codyhanson.com

I’ve made probably a half-dozen purchases from Audible.com. In the past, I’d often buy some This American Life episodes or an audio book before a long car trip, since they really help the hours and miles go by. I was never enthralled with the service. The downloading mechanisms were clunky, the DRM‘ed audio was annoying, and the prices seemed exorbitant.

A year or so ago I got a Griffin RadioShark, which, though an oft-maligned product, has worked great for me. I now record This American Life, On The Media, The Splendid Table and Kevin Beacham’s Redefinition Radio every week for free in glorious DRM-free mp3 files, and have more than enough road trip audio.

As a result of using the RadioShark, I haven’t used Audible.com in a while. As of today, I never will again. I got a call this morning on my cell phone from a telemarketer trying to sell me an annual membership to Audible. I was shocked. By definition Audible customers are tech-savvy enough that email ought to be their default marketing tool. Seems to me that in this post-Do Not Call List era that telemarketing is a realm reserved for the desperate or fradulent, because the odds of alienating customers are just too high.