I bought a sub a year ago because there was a good deal ($5/mo for 6 months or something). Now I have a pile of credits and a recurring monthly charge. Yeah, I knew what I was getting into, but it's annoying all the same.
I've had a subscription for a while and it has helped me read more books but this cancellation policy is absolutely bonkers. They really are actively trying to hurt and squeeze the customer more than any other service I've used. I downgraded my subscription (to stop receiving credits) but I'm still having trouble using the credits I did build up. As soon as I'm done I'll be cancelling forever.
Personally, I have no trouble buying on average one book per month. I think that the ability to accumulate credits offers quite a lot of flexibility. Instead of being forced to buy one book every month, I can opt not to buy a book this month, but instead buy two books next month.
Although it is annoying that you lose all your credits if you cancel, there are plenty of books to spend them on. And I don't think it's entirely reasonable for Audible to hold on to your credits for eternity – since you could redeem them at any point, they'd have to keep a pot of money sitting around for paying rights holders. Imagine if something happened and a huge amount of people decided to redeem all their credits all at once – without a huge amount of cash set aside, Audible could have trouble fulfilling all those orders.
So I think the pricing system isn't so bad, but the DRM situation is very disappointing.
Credits or vouchers are not a new thing. Common schemes are limited duration, buying when you need them (possibly with bulk discount) instead of every month or buying every month but automatically stopping if you still have 10 stocked up (e.g. pop-up for phone's) or returning/selling unused vouchers for X%, ...
Given all these options available offering "nothing at all" seems not that reasonable.
Their cheapest plan in the cancelation flow is "Switch to a credit every other month for $8.50/mo" which doesn't show a title in the UI but sounds like the "silver plan" from [1].
It's clearly so that people like me who save credits and only use them on $22+ books have no idea what a book actually costs without looking them up. I buy anything under $12-15 with cash since credits are basically $12, at least in the 3 credit bundle.
Jokes on them though, now I buy even less books and stick to my unread library more nowadays.
Audiobooks used to cost like $30-$40 each, at least. With Audible, I pay a monthly fee and get access to books at $10 each. They also routinely have deals selling books for $10, or 2-for-1 deals, etc. The difference in price is huge and a no-brainer if you read a lot of books.
Note: I actually do the year-subscription plan, in which you get 24 credits for the cheapest price, to spend during that year. Buying extra credits will give them to you at that low price as well.
The dig comes if you decide you have too many credits cached. Perhaps because you can't get through one audiobook a month. If you cancel a subscription for an account with remaining credits, you'll lose all your credits. Your choice is to either spend them all at once or keep your account active and keep paying the monthly fee while hoping to eventually pay down the credit debt enough to cancel.
The only thing that's compared in my experience is for Adobe Stock.