PubbyReviews of pubby.co

The software is buggy—out of every five reviews requested, only three actually appear, and just two show up on the Pubby dashboard - if you expand this out to 10s, it's a big, costly impact. It’s a known bug they keep promising to fix, but this issue has been ongoing for AGES. The customer service is HOPELESS. You can't even recharge your card without involving a person, and responses are slow, generic, and require endless back-and-forth. Their AI detection system is flawed. I've personally handwritten lengthy reviews that still get flagged as AI. Their justification? They don’t want Amazon to flag reviews—but changing a review five times is exactly what would trigger Amazon's alarms. SO DUMB. Don't waste your time building up snaps with Pubby. Go straight to Book Bounty or another provider instead.

Was great during my free trial. Really made me feel like it was beneficial and got me over 15 reviews. As soon as free trial ended and subscription started, I've found it's nearly impossible to get a review. Makes me think they highly promote the books of free trial members to get their money and then just abandon them.

If I could give it negative stars, I would. It's ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE! It was good until it was NOT and they can't solve a single problem.

I have been with Pubby since 2022 and at first was thrilled with the customer service! However, since they have grown it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a response when there is an error ( example I was told I had not made a verified purchase with Amazon of the books I reviewed and lost “snaps”. I have sent screenshots of the emails from Amazon confirming my purchases, I have sent messages through the site - (they don’t work weekends…because “they have a balanced work life”. NOTE/ April 26- Since I submitted my review I did hear from Pubby and my “snaps” were returned- no apologies though!

Aside from the horrible customer service, their platform itself is a rusty bear trap for new and aspiring authors wanting some reviews. Let me tell you why: 1. There is absolutely NO moderation at all. Their platform's economy is based on 'Snaps' - which is like a currency users earn by reviewing and spent to request for reviews. Now, their platform instantly awards Snaps as soon as a user picks up a book to review (regardless if its free, Kindle Unlimited, or Verified Purchase) - they get the Snaps right away. So, in this major loophole, a user can opt to pick the book with the highest Snaps (like one with a verified purchase) - spend the snaps as soon as they can, then just screw around without consequence - like giving generic AI generated reviews which eventually gets removed by Amazon, NOT READING the book at all and giving low scores, and the worst is picking up either KU or Verified Purchase, without even purchasing or reading via KU. You see, there is nothing that prevents these users to abuse the system which is designed to just milk subscribers and waste money & their time. 2. I'd like to repeat again - Horrible Customer service. I'm not sure if these people are even real or have any proper training. The response time is waaay too long and the response they give you is as bland as a flavourless limp pasta soaked in water for hours. They never get your issues fixed, they just waste your time and money. They don't even care if they lose subscribers. (I feel sorry for the owner). Now, the owner sometimes respond themselves, which can give a more fruitful answer - but given the huge number of customer complaints, I doubt she can answer them all. 3. Subscription trap - so if you finally get pissed off enough to cancel your subscription, you are still entitled and owed the service you paid for the month before. With their Snap based economy, only subscribed users can request reviews and report. Once you cancel the subscription, everything else goes - even the ones that you have already paid for. So, this means you will have to pay them constantly to try and chase for your reviews or response. Also, if you opt to activate the Verified Purchase feature, you'll have to pay them an additional $14 - but with the first issue above, you'll just waste your money and time posting reviews up for Verified Purchase only to get picked up by those nasty users who abuse the heavily flawed system. Meaning, they waste your time, your money, and the VP review request because they don't even purchase it nor read it. So, as most of the other people here have already said, Proceed with Caution, and be ready to be disappointed. I am still hoping they can fix the issues - Pubby does have potential and is a little better than some of their competition.

Pubby was great when it first started. However, over the last few months, they have become nearly impossible to communicate with and take forever to find readers. As of today, my previous four reviews have been rejected by Amazon with no recourse for the reviewer - just the message that Amazon is no longer accepting reviews from this account. Poor communication from Pubby is the biggest issue - even though subscribers received a nice mea culpa from one of its founders a few weeks ago, the situation is just as bad.

If you use Pubby, you put yourself at risk with Amazon. And if your review is coming from Pubby (because you clicked on the button that says "post your review" there is a good chance Amazon will flag it. Pubby is about authors reviewing authors, which, if you read Åmazon's guidelines, they are against review swapping. Pubby has a way around this that works for now, but that is still what it is. Be warned.

I have two weeks trying to find readers for my book with no luck. Contacted them and they didn't help. They replied back after aprox 5 days and were talking about taking them 5-6 hours to find a reader but completely ignoring me and the part where I said that I have two weeks trying to find readers and still couldn't find any. They also completely ignored the part where I said that I want a refund!! Pubby is definately a SCAM! Please AVOID!