll have to wait until the next comes around. The Hibooks app is 100% better.

RE: DEVELOPER RESPONSE

I can tell you with 100% certainty and honesty that what I said in my original post is accurate and continues to be an issue. I am not mistaken about the fact that titles I search which one moment are available suddenly become unavailable until my next billing date. The availability is ALWAYS my billing date. I can also see by reading other reviews that I'm not the only person who has encountered this issue. I also can't understand what the point of your response is other than to claim that I'm wrong or that I don't understand how to differentiate between available and unavailable. The funny thing is that nothing seems to be unavailable until after I've listened a single title I searched for.

I even tried saving several choices before listening to one of them, which appeared successful, until I finished the first title in a series and tried to start the next. Suddenly the rest of the series was no longer in my saved file, but were moved to the "available soon" area.

This app is amazing. I have wanted something like this for a long time. The wealth of audio and print content is staggering. I keep expecting books I want to not be available, but there the are. Despite how good it is, I see two issues that give me serious pause.

1. There seems to be absolutely no way to filter out explicit content. Perhaps Scribd has made the decision that porn access is part of what they are offering here. But with that comes the need for some kind of (at least basic) way to block that content. There is none. I contacted Scribd about it. They’re response was,

Thank you for reaching out to us about wanting to filter your content recommendations. This is a request that many of our other customers have had, and as we work to improve the Scribd experience for everyone we've definitely taken this feature into consideration. Hopefully we'll see it on an upcoming release.

Hopefully?

2) there is pirated content here. If we want quality content, we have to make sure content creators can get paid. Unfortunately, the “sharing” feature that lets you upload documents is brining serious amounts of pirated works. I raised this point, and this was there response:

Meanwhile, if you are the copyright holder of a document that is on Scribd without authorization, please see our Copyright Resource Centerfor instructions on how to request removal of the document.

If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Thanks, and have a lovely rest of your day!

Their boilerplate states,

Content on Scribd is uploaded and maintained by our members and publishers with no editorial approval or other intervention by Scribd’s employees. Scribd takes the rights of intellectual property owners very seriously and complies as a service provider with all applicable provisions of the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") of 1998. We expeditiously remove infringing material and terminate repeat infringers when such action is deemed appropriate.

They are trying to minimize their responsibility by taking the position that they are just a platform. That’s not good enough. They are making money by offering pirated works. Personally, I think they need to ditch the sharing aspect of the app.

I was a user before the change that now only allows 3 books per month. I'm also a user whom this affects unfortunately. That being said, it's still a great deal and I'm quite happy with the services.

I have two smallish complaints. One is that the offline mode sometimes saves the page number and sometimes doesn't. I'm reading a book right now that doesn't recognize chapters (bad Ebook formatting?) and when scribd loses my place it can be rather annoying. The other minor quibble are the previews. Some previews of books are great and give me a great indication of the book. Others.. Not so much. For example, I just tried to preview a poetry book. After I got through the table of contents and prologue, I was only able to read part of a single poem! I understand that it may not be Scribd per se, but I wish the previews were thought out a little better. Eh.

Anyway, that's my general review. Now I'll talk just a bit about my personal reading habits and how it relates to scribd. Don't bother reading unless you want to know if scribd is worth it to you :)

I read primarily spiritual books, an occasional poetry book and comics as well as reference books (massaging, languages, drawing etc). I don't read many novels on scribd.

This is one reason why the program works out alright for me. I used to read much much more than 3 books a month, but this is forcing me to go through them a bit slower. For something like a novel, perhaps that's annoying. For something like poetry or spiritual books, it's usually a good thing!

And the gardening/language/other reference books are something that I need to just slowly build up. Once I get my Chinese reader book I'll be set on Chinese for quite a while for example.

Comics are the worst because most are just read so quickly! I don't want to spend my precious book tokens on a book I'll easily read in 20-30 minutes!

As for the free Scribd selects.. So far I've always found at least one book. This month there's the 500+ page From Hell comic. So it doesn't take a book and it'll last a while! A great gardening one and even a cool novel I'm going to read.

So overall I'd prefer having unlimited books, but my reading habits still work quite well under this model. Heck, maybe even its a bit healthier for me.

Update: appreciating the idea that Scribd is now offering its new form of throttled unlimited. But the audiobook stops every 7 minutes if not connected to cellular/wifi. Wanted to use this app to listen to audiobooks while on road trips. Not safe to drive and restart app every 7 mins! Almost had an accident...

The app is great. But my issue is with the new credit system. I've been using Scribd on two accounts in my household for the last year. I was happy when it was books and would pay for 2-3 months then take one month off. Then they added audiobooks and I was thrilled. No more breaks. No need to even use my kindle anymore. No more Audible. Thrilled at a level where I can say Scribd actually changed my quality of life. I knew they couldn't sustain this buffet, but to cut back so extremely... So many of us will bail. My wish would be that they offered some other option that gave users more than one per month. If I had to pay three months in advance but got bonus audiobooks, that would be fine. Or pay $15/month for unlimited books plus 2-3 audiobooks. Looking at my history I see one month this year I heard 6-8 books but other months just one audiobook. There has to be some other solution, Scribd. Please don't send me back to Audible. For now I'm using public library, hoopla, and checking out TuneIn which launched a Scribd alternative. I will miss you bunches my old friend.

Review of the App:
I've been downloading audio books and ebooks to my device when I am on wifi. Then head to office and listen to books stored in the app, with no worries about misusing my cellular data plan. No complaints about the development behind this app. Only issue I encounter is the app hanging when I have already downloaded book via wifi and later try to listen while at location with cellular signal issues. Sometimes have to restart app every 20-30 minutes. Update 2018: still having issues with the app failing. But it's worse now. Happy they brought a pseudo-unlimited version to us. But the app closing itself after each chapter is driving me nuts. For example the book I'm listening to is broken into 85 chapters. Each chapter I have to walk to the back of the studio and reopen the app and find it in the Saved list and start the audio again. It's aggravating.

First off, I have yet to see anything like the Scribd subscription–3 books and 1 audio book/month (with 'leftover' books rolling over) is a great option for all but the most voracious of readers. The selection of titles is, as well, for the most part adequate. I've never had a problem finding plenty of books that interest me. If that were the end of the review, it would easily be 5 stars.

The problem is this app. Aye. Where do I even begin... This thing is glitchy and so bizarrely slow that it almost isn't worth the frustration of trying to deal with it. Want to open a book you're reading? Get ready to wait 2 minutes. Literally. 2 MINUTES sometimes. Other times it will just fail to open the book altogether and give you an error message. And unfortunately, once you manage to finally get a book open the problems don't stop there. It sputters and freezes just while turning pages and will frequently take 30-60 seconds just to turn a page. JUST TO TURN A PAGE. I have other similar "reader" type apps running on my device for reading sheet music, etc. and have NEVER seen such abysmal performance. Downloading a book to your device for "offline" mode can help a little, however you have to actually turn off your WiFi, otherwise it will still go into the excruciatingly slow process of "syncing" and "opening" for some reason. And as if that weren't enough, then if you're not connected to WiFi, the app often somehow forgets you have saved anything to your offline downloads and they won't show up in the app at all—so you're SOL if you, say, downloaded a bunch of books before a long flight, turn on airplane mode and then are greeted with a lovely blank screen (I learned this the hard way!).

The title search is (shocker) unbelievably slow. The GUI has a persistent glitch in inverted/night mode where the text for buttons flips back to black instead of white, so you can't see any of the controls. Really, just about the only thing this has going for it is the concept. The execution couldn't get much worse. I wish they would just make it possible (and optimize) access to Scribd from Safari and other mobile browsers. Then at least you'd have a workaround for is royal clunker of an app. As it stands, though, the subscription is just not worth the hassle and frustration if you plan on primarily using it with the app.

1/29/22 Update: I can no longe recommend Scribd, on iOS anyway. I only use it now for audiobooks because I read books on a Kobo Libra. Since I use Scribd to supplement my other reading formats, I don’t run into the issue with not being able to listen to more audiobooks in any given month. What I do run into though on my iPhone is Scribd losing my place in the audiobook and starting over. I don’t keep track of which chapter I finished or even how far I am in the book so the process of trying to find out where I am in a book is extremely frustrating. Because of this, I probably won’t be resubscribing when my current subscription is over.

Scribd is one of my favorite apps. Even though I still check out books from the library, I keep Scribd because there are books at the library with long waits that I know I won't finish during the library checkout period. Many times, Scribd has those books as well and I don't have to rush to finish them. I haven’t really been affected by their limited “unlimited” issues because Scribd is not my only reading source. I use it to supplement my reading from the library.

Update: I’m taking away one star for the following reasons: 1. You took away the percentage read and number of minutes left in the chapter. I know that you can see the book progress and the number of pages left by clicking on the page but I did like seeing that info without having to do that. I guess the upside is that the reading page itself is cleaner. However, please bring back the number of minutes left in the chapter. That is valuable info for chapter readers like me. 2. While I feel it has gotten better with the past few updates, I still have intermittent issues with audiobooks losing their place when I unlock the phone. It sometimes goes back to the end of a previous chapter. 3. You took away the ability to fine tune the background. My eyes are really sensitive and so I would set the background to a slightly off-white/light gray background. By taking that away, it’s actually harder for me to read now which may be a deal breaker for me at renewal time. 4. It’s time for more flexibility in reading formats. Please give us the ability to change the margins, line spacing, and font boldness. My eyes require a lot of contrast between the background and the text and Scribd does not provide enough contrast.

I can say the variety is good but the app itself is frustrating to use let alone the restrictions of the their "unlimited" plan. The search system is awful, it almost seems deliberately sabotaged with duplicate authors pages that included some of their books and not others and a faulty system of showcasing series.
Not to mention it crashes constantly, kicks you out of your account regularly and the' download for later' feature is glitch (as in, it says it downloaded but the moment you are out of a wifi area it disappears, or sometimes refuses to be deleted).

I've had Scribd for a while, back when it really was unlimited, then it switched to the credit system and now its this fake unlimited system. Its more than a little frustrating.
I have Scribd mostly for the audiobooks, but i'm starting to see not much of a point to it, at the rate i'm allowed new books, I might as well just buy them, at least that way I get to keep them.

Their unlimited plan is a kind of throttling process, as I've noticed its done for audiobooks.
At the start of the month (as in, right after payment), I'm allowed full access but after listening to about 2 or 3 books the service starts restricting titles by moving them to the "available soon" category. They are of course set to be available again right after the next payment cycle.
There are still a good few titles left, but after listing to about 1 to 2 more or just listing to the ones you have already heard, more books become unavailable until all you are really left with are some books from unrelated genres, classics and public domain works.
Its really noticeable if you lean heavily to one genre since it petty much just empties out the category.
They stop even showing up in the search queries so it seems like there are no books being denied to you, they just aren't there to begin with.

I understand there are limitations but this fake unlimited system is insulting.

I stuck with Scribd through their very limited credit system because at least they were being honest and I understood how the system worked. Now I'm not sure if by previewing a book I turn out not to like at the start of the month if i'm losing the ability to move onto another I want to listen to.

I am on day 5 of my current payment cycle. Yesterday 420 books on my saved list were moved to the "available soon" category. I am currently on my 3rd book for the month.

I was with Scribd from the moment they premiered unlimited audio. I was a fan and a vocal advocate of the company to anyone I met who was an ebook or audio junkie. I'm an audiobook junkie. I don't have time to read at home, so I use my commute to listen to books so I can still get my literary fix. I understand the desire to increase profit margins and monetize a site more, and I would have happily paid double the monthly fee to retain the unlimited audio even with the annoying issues where the app crashed, didn't sync across my devices or just plain locked up, which happened at least once a day, normally.

I stayed when they announced they would be modifying the package and going to a monthly "credits" system.

When I found out my previously unlimited membership would now only give me one measly credit per month I gave it the benefit of the doubt because we were promised that "thousands of great audiobooks" would remain free on a rotating basis.

I used up my one credit for the month today and started hunting my next book, hoping to find something in those much advertised thousands. Instead, what I found was fewer than ten titles total across all the fiction genres I enjoy. To be exact, those genres are science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror and mystery. I searched in every subcategory and less than 10 titles in total, and of those they were all either open source material published a minimum of 100 years ago, or Creative Commons productions made by theater groups or comedy improv groups. The so called thousand I found in self help, religion and eduction.

I have now cancelled my subscription and am now an Amazon Unlimited customer. Their selection of unlimited audio fiction has over 55,000 titles, and their paid content averages between 50% and 80% less than Scribd credits which soak you an entire monthly fee for every credit you buy without even a token volume discount. I get that sites need to make a profit and everyone is looking to monetize more effectively, but to pay for a months subscription fee for every book? No. That's not not monetizing, that's attempted assault on the clients wallet. By my reckoning my monthly bill would have jumped from $8.99 to an average of $54.00. Instead, I jumped off this service. It's such a shame when greed makes a company strip most of the value from their service then try to charge more for less than you received to begin with.

I use this app all day every day. I drive for work and audiobooks help keep me sane. The set up is difficult to navigate. For example, when I click on a title, I have to click like 3 times to finally get to a full description of the book. Sometimes it will show me the first few sentences in the description but then when I open it up all the way, nothing is shown. They make it way too hard to find out what a book is about. I’ve had a few times now in the 6ish months I’ve been using this where I open it up one morning and everything I had saved is missing except the book I’m currently listening to. That’s super frustrating I usually have about a dozen books saved at once. One other thing the app is terrible about is showing an entire series and the correct order. I’ll find one book to series and then have to open a web browser to find out what order I need to listen to the books in, or if it’s even a series at all. Sometimes you can only tell because the cover art is similar in multiple titles and it makes you wonder if they go together. I feel like if I was after a certain book and I knew the title or author and could do a search, this app works well. It’s not very user friendly in helping discover new titles or stories though. It also has a fraction of the titles a available compared to Kindle or Audible. What I like is that you can find audiobooks as well as written text to read (but not both, so you can’t switch between reading and listening), the monthly fee isn’t very high and once you subscribe, you have unlimited access to all the books, magazines, podcasts, etc. You never have to worry about credits or purchasing each individual title after you already paid for the subscription like you do on Audible. I keep using it because I can’t afford anything else. I go through 4-6 books a week while working and wouldn’t be able to buy that many through Audible. It seems like they are constantly adding more audiobooks, which are my focus, but I’m often searching for something from my favorite authors and come up with nothing available from them. Especially, smaller and less popular authors and titles. They seem to focus on mainstream titles, which is understandable, but I like discovering new artists and it’s almost impossible on here. I think if they focused on a wider variety of titles and worked a little on their search display and title information, it could be an excellent app.

Great concept, poor execution. I knew the price for this “unlimited” service was too good to be true. That said, I do understand why you can’t listen to an unlimited number of popular audiobooks for $12/mth. My issue is that the limits are all shrouded in mystery — WHY? Why can’t you tell me how many “premium books” I have left to download each month? Why can’t you flag which titles are deemed limit-worthy? These features seem like table stakes if you’re going to offer a service that includes user restrictions! I read A LOT and I often find a narrator hard to listen to or a story too awful to struggle through. At least with audible, I can return one book each month if it doesn’t meet my expectation. With this, I have no idea what the limits are so if I return a book or two, I’m out of luck - they aren’t going to let me replace the title if I’ve reached my limit - even if I return it without listening. Now with two more weeks left in the billing cycle, all my books are locked down - with no advanced warning. This is so frustrating as I’m headed off on a week long work trip and I can’t listen to any of the books I downloaded for the trip. PLEASE figure out a way for users to manage their account limits!

Another great option would be a way you can buy additional access / books once you reach the surprise limit. Because none of these features are available, I will now have to pay for this service (which is worthless for the next two weeks) AND buy more Audible credits if I want to listen to any of the books I had already downloaded from Scribt for my trip!

Again, I’m not angry there is a limit to downloading top titles. While this should absolutely NOT be promoted as “unlimited”, I do understand why the limits need to be imposed. My issue is the mystery surrounding what the user limit is and not knowing the limit until you’ve already reached it and you can’t access any of the titles you’ve selected - the limit feels completely arbitrary every month - no rhyme or reason to why and when it will happen.

I see so many users complaining about the exact same issue — does this company care about the customer experience at all? I’m guessing “no” because if they did, they would be working to address these usability problems. Unfortunately without these features, the company clearly has no commitment to transparency, making Scribt unreliable and poorly executed. I cannot recommend.

There were more books available when I first subscribed (3 years ago, I think). At that time, books and audiobooks were unlimited every month, fantastic for me as I am often ill and was able to lose myself it several books a week without trying to get to my local public library. This is why I now also have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I'd like to try a new cookbook, for example, but then I have to think about to using that credit, and what would I do if a new Lisa Kleypas book comes out and I'm out of credits (insert gasp here)?

It would be a nice if there was a way to sort saved books by author. That's another thing ... why do I have to "flag to save" books now?

From the last version update, earlier this year, Scribd created a "books read" list and moved about a third of my books to that list (mysteriously appeared so I have to assume Scribd created). I deleted the system created list, not knowing all the books from the list would be deleted from my library. A few of the books I could find in the general library and was able to add back to my library but not all, such as Penny Reid's Winston Brothers series. I only found 2 of the 3 Winston Brothers books, which I have already read so they should all be available to me.

That leads to another thing ... why aren't the Winston Brothers books shown under Penny Reid's books authored list? This is what I meant when I wrote my review title. It is nice that the system can direct you to other books; you can select a book, read the blurb, then scroll down to author or subject related books, which can lead to even more subject related books. But sometimes I'll find an available book randomly that I could not find by searching by title or author.

I started creating lists now in order to sort by author or subject, nice to be able to mark lists as private. Lists do seem to disappear then reappear randomly (developers, see my Dublin Street list as an example). I have also had books disappear and reappear from a list.

It would also be nice if there was a "return to home" feature instead of always having to back out by each level (read a blurb, select a related book and read that blurb, select another related book, then have to back out by the left arrow as many times as needed). I know clicking several times isn't strenuous, but a home button would be nice. Other times I close the app, refresh, then reopen the app.

Developers, the new app logo is terrible. You know it kinda looks like a number laying down with another number on top? Or maybe I just read too many eroticas.

I never really got on the Scribd bandwagon, 'cause my personal addiction was audiobooks. What with the addition of that option to the Scribd service, though, it certainly seemed like time to climb onboard. I'm now thinking it's still a bit too early, though, because the audio portion of their app is REALLY not ready for prime time.

1) books take hours to download (when you're lucky)
a) when you're not lucky, it can take days (seriously.)(days.)
2) no way to pause a download. only cancel. so if you're interrupted for any reason (or accidently tap that area of the screen when you're checking on the status of the download) you get to start all over again at point 1. (see 1a)(and insert string of expletives here.)
3) the reader is reliably unreliable. Can't tell you how many times it's just jumped ahead to the next chapter, from any given point in the current chapter.
4) and getting back to your previous point is no easy trick, cause the slider is no more reliable than the rest of the app. (I've taken to creating bookmarks at regular intervals for no other reason than to get me somewhere in the vicinity of my current reading point when the app decides to make those quantum leaps.) (I see a glitch with the bookmark feature somewhere on my horizon...)
5) the read-across-all-devices feature is a joke. but like all jokes, it has a limited laugh life. Been reading for hours on the current device, only to be interrupted by this helpful feature informing me that though I'm currently on Chapter 9, at some point in my past I was at Chapter 1, and wouldn't I really like to go back to Chapter 1? Am I sure? It was funny a time or two, but I'm no longer amused.
6) who needs a 6? If I give it a seconds thought, I'm sure I can come up with a 6, but I'm getting irritated just thinking of the first five, so maybe that's it. Maybe just list blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke here.

So why 3 stars?
Because,
1) in spite of the strings of expletives that are an inevitable part of my every interaction with the scribd audiobook app, I nevertheless managed to read seven titles in my first month. and I even downloaded some ebooks that aren't available on audio.
and because,
2) ultimately, I value those books and am grateful to scribd for offering this service at such a reasonable price,
and finally, because
3) it's SCRIBD, and they'll fix it! (right, Scribd? You will fix it, right?)

So 3 stars it is. Because the books themselves are worth the time and effort, because the price is unbeatable, and because I trust Scribd to solve these problems.
And because if they don't, I still have Audible.

I love Scribd. At the same time, the app is so disappointingly and incredibly glitchy. It’s user experience pales in comparison to Audible. Still, it’s pricing is far more reasonable, and in particular the service model excels for those who appreciate bouncing around between audiobooks.

It is not truly “unlimited” access, since after savings a certain unspecified number of audiobooks, Scribd restricts others as off-limits, or “unavailable” until a given date in the following month.

But Scribd still allows access to far more audiobooks than Audible for a lower price.

Their customer service is consistently disappointing, responding to my regular reports of glitches with the same template recommendations that are unhelpful and neglect the information I initially provide, suggesting for instance that I might not have the latest app or iOS update.

Here are a small sample of glitches I encounter on a weekly, if not daily basis (I am a heavy Scribd user and have been for years):

1) An audiobook abruptly interrupts playback and resets to the beginning. This is perhaps the most common glitch of all, and it occurs without warning and requires the frustrating task of re-finding one’s place in the audiobook. With Audible, re-finding one’s place might not be such a hassle, since Audible conveniently allows users to browse chapters by title, whereas Scribd inconveniently omits chapter titles and only allows navigation by chapter number.

Scribd’s response to this issue? “Try setting bookmarks” (paraphrased).

2) Unlike with Audible, playback in a no- or low-signal environment is nearly impossible, since the app automatically tries to stream data, and freezes on the loading screen. So even if I have saved several audiobooks to my device, I am typically still unable to listen to them on the subway, for instance, since I cannot bypass the loading screen in order to access my library.

3) Recently, every time I open the app, Scribd opens an audiobook that I “unsaved” months ago - it should no longer be in my library. Combined with the previous glitch, this problem is aggravated, since I often must wait several minutes while the app attempts to load/stream this default book that I’m not interested in, before I even have the option to back-navigate to an audiobook I am interested in.

4) Unlike Audible, there is still no option to add notes within an audiobook, or to otherwise label or organize bookmarks.

Overall, Scribd is cheaply priced for the breadth of content it offers - not nearly as much selection as Audible, but better for those who wish to read/listen to several options at the same time. Yet, the app is plagued by one glitch after another, and it’s customer support team is largely incompetent and/or unwilling to provide tangible assistance or technical updates to resolve glitches that have been reported multiple times.

I cancelled my subscription September 2022 & deleted the app. I found out this month that the company continued to charge my credit card even though I was not using the app. Apparently when Apple receives the cancellation & stops the charges, this company continues the charges on their own without any notification of the change to the subscriber. This was my own fault for not checking my credit card, but when I cancel my subscription I expect that to mean I no longer want or use the service & the subscription charges should stop. Wherever the miscommunication is, it needs to be fixed ! Apple can add a note when the user cancels the subscription: GO TO THE COMPANY WEBSITE AND CANCEL YOUR SUSCRIPTION SO YOU WILL NOT CONTINUE TO BE CHARGED & Scribd can notify the customer of the same. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN !

I’m replying to this from Scribd:
“….Hi there. We’re sorry to hear this. Apple subscriptions can only be cancelled through Apple….”

This is exactly what I did as I clearly stated in my review above. I cancelled my subscription & deleted the app, yet Scribd continued to charge me as I also clearly stated above. It’s almost as though this reply was made without actually addressing what I stated in my review. Then the reply went on:
“…Since we cannot charge a cancelled subscription, it sounds as though you might have a duplicate account….”
So, now I was being charged twice a month for the same service ?
Did they check to see if this was the case ?
After speaking to Apple customer support, I called my credit card company to challenge the charges. When I explained what happened, the person I was speaking with said:
“….This is why I stopped using my iPhone, this happens all too often…”

Hi there. We're sorry to hear this. Apple subscriptions can only be canceled through Apple. Since we cannot charge a canceled subscription, it sounds as though you might have a duplicate account. Please write to us using this link so that we can assist further with this: bit.ly/ios-reviewThanks! -RH

Hi there. We're sorry to hear this. Apple subscriptions can only be canceled through Apple. Since we cannot charge a canceled subscription, it sounds as though you might have a duplicate account. Please write to us using this link so that we can assist further with this: bit.ly/ios-reviewThanks! -RH

Hi there. We're sorry to hear this. Apple subscriptions can only be canceled through Apple. Since we cannot charge a canceled subscription, it sounds as though you might have a duplicate account. Please write to us using this link so that we can assist further with this: bit.ly/ios-reviewThanks! -RH

Hi there. We're sorry to hear this. Apple subscriptions can only be canceled through Apple. Since we cannot charge a canceled subscription, it sounds as though you might have a duplicate account. Please write to us using this link so that we can assist further with this: bit.ly/ios-reviewThanks! -RH

First I’ll comment on their actual service: I consume a LOT of audiobooks- I’m a handmade artist in my studio all day long and I listen to audiobooks, not music. I was paying huge amounts to Audible for books and membership. When I came across scribd I was so incredibly happy at the one fee for unlimited books. But it turned out the books I “saved” to listen to as well as their recommendations for what I would like based on what I’ve read were only available for about one week- I wondered why my recommendations kept appearing and disappearing and when I asked, I got a generic answer about title rotation. Their search function is just unusable. There’s no other way to describe it. When your recommendations disappear pretty much the only options you have are open source libri-vox titles that are free elsewhere without subscription. I started saving a bunch of titles to have when my recommendations disappeared so I wouldn’t have to search- but then those would also disappear. I started downloading titles to have when both the recommendations and saved books disappeared- and but those also disappeared. When I asked about this i kept getting generic answers about title rotation. At no point was I told that I had reached the allowable limit of audiobooks (with an “unlimited” subscription) and now have to wait until the next month. Eventually I just gave up and started waiting until the “available” date. When I came to the App Store reviews I was happy beyond belief that this was a major issue across the board AND I got a real answer to my problem- that the service is not actually unlimited. After you listen to the amount allotted the only books you’re allowed are the open source titles. That’s how they offer “unlimited”. This was like a bolt of lightening piece of information. They pretty much disable the audiobook service after you reach your limit to prevent you from finding any other non-open source titles. As others have said, I would happily pay a premium subscription for truly unlimited titles. They should tell you that this is the way the service works up front.

Second- the technical aspect of their app: the app is buggy and unreliable. Sometimes The audio will just stop for no reason and you have to go back in and push play. I have tried to delete the app and reinstall but it hasn’t done anything to fix. It will lose my place in the book and I have to search through the table of contents to find where I was when I stopped last time. It takes forever to load. Once or twice the book has played with no sound.

In conclusion: scribd is a service that gives you 3 audiobooks a month for 9.00, which is still a better deal than audible 2 titles for 22.00 a month. After your 3 books you are given only open source titles to listen to. However the app is buggy and unreliable but I’m hoping for some updates to fix the problems.

The thing is that I LIKE scribd, I only wish they fix these technical issues and be up front with their service.

I have connected with customer service to inform them that while I cannot access audiobooks that I waited a month to get "available" after reading 2, the rest weren't available for another month! Yet a friend who signs up gets access to all of those audiobooks. Customer service has a script of explaining that

"This content availability is specifc to your account and yours alone, so this is why someone who has just signed up for the service has all titles available to them. We consider our service unlimited in that there is always additional content to access, but we are unable to guarantee the immediate availability of all titles"

Which means they throttle what you use the most. I'm disabled and need to use audiobooks, so I'm being discriminated against for this. I've cancelled my service..

As of May 11th my scribd is barely usable! I waited weeks for titles that would be "Available 5/1" only to read TWO BOOKS, before the rest are now not available until 6/1! I was so excited to read a bunch of Steven King books and there was no warning about the books becoming unavailable. The list of unavailable DECREASES when I remove a book from my list. And audiobooks were so easy to read before I saved a bunch. Now it's again only public domain audiobooks.

Unlimited is a LIE! This feels like false advertising and I'm going to keep documenting it. I'm extremely disappointed in this service and am unsure if it's worth it as it's so unpredictable. Even if it's just an change in availability, it's getting ridiculous. No notice? It just happens to always be more desirable titles?! No. At least with audible or Kindle unlimited you know what you're getting.

------previous review--------

I used to sing praises of this app, however recently I noticed that since I've been using it just for audiobooks that slowly the audiobooks disappeared. First, I could search for a book and both ebooks and audiobooks showed up. Even if they didn't have the title other similar titles would pop up. Slowly only ebooks and documents showed up. Then I discovered there were audiobooks but I couldn't find them through search, I had to find the author and view all of their work available on scribd. By the end of the month I can only view audiovox (public domain aka FREE) audiobooks! To me this is either a huge bug or it's clearly throttling that has nothing to do with their licensing. This only upsets me because they claim to be unlimited. If there's a limit I need to know so I can plan accordingly, as even with limits I think the service is worth it. I just want honesty. It loses two stars for this.

I also have a hard time playing audiobooks. It gets stuck "loading" when going to the next chapter. It keeps playing the audio, but it just doesn't seem to be able to track where it is. So, you're not aware this is happening. Then it gets so bad it stops playing audio and you cannot hit pause/skip forward, or exit the book within the app. You have to close the app, which then doesn't update your place in the book and if you try skipping forward to get to where you were, it just gets stuck loading again! It happens with downloaded books too, so it's not my connection. In case it matters, I am using a iPhone XS Max that is updated, as well is the app.

Update: 9/10

I wrote this review two years ago when scribd changed from unlimited to a credit system. It was not worth it to me, especially with the vast selection of audiobooks my library offers through Overdrive. I have received numerous invitations to rejoin, including the one several months ago that the company has gone back to unlimited. I thought I’d give it another chance.

It all worked fine for a couple of months and I honestly didn’t mind the throttling of certain books since there was still plenty for me to choose from. I have saved over 150 titles of audiobooks that I want to listen to eventually, so it was never an issue. Until this last billing cycle after which NONE of my saved books are available until the end of September. Not a one! In addition, every title I search for that I haven’t already saved is unavailable as well. To clarify, I have listened to zero audiobooks since the last billing cycle, yet I cannot access anything that interests me. I am not interested in scribd “suggested for you” free offerings, nor am I interested in paying a monthly subscription for a service that tries to dictate completely what I have access to.

I don’t think I would have a problem with any of it if the developers were honest and transparent with their subscribers regarding how many audiobooks they can listen to during any given billing period without the BS about superusers and having to pay their publishers. If listening to two or three books a month is considered being a super user, then this company should seriously consider redefining the term “unlimited”.

As many other subscribers, I have reached out to scribd via email (no customer service phone line or chat option is available), only to receive patronizing, general responses such as the above mentioned. No one has bothered to answer my specific question why I am not even able to access ONE book that I am interested in this billing cycle. I am not even talking two or three. Absolutely horrible service and unethical bait practices from Scribd. Shameful!

——————————————————-

There isn't very much to add that other members haven't already expressed. Changing the audiobook plan to one book/month is extremely disappointing. Imagine your Netflix subscription changing from unlimited streaming to one movie per month after which you pay for each additional movie you want to see. This is kind of the same concept. You pay a flat monthly subscription to be able to listen to one audiobook. Then, you pay additional $9 for each audiobook you listen to during that month. And you don't even get to own the books! Preposterous!

My son and I enjoyed being able to listen to our own books at night when we went to bed. This as well will no longer be possible.

Like many others have already said, I was not only a loyal customer for over a year, but I also recommended the site to so many people that some were starting to think I was paid to do so... I was also willing to put up with all the bugs and my progress not syncing between devices.

I am beyond disappointed. Starting my free kindle unlimited month today and saying my goodbyes!

Edit: I just checked the unlimited selection. It is laughable! 90% of the books are for toddlers. Didn't expect that from scribd! There is nothing worth listening to on the "thousands of free books rotating each month" list! Ugh!

I’m not sure what went wrong, but all of a sudden this app crashes every time I try to open it on my iPad 2. I would hope that there would be some sort of message if my iPad is too old to keep working, but I also can’t imagine why I shouldn’t still be able to read a book. It isn’t that complex a process. So, I have a number of books downloaded and was excited to dig in and now the app crashes 100% of my attempts.

Prior to that my only observation re function was that sometimes it seemed to get hung up and it would take a minute or more before it would change the page.

The audiobook function works fine on my iPhone 8 and searching the library is pretty user friendly. There are just a few functions that would make it more user friendly.

First, I wish I could “follow” authors that I really like and be notified when any new books by those authors are added.

Second, I love all the recommendations of similar types of books to those I have read. Unfortunately, it doesn’t account for whether I have already read them. I keep books saved even after I’ve read them, and it is frustrating when I look at recommendations and they are all books I’ve already read.

Third, it is possible to organize the books you save and I makes lists of books by author so that I can find them. Otherwise you can filter out finished titles and by type of media, but you cannot sort the saved titles. When adding a title to a list, you must manually go through each list title. The app doesn’t let you know that there is already a list of the same name and I’ve discovered having duplicate lists. You cannot sort the lists either, which makes finding the list you want cumbersome.

Lastly, I was thrilled when this service changed over to unlimited access for a monthly fee. I devour books, usually at least 1-2 books a day, so I plow through a lot of books each month. Even though you cannot get every publication through this service, the selection isn’t bad and new releases do get added in addition to older titles. I was experiencing a lot of frustration that it is no longer unlimited access. A lot of titles now come up as not available until a certain date. This is annoying if I am reading a series and have to pause because the book I want next isn’t accessible for a month, but I was dealing with it. Recently however, books became available on the 20th and by the 22nd I had to wait another month to have access again. My credit card expired and my account was disabled for a few hours. Now all of a sudden nothing is restricted and I used up a huge amount of memory downloading titles just in case they become restricted again before I get a chance to read/listen to them! If the availability of the library flipped over with half of the titles available every other month that would be ok, but only 2 days a month isn’t enough. If that happens again, I may discontinue my membership since there is no point if I cannot access the titles I want. I use digital library services and Scribd is a great supplement to fill in when I have already used the maximum number of titles I can read on Hoopla or a title isn’t available on one of the other apps that my library gives us access to.

For some reason I was paying 5.99/ month and after my account was disabled I'm now paying 8.99. This is a little puzzling, but I’m willing to pay 8.99 as long as I can actually get the unlimited access I thought I was paying for.

First, if you are looking for an audiobook service, beware that the “Unlimited” feature, does not apply here. For popular titles, you are limited to 2-3 per month; then all additional titles indicate that they are “unavailable” until the following month. For the price, the service is still a good value; however, it would be nice if they provided a CLEAR explanation of how this system works. It would also be nice if they offered you the option of purchasing additional audiobook downloads, if you have reached your limit.

The Scribd service (web and app) need a serious overhaul of their search algorithms. Searching for a Book Title or Author is a bit like throwing darts. Some times, you will actually find what you are looking for, but you will often receive results that have absolutely no relation to what you are searching for. Other times, you will be informed that there are no results for your search, yet searching in a different manner will show that the item you are searching for, is available. For instance, if you search for a book title or Author, under audiobooks, you may receive a null result. If you then search “Everything”, listing the Authors name and select the result for that name, as an author; you will suddenly see lists of the books, audiobooks, etc, by that Author. The service desperately needs to rework their search and discovery process. (Something closer you Audible / Amazon)

My final issue is with audiobook download and playback. For years, I have experienced issues; where I have downloaded a book; but the app glitches and looses track of the download, then tries downloading again. At times, it partially downloads a book, then restarts from the beginning and makes multiple attempts. (BEWARE, if you do not have unlimited data, turn off cellular data for this app, or you could see outrageous cellular bills, for going well over your limit). The issue I have with audiobook playback, is that forward / reverse functions are a bit clunky. I often use the 30-second rewind feature, if I missed something, (didn’t clearly hear or distracted by someone/something. Books often end each chapter with something critical, that you may wish to listen to a second time. Unfortunately, the rewind function will only take you back, as far as the start of the current chapter. It will not, go back to the end of the previous chapter. I’ve also experienced issues; where if you rapidly press the 30-second (or whatever duration you set in your preferences) forward or back; at some point, rather than skipping forward/back in your chosen increment, the app begins to move forward / back by entire chapters for each press. You can easily loose track of your location in the book and must spend several minutes, actively searching for where you left off. I tend to listen to books, while driving and use the forward / back buttons on my Apple Watch to navigate within a book; without taking my eyes off of the road. Once the book becomes completely off-track; I’m forced to switch to Radio, until I get somewhere, where I am no longer driving, and can relocate the point, in the book; where I left off.

On a positive note; if you are looking for a source of technical documentation that is often difficult to locate or unavailable to the general public; Scribd is a great source. I have located service and repair manuals for a number of major appliances and outdoor equipment. These have saved me a small fortune, by allowing me to make repairs; without paying for an overpriced Service Technician.

So I have used this app/service on two separate occasions now. Once a few years back and for the past two months now. Both times I have ran into problems and cannot recommend this service at all. From random playback skips in audiobooks after downloading them to my device, to error messages even when streaming audiobooks, to lackluster customer service support, and combined with the very misleading allure of “unlimited”, this app should be a hard pass for anyone who listens to more than two audiobooks a month.

To support my opinions about this service, let me explain what lead me to finally cancel my subscription for the second (and most definitely last) time. I listen to older audiobooks and really wanted to like this service but the first time I tried it out, I kept having audiobooks randomly skip to different spots in different chapters when I had the audiobook downloaded to my device. After contacting customer service over this matter, they really didn’t provide a definitive answer to why this was happening, instead opting to tell me to try streaming the audiobook instead or to try another audiobook instead. This was the first time I cancelled my subscription with them because I really didn’t want to have to stream all my audiobooks.

Flash forward to two months ago and I figured that maybe I’d give this service another go. Perhaps by now they might have fixed the skipping issue. Well, I was wrong as the first audiobook I downloaded skipped all over. Despite this however, I was determined to find a way to enjoy this service. Now having an unlimited data plan, I remembered the streaming suggestion from last time and figured I’d give that a try, and what do you know, it worked...for a little while. About a week or so into my paid subscription period, the audiobook I was listening to started giving me an error message saying that ‘Something went wrong. Please try again later (insert random string of numbers and periods here). So I did just that, I tried again later, and later...and later but kept getting the same error message. After two weeks of getting nothing but this error message and frustrated by this point, I finally wrote to customer service to inform them about this issue. Now, given the crazy times we are living in now, I understand that things might take longer than usual to happen, in this case, customer service getting back to me. Maybe their staffing is limited or they are working remotely and still figuring out things, but I wasn’t expecting to wait more than three whole weeks just to hear back from them because yeah, it took that long to get a reply and they didn’t even address all the points I had inquired about when I wrote to them. I had asked if there was a fix to the error message problem, and had also requested, in all fairness, a refund or partial refund or even an extra month for free seeing as, by this point, I had gone a whole month without being able to listen to my audiobook of choice. The response I got from customer service basically said that the development team was aware of an issue and “good news, a fix would be in the latest update to the app,” and if I had any other issues, let them know. So no reimbursement of any kind. Fine, at least the app was working and I could listen to my audiobook series again. All was well...until I had tried to stream my third audiobook for the new paid subscription month, only to be shown a message saying that “This audiobook will become available on the first day of your next billing cycle.” So after streaming just two audiobooks, I had reached my limit of unlimited listening. Safe to say, this was the final straw that made me cancel my subscription and delete the app for the last time, seriously this time.

Look, if these things don’t bother you and you don’t mind the limitations of this unlimited service, then by all means go for it. The concept of the service is five star worthy, but the reality of what you actually get for your money is one star at best. I would rather use Audible and have to pay more for one audiobook that I get to keep no matter what rather than pay less to be able to stream two audiobooks before having my unlimited service limited due to listening to too many audiobooks.

Dear Scribd team

I have recently noticed that you have been charging me £10.99 monthly, since June 2022 ,apparently for the subscription of your service, that I was unaware of.

1.| would like to know how you have acquired my bank details (since it is the American Express-probably it was not difficult to obtain the access from USA)and why I have not received any notification of any withdrawals, since you have started taking money from my account for about 2 years ago.

Also ,the subscription email has not been verified and log in details has my email only, not a password. How happened that I did not have any password to access your site?(unless it has been crated automatically) and now to submit my complaint your site has requested to create a password and register my email.

By a logic I should have a password and registered email, if I have used your materials, is it not?

2. Why I have not received any notification about renewal of the subscription on the 2nd year, if you decided that I was using your site?

3. Your subscription was not that I have signed for, at all, I have other sources that I use for my job and if I had subscribed your service, how come that i have never used your materials?

4. I have never been made aware of the subscription of your site and it is outrageous that your site automatically entraps a person's bank details and automatically subscribes a person without a persons' authorisation.

5. I am unable to attach my bank statements, since this site does not have such an option, but happy to provide them upon a chance to do so.

6.I understand that my case is not the first occasion and can be observed on the "Trust Pilot" reviews, that confirm unauthorized subscription practise by the Scribd. The latest Trust pilot review by "Mustansar Ali Ghazanfar".

As in the title said, I never heard of this webside neather that I subscribed. I have an account but no Abonnement. And when I look to the payment history there is no charge but on my credit card there is Scribd Schiphol NL.

I don´t know how to cancel because there is no account.

They charge the 8th of every month since november 2022.

I just noticede it.

Hi There

An amount has been deducted of my South African ABSA account.

08 March 2023 Scribd Inc [protected] US 24204293066000899088070 -R 193.69

7 February 2023 SCRIBD INC SCRIBD.COM US 24492153037745191700789 -R 188.19

These payments have been coming off my credit card as far back as August 2022, and I don’t know why as my subscription cancelled in 2019.

Credit card details:

A DOBRONIC

**** **** **** 5013

After confirmation of cancellations, they took off an even bigger amount of my new credit card with a new number!

This is theft!

I will go to the highest authorities to have these amount refunded.

Anneke Dobronic

+27 [protected]

So, I gotta say, Scribd ain't all it's cracked up to be. They call it an "unlimited" subscription, but let me tell you, that's a bunch of baloney. When I first signed up, I was excited to see all the audiobooks they had available. I saved a bunch to my account, thinking I could listen to them whenever I wanted. But after a few days, I noticed that all the ones I hadn't saved said "not available until (DATE)." And wouldn't you know it, that date just happened to be the day of my next payment. So basically, if you don't save a book to your account and listen to it on the day of payment, you're outta luck. And they call that unlimited? Give me a break.

But okay, I figured I could deal with that. I saved all the books I wanted and waited until my next payment to listen to them. Annoying, but whatever. But then, out of nowhere, all the books I had saved became unavailable again until the next payment. What the heck? When I asked customer service about it, they gave me some BS about agreements with publishers. But I call shenanigans on that. It's clearly tied to the payment date, and the books are from all sorts of publishers. I think they're just trying to keep people subscribed for as long as possible.

Look, I'm all for reading and expanding your mind and all that. But if you're gonna promote that stuff, you gotta be upfront about what you're offering. If Scribd just advertised their subscription as it actually is, I'd be cool with it. But they're straight-up lying when they call it unlimited. It's shady, plain and simple.

So, I decided to give Scribd a try with their free membership trial. I thought it might be useful for some research work I was doing. During my trial, I only looked up one book. However, I was informed that if I continued with my account after my free trial ended on November 5th, I would be charged money. Unfortunately, Scribd turned out to be completely useless compared to other sites.

Today is November 5th, 2019, and I just received a message about an hour ago saying that I have been charged INR 636.16 from my debit card for the Scribd membership. I was not asked if I wanted to continue or informed beforehand that this would happen. It would have been nice to receive a warning beforehand. I would have cancelled my membership immediately before the amount was deducted from my account. My money has been deducted from my account without my explicit and express permission.

Despite not using Scribd's services for the paid month that begins today, I have spent the majority of the past hour trying to get a refund by contacting Scribd support. However, every time I press the link to do so, I get a notification telling me that I must verify my account by activating the link Scribd has sent to my registered email account. I was supposed to receive the email within ten minutes, but I have pressed the resend button multiple times and still have not received the link. I even tried changing my email address, but it has been to no avail. I have not used Scribd's services, and I want my money back immediately.

Overall, my experience with Scribd has been frustrating and disappointing. I would not recommend this site to anyone.

I recently had an experience with Scribd that left me feeling frustrated and taken advantage of. Despite canceling my free trial membership in April, I was charged monthly for four months throughout the year. When I reached out to the company, they only agreed to refund the most recent charge and refused to refund the previous three charges, citing their refund policy of not issuing refunds beyond 30 days.

As a consumer, it's frustrating to be wrongfully charged for a service that I did not want or use. It's even more frustrating when the company refuses to take responsibility for their mistake and repay me for the charges. I had to suffer the consequences of their error, which took a significant amount of money from my bank account that I had worked hard to save.

What's even more concerning is that this seems to be a pattern with Scribd. Many other customers have expressed their outrage at the company's unscrupulous practices, and it's disappointing to see that they continue to exploit unsuspecting consumers under the guise of a "free trial."

I provided Scribd with proof that I had canceled my subscription, and yet they still refused to admit their mistake and repay me for the charges. It's frustrating to see a company prioritize their own policies over the needs and concerns of their customers.

Overall, my experience with Scribd was disappointing and frustrating. I hope that they take steps to improve their customer service and policies to prevent this from happening to other consumers in the future.

This website, Scribd, is a total rip-off! They lure you in with a "free trial" but it's all just a big scam to get your credit card details. Once they have that, they'll charge you in a heartbeat and there's nothing you can do about it. It's not a mistake, it's part of their plan to cheat you out of your hard-earned money.

I've read through a bunch of reviews on this site and it's clear that this company is a fraud. They use all sorts of excuses like "technical difficulties" and "duplicate accounts" to justify their charges, but it's all just a bunch of lies. They don't care about their customers at all, they just want to make a quick buck.

If you try to contact them for help, good luck! They don't even bother to take your contact details, so you're left in the dark. And if you email them, they'll just blame Covid for their lack of response. It's ridiculous!

In the end, I had to cancel my credit card to stop them from charging me. It was a huge hassle, but it was worth it to get away from these scammers. And don't believe their "cancel any time" promise - it's a total lie. They make it really difficult to cancel and they'll keep charging you even if you delete your account.

Scribd, I'm writing this review to let you know that I'm not going to let you get away with this. I'm going to gather evidence and report you to every business that works with you. You're a fraudulent company and you don't deserve to be anywhere near PayPal, the Apple app store, or Google Play. Other companies have been kicked out for much less, so it's only a matter of time before you get what's coming to you.

I decided to give Scribd a try after hearing about it from a friend. I signed up for their 30-day free trial in August and was excited to see how many books on my reading list were available on their website. I was intrigued by their *unlimited reading statement, but I knew that there might be some limitations for voracious readers like myself.

During the trial period, I listened to two audiobooks, and to my surprise, I was suddenly labeled as a "voracious reader." This meant that 99% of the books that were originally available to me were now showing as unavailable until after my first billing cycle.

I was disappointed and frustrated by this sudden change. I mean, what's the point of offering unlimited reading if you're going to limit it for someone who only reads two books a month?

To make matters worse, I had a terrible experience with their customer service representative. It took over a week for them to respond to my messages, and even then, they didn't address my actual issue. They canceled my account without my permission and didn't even bother to explain why. When I reached out to them again, they told me that the book I was trying to view wasn't released yet by the author, even though there were already 200+ reviews on Scribd for that book. It was frustrating because I never even mentioned a book title in any of my messages.

I tried to show my representative screenshots of how Scribd showed the books as available on their website, but once I signed up, they were suddenly unavailable until after my billing date. Unfortunately, I never received a response from my representative.

I understand that Scribd needs to limit reading for people who read 50 books a month, but it's not fair to do this to someone who only listened to two books in the previous month. It's almost like going back to the credit system, which defeats the purpose of offering unlimited reading.

Overall, my experience with Scribd was disappointing. I was excited to try it out, but the limitations and poor customer service left a bad taste in my mouth. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wants a truly unlimited reading experience.

I recently signed up for a trial subscription with Scribd, which started on March 6th, 2018 and was set to end on April 5th, 2018. However, on April 5th, I was automatically charged $11.91 CAD without any prior alerts or emails warning me about the renewal. I did not find the service useful, so I decided to cancel my subscription. Unfortunately, I got sick at the end of March and missed the deadline to cancel. Since Scribd did not send any email alerts about the renewal, I missed it completely. It seems like this is what Scribd expects to happen to their customers.

On April 11th, while checking my credit card statement, I noticed the charges from Scribd and immediately cancelled my subscription. I submitted two tickets to Scribd support, ticket #*** and ticket #***. I also tried to reach their support phone number, but I realized that they do not accept any phone calls. They only respond to emails and message posts. I was confused as to why they even provide a phone number if they do not accept calls.

The first person who responded to my ticket marked the case as "solved" without providing any reply or solution. The second person, a lady, replied back saying that they cannot refund my money because I used the service. This makes no sense to me. The trial period was for 30 days with zero charges. Before charging me on April 5th, they did not send any alerts or warnings. Then, when I cancelled my subscription and requested a refund, Scribd did not even bother to return my money. Now, my money is gone.

The fraudulent aspect of this situation is that they are charging me for the next 30-day cycle, even though I cancelled my subscription and they are not returning my money. I am surprised that a company based out of the US is doing this shady business. I request people residing in the US to bring this to the attention of officials so that others do not lose their hard-earned money. This company has no right to say that they cannot refund my money because I used the service. Regardless of whether I used it or not, they are obliged to refund my money.

So, I gotta say, I was pretty disappointed with Scribd. They make it seem like their plan is unlimited, but it's actually super limited. Like, I don't consider blocking access to certain titles as unlimited, you know what I mean? And yeah, they do have a section that's unlimited, but honestly, most of those titles can be found for free on the internet. So why would I bother paying for something that costs nothing?

And get this: for over $100 a year, you only get 24 audiobooks and a handful of books. That's it. And they call that unlimited? Someone needs to buy them a dictionary or something. Plus, they have all these random documents uploaded that are just ads for other stuff. Like, what's the point?

But here's the real kicker: for just 50 bucks, I can join the Brooklyn public library and access their digital collections from anywhere in the US. I can check out 15 items every seven days just from their overdrive collection, which has over 100,000 books alone. And if I want, I can also check out 15 items every seven days from their bibliotheca collection. That's 1560 books a year for just 32 cents a book. And if you live in NY, it's totally free! Plus, they have videos, music, and even a language app called Mango that's free to use.

Honestly, Scribd is way overpriced and overrated. I'm definitely canceling my subscription after this free trial ends. We'll see if they try to pull any funny business come November 18th.

Hey there, have you heard of Scribd? It's a website where you can read books, listen to audiobooks, and even browse through magazines. I recently tried out their service and wanted to share my thoughts with you.

First off, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the cancellation process. It took me a while to find the cancellation page, and even then, it wasn't as straightforward as I thought it would be. I had to click through a few pages before I was finally able to cancel my subscription.

Another issue I had was with canceling through my Apple ID. I use my iPhone to access Scribd, but for some reason, I couldn't cancel my subscription through the app. I had to go to the website and cancel from there.

But where I think Scribd really needs to improve is with their cancellation funnel. I clicked the first "cancel subscription" button and thought I was done, but it turns out there were a few more pages I had to go through before my subscription was actually canceled. It was a bit frustrating, to say the least.

Overall, I think Scribd is a great service, but their cancellation process needs some work. If they could make it easier for customers to cancel their subscriptions, I think they would have a lot more satisfied customers.

I gotta say, Scribd ain't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, they claim to have an unlimited service, but that's just a bunch of hogwash. They only offer a few measly books that are actually unlimited, and the rest are limited to just one or two a month. And don't even get me started on their sneaky tactics to get more money out of you.

I started reading one book and downloaded a few others, but I never got around to reading them. And what do they do? They go ahead and delete them from my device remotely, claiming that certain specific books are temporarily unavailable. Yeah, right. They just want me to pay up again before I can access them.

And get this - they won't even admit to how many books you're limited to. They try to blame it on the publishers, but that's just a load of baloney. My sister can log in and access the books just fine, but because I listened to one audiobook, suddenly I'm limited. It's all a big scam, if you ask me.

And don't even get me started on their violation of the court settlement for blind readers. Their app and website are still unusable, even though they had over a year to fix it. They could easily work with publishers and the NLS to make it accessible, but nope. They just don't care.

So my advice? Don't waste your time or money on Scribd. Cancel your subscription and head to your local library instead. They've got Libby and Overdrive, which are free and actually provide prompt, honest service. Trust me, you'll be much better off.

So, I heard about this website called Scribd and I thought it sounded pretty cool, so I decided to sign up for their 14-day trial. I put all my info in and then went straight to the cancel membership section so I wouldn't forget to cancel before they charged me.

But, when the trial was up, I saw that they had charged me for a whole month of service! I was pretty annoyed and went back to see what happened. Turns out, canceling is a real pain in the butt. When you hit cancel account, it takes you to a page that says "This doesn't have to be the end". I thought that was it and missed the part where you have to confirm the cancellation. Then, it took me to another page trying to convince me to stay with the service. I hit cancel again, but then it took me to a page offering me a 30-day trial. I hit cancel again and it took me to a page asking for feedback. I filled it out and explained that the cancellation process was annoying and that I wanted my money back. I thought that was the end of it, but nope! I was taken to another page with a bunch of buttons trying to get me to stay and one tiny button to finalize the cancellation.

I was pretty mad and wanted to give them a 1-star review, but I decided to be nice and give them 2-stars for a couple of reasons. First, the service itself is actually pretty good. I wanted to try it out because they have a huge library of comic books and I was able to read a ton of graphic novels that I would have had to pay a lot of money for at a store. Second, even though the cancellation process was terrible, they responded to my feedback within an hour and refunded my money.

If you're willing to deal with the annoying cancellation process, I think the service is worth it. But, like a lot of the other reviews on here, there's something sketchy about this company and I don't think I'll be using them again.

I signed up for a one month trial. When my month was up I decided I wanted to continue being a customer. However I noticed there was two charges for $8.99 one from Scribd and one from Apple. I was shocked so I contacted Scribd customer support the only way I could via email. A customer service representative contacted me stating that I had two accounts. The rep said she would be more then happy to refund my credit card and cancel my subscription linked to an actual user name and password. They informed my that Apple didn’t give them refunds and I would need to take my problem up with Apple. I replied saying that I would like to keep the account attached to the user name and password where I could sign in using different devices. I said I would be more then happy to have a refund or even the credits I paid for. The rep replied stating again that they could refund my account but that it would cancel my membership with the user name and password. At this point I was getting upset. Here I was trying to keep the very account the rep was saying I would have to give up not only that but the rep addressed none of my issues or concerns. I again attempted to contact Scribd saying that I wanted to keep the user name and password account and requested that they help me figure out how to do so. I received an email only a couple hours later stating my account was canceled and my credit card would be refund within 3-5day. I was told to contact Apple if I wanted a refund from them. I was left in shock! I can’t believe that a subscription based company has zero customer service and absolutely no live contact.

I just love how Scribd always “circulates their library” after I’ve listened to only a few audiobooks. It absolutely blows my mind how all the books I want to listen to suddenly become unavailable until the 22nd of the month. These books have only been “available” for a week!? My “monthly” subscription was supposed to provide an “unlimited” number of audiobooks to listen to, but after listening to a few, the options slim down greatly to just some low key audiobooks on self help. This is false advertisement, and I DO NOT recommend their service! I cannot recommend their service until this resolve this issue!

EDIT: Hey, Scribd, maybe you haven’t noticed you customers’ complaints, or perhaps you simply don’t care. It certainly feel like the latter, as it seems everyone is complaining about the SAME THING! Just a little business advice: if Everton is complaining about the same thing, then what you’re doing is clearly not working. Try actually fixing the issue rather than giving half-baked excuses that aren’t acceptable. You leave us feeling undervalued and our opinions less than appreciated.

If the books we want to read/hear are only available for one week a month, then create a new subscription that is weekly and at a lower price, so we can subscribe and unsubscribe weekly, so we only have to pay for the week our desired books are available! Because right now, I feel like I’m paying for books that I DON’T want!

LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS BEFORE YOU LOSE THEM ALL!

P.S. I lowered my 2-star rating to 1 because you decided to belittle me rather than try to fix the problem in any way. Doing an awesome job guys!

While there are certainly more big name authors on Scribd than on Kindle Unlimited, the claim of unlimited reading on Scribd is false. I reached my “limit” a week ago. I’ve sent an email to try to get things cleared up, there has been no response yet.
I read voraciously. I bought the membership and happily started reading. Within a week, I had went through 16 books. When I went to read my 17th book, every single book on every single author I searched was “not available until August 28th”. That was a week ago. My unlimited subscription was unlimited for exactly 1 week. Now I can only access audiobooks (which I do not do), or books recommended for me. Which is great, if any of those books were books I wanted to read. Most of those books are available to me, for free, on iBooks.
So, if you only read a couple of books a month, this is probably a good deal. If you are an avid reader, be aware of the “unlimited” false claim. The little “some books may not be available due to your past reading” codicil actually means “every single book and author you search out will be unavailable after a certain number of books a month, after that you will only be able to read the books we want you to read and if you manage to find a new author you like who has a series, you’re only going to be able to read one book in that series and the rest will be unavailable until the month is up”.
It would be nice if these things were clearly spelled out in print somewhere on their site. False claims that result in my money being taken while the company doesn’t hold out on their end of the bargain really sort of piss me off for some reason. Go figure.

Glitches and crashes and lags, oh my!

While this app has an amazing selection of reading media, the function of the app itself leaves much to be desired. Long loading times, even with a strong internet/WiFi connection, cause great frustration, even to the point of my not using the app for months on end because it’s simply not worth it. The features to save a book or add it to a list lag horribly, often taking five minutes after the initial tap to actually complete the action. The app also crashes regularly, especially if the screen is locked soon after starting an audiobook. Playback ceases soon after starting to listen, sometimes even without locking the screen. Books I have saved to a list disappear, remaining saved, but no longer on the list. I have complained about this particular problem before, but the response was extremely rude and condescending, and no effort was made to remedy the issue. Sometimes items will stay on the list, but they generally do not. The app is slow to load anything, actions constantly lag, audiobooks cause it to crash, and its support team has been useless when it comes to fixing any of these issues. Two stars instead of one simply for the media selection, otherwise, don’t bother paying for a subscription. With the functionality of this app, it ought to be free.

Note: I have an iPhone 6. It is possible that Scribd is optimized on newer phones. However, as this only allows those who can afford a newer model to have a smooth experience, the Scribd team needs to optimize their app for all smartphones in general.

Update: my review did not show up in the App Store and no response has been given. Shameful.

I’m on my free month and all the books I were looking for were there. I’m like great finally a Netflix for books...wrong... I’ve saved books because I can listen to a lot of books at work, and I don’t care about the monthly price. Like someone else said, at least tell me how many books can I listen to for the month. I love the mystery series books but as soon as I start the series the rest of the books magically disappear. Some do say available for the next month, but I have a couple I’ve actually downloaded and suppose to listen to next disappear. I can no longer even find the next audiobook in the series when I search for the title, when they were there the day before.

Once I place a author I like in the search engine those are no longer available for another month, but it doesn’t stop me from listening to audiobooks yet. Just the ones that I’ve been interested in listening to.

It’s very frustrating because you get into a book or an author and then u have to wait a month and hopefully u might be able to listen to later.

I thought I was only getting limited options because I was still on the free version, but I’ve read other reviews and it’s not just me.I emailed them advising them to at least end the free version and I’ll pay the monthly fee.

The concept is great and it started off amazing. Wasn’t even sweating the wait for the next month for certain books until it started happening so much.

Please let me know how many books can I really listen to for the month, because not unlimited.

I haven’t had any issues with the app, just the fact that it doesn’t really seem unlimited and books disappearing and u can’t get a real answer why.

Lately, I’ve started to notice there was less of a selection of books available. Which is frustrating because I pay for a subscription so I expect to have books that I’d like to read available. The titles I was seeing were older and under 3 stars. I noticed the app needed to be updated, so I updated it, and went back too find still very few titles available.

I wondered if anyone else was having the same issue. As I started to read the recent reviews I found that once you have read and saved a certain number of books the majority of the “bestseller” or “recent books” would disappear. Now I didn’t realize that I never unsaved a ton of books that I had finished. So I went back and unsaved all of my finished books. After I did that at the top when I clicked browse were tiles that I had saved that had previously disappeared for me. It said those books would be available for me on the 13th (my billing day for my subscription).

Now I can understand to get new books in the app needs to pay for them and so on. With that said when I subscribed to this app it was under the impression that it was unlimited. Now if that changes I feel like you should have given a date that the unlimited service was ending and update your subscribers as to how many books we can read per month.

For anyone reading this that might also be frustrated with this app, I will say library apps have plenty of books/ audiobooks. Although, you do have to wait a few weeks for bestseller and recent releases (which was why I downloaded this app)... Sometimes people return early, so the wait is not as long as you expect, and it’s free! If your going to have to wait for books you might as well wait for free books.

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. It is only briefly explained in the lengthy terms and conditions. Shady!). 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 and to punish users who frequently use the app and listen to multiple audiobooks.

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.