my Kafkaesque experience with Babbel
While learning Polish with Babbel I encountered multiple problems, both regarding to the performance of this app itself and its customer service. First, when I repeat after the audio I always get it right even when I say something completely different; I checked the technical setting and tried speaking loudly and clearly none worked. It seems like this feature is a total joke. Second, there were some words that I spelled wrong in some lessons that never showed up in my review list; I had to restart all the lessons to recall which words I messed up. I felt as though the app wasnt serving me as a facilitator to help my learning process, but more of me as a user to help the app achieve what it is supposed to offer.
The worst part of my experience goes to the unwonted auto renewal feature that apparently cannot be easily turned off in the app setting, and the customer service representatives impatient response to my corresponding issue. Since it wasnt a happy experience in the first month, I stopped using the app hoping that the subscription would expire itself. Later, when I was billed three times for my monthly subscriptions I contacted customer service to request for a refund for the most recent subscription cycle, and instead, the rep wrote back proudly declaring that Babbels autorenewal feature is stated in their terms and conditions if I read carefully. Lol. That, WITHOUT friendly offering to make a refund to my most recent subscription (automatically renewed within 24 hours I wrote my claim email), or even just saying "sorry to hear your experience". All in all, Babbel is definitely not one of those proactive companies, like Duolingo, who genuinely care about user experience enough to strive for revolutionizing the traditional ways of language acquisition. Babbel is only a follower and imitator of such which offers no better app experience and turns out rather exploiting both the consumers "automatically renewed" monthly payments and, most of all, trust.
I first purchased
Yo1anda about
Babbel - Language Learning, v5.3.1