Another instance of Make Orwell Fiction Again.
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was a purchase I made in 2020 or 2021. It was purchased with gift card money; my mom’s boyfriend bought me 12 credits worth of an Audible subscription for Christmas. I registered the code, and used the gift card / subscription to purchase this book.
I listened to the book in 2021:
It’s there in the middle:
That 12 hours left text is an artifact of hitting the Start button again, after having listened to it once.
John Perkins wrote this autobiography. He says his job was to convince leaders of underdeveloped countries to partner with USAID (an alleged CIA front) to take on huge loans for development. And if the leaders (or newly elected leaders) don’t go along, they might happen to die in airplane accidents….
This book is particularly annoying to certain really corrupt people in government. It is not surprising that it would end up on Big Brother’s to-be-memoryholed list.
So, I’d paid for it, downloaded it, and listened to it. But many months ago, I noticed that in my Audible app, it switched to “Unavailable.”
Today, I reached out to Audible support, and their story is that the book was moved to Plus Catalog. By moving it to Plus Catalog, they also got to remove it from my library.
If I want to listen to it, I’m going to have to buy it again.
Thieves.
That’s how I reconcile their web page saying:
Can I keep titles marked as “Buy for $0.00”?
Yes. When you select Buy for $0.00, the title is yours to keep forever.
versus their customer support rep telling me that they have moved the title to another category, and I’ll have to purchase it again if I want to listen to it again.
And now, what is particularly Orwellian, is that within the the Audible web page of my list of titles I own, The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man has disappeared. I foolishly didn’t take a screenshot of it in there before reaching out to Audible support. But when I did the chat session with the Audible customer support rep, he went ahead and updated my account to make it align with Big Brother’s view. I asked him about that, and he blamed it on automated systems.
Either way, I cancelled my membership. Why would I continue to do business with a company that abuses me by taking my money and then deciding they can change the deal?