Contact Blinkist Support

I thought I’d give this 7 day free period a go and see why it was about. I unfortunately had to leave town and got busy that week and didn’t get a chance to really look into it. I had it scheduled in my diary that day to cancel the renewal but arrived home a few hours too late it seems. As soon as the week expired I got charged $100 and put on an annual plan. No more than 2 hours after this happened, I contacted Blinkist and asked for a refund as I simply hadn’t seen that I’d be signed up for a $100 annual plan if I missed the cancel date. Most of these kinds of apps are monthly at worst and I would have swallowed the monthly fee If I’d missed the cancel date. They told me that they couldn’t do anything and suggested I try iTunes. I’ve contacted iTunes 3 times now and have not had one real response other than an auto response stating it’s not available for refund. I’m furious as I simply can’t afford it right now and you should always have a window after payment for something that as it’s simply a use as you go type of arrangement. Now I don’t even want to use it because it’s left such a bad taste in my mouth. If it’s such a great product, then they shouldn’t have to prey on those that forget to cancel their trial on time to then charge them $100. Pretty unhappy.

Edit: also, the people they have summarizing the books have a problem with keeping their own personal opinions out of the summary, which begs the question as to what else they might be adding or removing to these. I’ve changed my review to 1 star due to this because I’d really rather just read the actual book and know the author’s actual thoughts than be preached to by a second-hand source. I decided to try this since I’ve been hearing about it everywhere right now. Unfortunately, I don’t have the money for a subscription right now so I’ll have to make due with the one free that’s unlocked daily. The only problem I have is that if you add the daily free blink to your library under a free account there’s no way to delete it the next day because it goes back to being just another premium locked into your library. This makes it really hard to want to stay with this service if you can’t remove things after a lapsed payment since these short form “blinks” could really start to clutter up after awhile. Having a delete option, even if the blink is currently locked due to no being a subscriber, would be a nice improvement. Without it, I’m not actually sure I will continue using this, or even suggest that others use this service.

First, the way each book is summarized is incredibly boring—even for books with engaging and funny prose. Each summary is written and read without mimicking the original author’s style or voice. It’s as if Blinkist is trying to shorten every book into an excerpt from a second rate dictionary. The “audio” option Blinkist provides makes this even worst. Each Blinkist summary is read in a monotone voice , with little to no inflection, and absolutely no enthusiasm. I thought that maybe—just maybe—I had just been choosing each Blinkist summary poorly, and decided to stay past the trial to find out. Horrible decision. Each summary is written in such a monotone and uniform fashion, I have to force myself to finish a minute-long summary. Second, the audio only works if you have the Blinkist app open—no scrolling through other feeds or doing anything else. When I decided to finally cancel my subscription for the following month, I realized my fatal mistake. Although Blinkist advertises their monthly subscription, with the trial, you will automatically be charged for their YEARLY subscription. Even the company has no hope that their content is enough to keep customers coming back month to month.