Vocal Reviews 

Pathetic. I submitted a piece, and it was arbitrarily placed into a category that DOES NOT EXIST AND IS NOT ACCESSIBLE! So I have had friends try to search for it specifically, with no luck ... how on Earth does anyone ever read what you write? I feel as though if the piece is not PC enough, and doesn't appeal to SJW's, they sweep it under the rug and make it impossible to access. Meanwhile they showcase Youtube channels and writing that is frankly so amateurish and full of virtue-signalling that it is rendered unreadable to any discerning adult. For this utter rubbish they want you to subscribe for more than a Netflix account would cost you? A totally demoralizing experience - avoid it like the plague!

The contests are a complete joke. They pick ridiculous winners with entries riddled with spelling errors, and one winner didn't even abide by the word count. It's a giant waste of time and they clearly don't have the manpower to read every submission so they select winners at random... or have some poorly formulated algorithm do it...it's unreal.

If they truly selected the winners, they have no grasp of writing mechanics. I'd also suggest they give one or two sentences on why they are giving that piece thousands of dollars.

This is not the website for you if you're trying to make money for your writing.
Personally for me it is the site for me, for now. Especially after they work out their kinks. I'm not trying to make money from writing just was looking for an easy platform to submit and share. And other established platforms seemed too instagramy for me. Vocal is relatively new and still has heart. I can understand people's frustration, it seems to be in its early developmental stage.

An issue they have is that there isn't an edit feature (edit: they introduced one today for paid members).

The stats are all also delayed by 42 hours.
I think they would benefit from some sort of community communication. I can understand why they don't allow people to comment etc. But even a feature like allowing other writers to have a column on their profile of favorite stories (from the website) would be beneficial.

At the moment it's just write publish and that's it.

They do have staff picks. But that is problematic within itself cause it would be inherently bias cause it's coming from a limited source of people.
It's okay and vocal media does have potential, sticking to it for now :)

May be good vocals but nothing is catchy- not a great selection - for my taste i wont find a hit.
For my taste overpriced - rather stay with SoundBetter

All I wanted to do was change my password, and so I clicked that link. No reset link ever arrived at my email regardless of repeated requests. Very frustrated.

Encouraged by a friend to try this way of generating income from my writing, I got as far as halfway writing my bio, in setting up my account when it froze - then emailed Help Desk ditto.

After a day or so, got a reply they're ready to help! What browser are you using? OMG, I think, this is going to take forever. So I tried logging in, reloading, refreshing over another 3 days and decided to close my account, start again.

THAT's where you'll discover your powerlessness. There was NOTHING on how to delete your account (only how to delete a Stripe account).

I googled, how to delete Vocal Media account? And saw how impossible it is. I then copy/pasted the T&Cs onto Word, searched 'account' and 'delete' - and found the words "You can delete your account any time"... with no instructions how to do so. *red flag*

I resorted to going to my profile and renaming it 'THIS PERSON WANTS TO DELETE THEIR ACCOUNT BUT IS FINDING THAT VERY DIFFICULT, SO THIS PERSON SAYS THEY ARE UNDER 13YO AND VOCAL SHOULD EXERCISE THEIR AUTHORITY AND DELETE IT FOR THEM - or something like that.

I then changed my email address to their email address, and on saving that, saw an email was sent there (for them to confirm "updated email"), changed it back to my email, and back to vocal a few times so they will receive a few emails that "You've updated your email addres..." and hopefully by some obscure method they'll be led to help me delete my account, by deleting it themselves.

Wow, am DEFINITELY glad I didn't get into business with them.

Oh - and I couldn't simply delete my profile photo, only had the choice to change it with another photo, so had to choose a random photo so as my own photo is in no way attached to Vocal Media and thus professionally embarrassed by my halfwritten bio.

Vocal Media is irresponsible in handling customer complaints. There is no way to reach them. Emails, calls, and reviews like this are all consistently ignored.

I had hundreds of thousand of reads, I made some money, they take a long time to send the money when you request cash out but they’ve never not paid me. They began censoring my investigative articles once they became bigger. They used a legitimate photo as an excuse to take down an article on an associate of Jeffrey Epstein which was all well sourced and full of evidence. They used one of my articles to promote how to make money on their site but I didn’t make that much. You still have to do all the marketing and promotion, they don’t even check grammar and spelling. It’s pretty obviously an attempt to flood social media platforms with average “safe” content. It is not good for journalists and people investigating corruption.

I was really hoping that they would be better, but they failed.

Horrible! Don't bother with them. They had a discount trial for three months (half off) which they never credited me. When I emailed them to inform them of the mistake they said there was nothing they could do... didn't even bother to give me the credit for future months. I reported the error right away when I was charged the full price after the first month's. After a few months I really didn't have time to write and was sour I couldn't even get the discounted deal so I canceled. Did they repect the cancelation....NOPE! THEY CONTINUED TO BILL ME TIL I CHANGED MY CREDIT CARD!
NOW I HAVE TO GO THROUGH ALL MY AUTOMATIC PAYMENTS WITH ALL MY OTHER BILLS TO UPDARE MY NEW CARD just so I don't have to worry about them not taking my money! don't bother with this company!!!!

Well, I signed up using my phone initially. I then tried to sign in to my account on my laptop. That didn't work. Via my phone the email has been confirmed and the first month of V+ has been paid for but on my laptop it recognizes me as a different user. I've contacted help from Vocal but so far all I've received is a letter saying they received the letter about my issue and will get to as soon as possible. I stated I was trying to enter a contest that deadlines today. So far nothing. I have the story uploaded on my laptop identity, hoping the two had been merged (which doesn't seem to be such a big problem to fix) but nope. I was hoping then pull up the file on my phone and submit it. Nope. I even submitted my own photo on the story (they require some form of artwork with the stories). Frustrating.

They only read submissions from people with large followings, who are able to bring attention to the platform.
If you are a enticed by their promises of prizes for your unique writing, do not bother laying for the subscription. They will not consider your submission unless you can show thousands of "engagements."
Save your money and post it on Facebook.

Paid for the first month to use and can't get into my account anymore. It just says there's an error when I try to sign in. Glad I canceled my Vocal + membership before I cleared my cache since I can't get back into it now. Horrible site.

Concept is great but the website DOES NOT WORK. Not sure if it's a problem on a laptop or PC but as i don't have one, who knows!

I really wanted to like and trust them. Don't be fooled.

When I first heard about Vocal I was excited. I should have read reviews prior to signing up. My first story was approved no problem, same with a poem. But there's too many issues with this site and the legitimacy of it.

For one I've used Stripe in the past and it was a nightmare. I catered an event was paid through Stripe who in return held onto my money for a week because they needed to verify my business. This isn't stated prior to signing up. A whole week, I had to buy materials with my own money instead of my business money. The worst. So that's the payment issue and one of the reasons I don't trust the site. Bc why not PayPal???

Anyway, my next issue is I submitted for a contest and my poem was approved or so I thought. I saw that my poem had published but they suppressed my artwork. My artwork wasn't inappropriate in anyway and if it was this should have been told to me and not approved. I could see the picture on the thumbnail but once you clicked the poem to read it won't appear. I emailed three times asking if this issue was on my part or theirs. Its been about 5 days and still no response. At this point I rather just keep hustling and making it happen for myself bc this site is shady.

You can't delete your stories which makes no sense being that it's your work. You can't delete your account which again makes no sense because you have the right to decide what you do and do not want to participate in. You can't make edits without having to contact them to delete your story entirely. It's a mess. A mess. Oh and lastly, you can't upload any sized piece of cover art, it has to be 500 x 500 and you HAVE to have cover art. It's just dumb. I can't anymore.

SO beware and good luck!

Clumsy formatting for stories. Evidently they absolutely hate short short poetry/stories. In order to publish, you must pad out the story to an arbitrary length. ALL stories are double-spaced including poetry.

To delete a story or your account you have to jump through hoops. VOCAL Media has all the markings of a scam. I regret ever having anything to with them, and I regret being swindled out of $99 for an account that is so @#$%^ useless.

This website charged me $9.99 when they advertised my promotional rate for the first month of my vocal+ account would be $1

Then when I tried to access my account, the system wouldn't let me in

I submitted support requests after which they didn't offer any indication that they received or even cared about my issue. No auto reply or anything

All I wanted to do was enter a competition and they made it the most difficult issue in the world

Okay.... I joined for the challenge the Little Black Book. Was shocked at the entry that ACTUALLY WON....eh? Sorry to the writer, but I read at least a dozen other writers pen a better one. Seems rigged. Second, I wrote a story that had an afterlife in it. Short story of a dog. No mention of god, or religion... it was philosophical. I am not religious myself, so there WAS NO AGENDA. They rejected it on the grounds of RELIGION....which is not at all the case... THIS OFFENDED ME... completely. BESIDES, even if I was, there was nothing about what religion, or faith... Afterlife belief does not require a faith in a certain religion. So their stance forced my hand to back out of using them as a platform. In fact, I wish I never used them in the first place.... I was irritated that they pushed odd types of writers for strange reason, charged the CREATORS!!!!!!!! like.......what? THIS IS THE MOST BACKWARDS PLATFORM I HAVE EVER SEEN. I have had less readers and made more money on Medium.... BETTER AT MEDIUM

This website is a complete scam! Oo pay for vocal+ You’ll earn more money off reads and can access more challenges.

That’s complete crap! They take your money and you don’t get it back! (I paid for a years worth of vocal+) Those so called challenges don’t waste your time. Their bias opinions always go towards what got the most attention (that’s all they care about).

Those so called tips. Good luck you’ll have better luck winning the lottery. Getting paid because people read it- half a penny per read. Great unless the website decides to stop tracking your reads!

However if you already have a well established blog. Got for it. If you’re an unknown writer like me. Find a different website

AVOID. For a writing platform they are not only opposed to Freedom of Speech but they are actively opposed to any material from the political and religious Centre-to-Right while actively promote material written in favour of Communism and Marxism (political systems that have seen the active government sanctioned systematic genocide of millions) - for context I am Liberal, and my posted topic on the concept of an afterlife was repeatedly put into “Fantasy” as they don’t accept views that promote any form of faith, while not religious myself this is extremely troubling as a stance.

They also REFUSE to delete your banking information, REFUSE to delete your account, REFUSE to delete your (owned) posted work.

If this platform was around any earlier then great works such as 1984, The Lord of the Rings, Dune, Anna Karenina, the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe... all of these books, works and authors would have been banned from the site for being offensive (this might sound like an over-exaggeration but I PROMISE this is the case).

AVOID AT ALL F@CKING COST. Excuse me while I try threatening them with legal action if they continue to refuse to delete my banking information (a LEGAL requirement).

I do not know what is going on, either Facebook is blocking reactions to my poem "Once There Was a Rose" from my friends and other viewers, or it is Vocal blocking access to viewers in reading my poem. I notified Vocal about first placing my poem within the wrong community. After speaking with Heather, the poem was then placed into the poetry community. However, after posting to Facebook and Instagram on seven different occasions, I have been told that when (several individuals) someone tries to open the site it says "Page Not Found." I have accused Facebook of purposely blocking my poem from an audience, and Facebook has chosen to ignore my accusations. In order to see if what I had expressed was incorrect, I placed my poem "Once There Was a Rose" into my Facebook website page ExpoCorruption (Direct reading of the poem) to acquire readers and exposure. Although Facebook shows that the poem has reached approximately 245 people as of March 4, 2021, it also shows only one (1) reaction and seven (7) likes. I know better, and it is either Facebook, Vocal or both who is trying to keep this poem from acquiring any type of positive or negative reactions. Since I am not personally known to, or by Facebook or Vocal for such (as stated above) to be occurring. I have to believe that the issue is of another origin, and that origin have to be the color of my skin. Now prove me wrong, and stop blocking my written work, because I did not submit my poem to earn money from Vocal.