Back in 2020, I reviewed Audible and gave my perspective as a bookworm using the platform. This year, I decided to try Scribd after seeing good reviews. You can read my 2020 review of Audible here. I was looking to get back into audiobooks and having already tried, and fallen out of love with Audible, Scribd seemed like the next logical platform for me to try. I had a free trial for two months from July to September and this is my experience using it.
Please note that this is coming from a UK experience and the experience in different countries may be different. These are also just my opinions and experiences.
Why I got my account?
As I've already mentioned, I wanted to get back into audiobooks. I liked listening to them when I was walking or commuting somewhere. I had decided that I wanted to read the Complete Sherlock Holmes and thought an audiobook version would help me. I used a BookTuber's link to get a two month free trial, rather than the typical one month free trial. This lasted from mid July to mid September 2021.
Pros and Cons
I'm going to try and not compare the two platforms too much, but my first point is a comparison. I loved that you could listen to as many audiobooks as you wanted in a month on Scribd. You could also read eBooks, magazines and sheet music. Essentially you paid £9.99 a month to have access to all of this, which sounded like a pretty good deal. A few reviews I had read said that they listened to multiple audiobooks a month and read loads of eBooks. It really is good value for money.
Let's talk about price. I think that £9.99 is the most I'd want to pay for a monthly subscription to a platform like this. During my time using Scribd, I was using a free trial and I now wish I'd made more of it. I only listened to about 10% of my audiobook and would have loved to have tried more elements of the platform. I would say that £9.99 for all of this is actually pretty decent and I wouldn't mind paying that each month.
However, this is where my nice things to say about Scribd runs out. My free trial was coming to an end and I needed to update my payment information, as I was quite happy to continue my Scribd account. This is where I encountered problems. It wouldn't accept my card details, despite them being correct. I then went looking on their website and there was no way of getting in contact with anyone via email or messaging. As it is an American company and I am based in the UK, phoning them or visiting their offices was completely out of the question. I tweeted them through their help account, but it hadn't been used in months.
This is when I decided to look at reviews of the Scribd UK company and it had nothing but negative reviews. Most of them were issues with payment like mine, saying that they couldn't cancel their accounts. There were a lot of comments like this and seeing the responses from Scribd made me less inclined to continue my account. I decided to cancel my membership, partly due to my payment issues and partly due to these reviews putting me off the platform.
I was really disappointed when this happened as if it wasn't for this, I imagine I would be writing glowing reviews and continuing to use them. I had had no problems up until this point.
Is it worth it?
I think it comes down to where you are based in the world. For me personally, I found the selection and potential great. The customer service was abysmal, especially for a UK customer, where it seemed not to exist at all. I would have to give Scribd a 3/5 stars and like Audible, have decided it's not worth my time or my money. This is sad as I can't find any audiobook companies as good as Scribd in the UK for an affordable price.
That concludes my review of Scribd. What was your experience using Scribd? I hope this helped.
