Otter.aiReviews of otter.ai

the customer service sucks !! they do not have a phone number to contact them and had canceled my account but they still debited subscriptions and there is no way I cant get assistance !!! its pathetic !!

Simply never worked. Appears to be user friendly but confusing once you hit record. Totally worthless.

I've been an Otter customer for 5 years, and they've been deliberately making the product worse to force people into higher packages. It used to take me just a keystroke or two to delete a file, they literally changed the interface so it takes a bunch of keystrokes to delete each file ... unless you upgrade to a higher level package where deleting files is easy. The Pro package offers 1200 minutes, but only 10 imports of max 90 minutes each, so they basically don't let you use what you bought. And this thing with restricting imports didn't used to be an issue with the package before, it's like they keep reducing functionality to force you to switch. The editing function, which didn't work well before, has been made even more difficult to use. I gave them a pass on these things in the early days when it was new, but not after 5 years, when they invested money to degrade the program instead of upgrading it. Once you're on this, it's hard to get off, because files have to be downloaded one at a time, and they've made it so it takes many clicks to do that too. And they intrusively jump onto your Zoom meetings without your permission - it's been super-creepy. I went from loving this program to feeling so bothered by it that I wanted to write this review. I just wouldn't recommend the program at all anymore. I don't see a competitor at the moment to replace this yet, but I'll jump as soon as I do

the platform is buggy and doesnt work, they pricing structure is a joke and when you cancel, they still charge you and don't respond to emails. absolute scam.

Otter's transcription is quite good but the customer service is among the worst I've encountered. If you have any problem at all, it might take their tech support weeks to resolve it. I recorded an interview for a deadline article; the recording began to stall during the interview. It appeared to transcribe fairly well but the man was soft spoken so I needed to listen. It skipped and stuttered so badly I couldn't make sense of it. Instead of helping, Otter tech support deleted the recording and the transcript then made promises to restore it. They suggested I re-interview my subject. Then silence. Nothing. No new transcript, not even the bad recording to try to go off of. Just crickets despite my pleas to give me at least the bad transcription. So I ate my pride and told my high-profile subject I needed to conduct my interview all over again. The upshot: No one should have to pay for a subscription and then do this, but make a backup recording for your important conversations or you might find yourself screwed by Otter.ai. Or, find another service with better customer support.

I don't remember signing up for Otter.ai and all of a sudden every meeting I was a part of was recorded and I did not understand how to turn this off. The participants were VERY offended and this software made me look bad in multiple different meetings. The downside far outweighed the features.

As someone who interviews people regularly as part of their job, it's extremely frustrating having to rely on a piece of software that consistently falls short and never seems to be improved upon. The accuracy is consistently hit and miss, with the NLP (typically) being better at US accents than UK or others. Punctuation seems to always appear in the wrong places, and it will give you multiple different translations of acronyms within a single transcription. The highlight feature is basically broken: you will be led to believe that you are highlighting just the bits you need, only to later realise that Otter has decided to highlight an entire section, meaning you have to then unhighlight everything and do it again (if it allows you to unhighlight, that is - sometimes the unhighlight option doesn't appear and you end up adding multiple layers of highlight to the same section, which you then have to manually delete in the summary box.) If there was any indication that Otter cares about its issues and is actively attempting to improve its product, it certainly isn't making that clear. Unless things change drastically, I'll be looking for an alternative option when it comes time to renew my subscription.

I tested quite a few transcriptions apps before I went with Otter.ai. It had some good features such as links with the audio file, but otherwise pretty similar to other apps and a little bit frustrating if your speaker has an accent. I was promoting it to a friend and accidentally added her as a team member. I was immediately charged for a new team member, despite deleting the additionally team member. At not point was I advised that there would be an additional charged, nor was the charge approved by me. I have asked Otter.ai three times for a refund, and basically get no response at all. This is very disappointing, and means I would probably not recommend this product, as there are other equally good apps out there. In addition most other software companies have better policies regarding refunds.