I've rec'd several audio books lately that have at least one non-playable tape in the set.  So annoying! Can there be anything worse than listening to a great mystery (PD James, Mystery Room) and right in the middle you discover that tape 2 is broken?  Quelle bummer.  The other 6 tapes played OK...but I disliked missing those chapters.

It would be very helpful if folks sending audio books would check the tapes /CD before posting them.  It certainly would save us road warriors a lot of aggravation and tape swaping. 

Merci

Broken - as in severed? Or as hearing gobbledygook instead of narration?  The former can be solved by splicing together the ends of the broken pieces with scotch tape; a pain, and agreed you shouldn't have to do it, but it has helped me out when audio library books have snapped. Not much you can do about the latter, although if the tape is "jammed" and won't play at all at a point, you can take the housing apart to free it (usually).

That happened to me too.  I went to put in a tape, middle of the book, and it wasnt working.  When I took it out of the player,  it was all twisted so i figured that maybe it was just that part.  So I put a pencil in the hole thing and turned it, only to discover it was completely off the reel.  GRRRR.

Other than spending way too long listening to a CD book I don't want to hear, or buying a tape deck and doing the same thing with a tape audio book, is there any way to check?

I'm always hesistant to post them, because I haven't figured out how to tell if the tape is bad, other than visual inspection, which seems limited.

I buy them at thrift shops, but prefer reading to listening so I never pre-listen.  If one of the audio books I sent was bad though, I would not hesitate to return the credits if the receiver told me.  Did you try asking for your credits back?

Audio books are harder to determine condition, i.e. playability.

Even when I've listened to an audio book before posting it, it's a real possibility that the book won't play as well on another machine.  It's particularly bad with CDs, as I can find a CD won't play well on one CD player in my house and play just fine on another.  With tapes, my car tape player can handle some tapes that my home tape player can't play legibly. 

Like Patti, the best I can do is be very open to returning a credit if it doesn't play well for the requestor.  That hasn't happened to me yet on PBS. ***knocking on wood.*

Karen