For Christmas, my husband got me a satellite radio for my car. I had a super old system and this one would replace my old unit and could be docked in my car. Sweet!
Sweet until I got scammed by the subscription department at Sirius XM when I tried to activate my account.
I waited forever to put the unit in my car and set up service, but when I finally did, I was shocked to learn that they wanted over $200 for a yearly subscription to all their available channels. I have never been a fan of paying for radio, especially since my husband works in terrestrial radio and I have the luxuries of Pandora, Spotify and my iPod, but I was willing to pay a few extra bucks a month for commercial-free tunes geared towards my musical preferences.
Sirius/XM was never terribly reliable. It would lose its signal randomly and stations replayed the same songs within an hour or two of each other. Yet, even with these annoyances, I liked the idea of listening to the all 90s channel on my way to work or writing to the tunes of Coffeehouse. That was until I found I would be paying twice as much as other customers.
My neighbor told me he paid $94 a year for his premium service . My mom pays a mere $84 annually for the same plan. When I called, over a holiday weekend, they wanted about $230 for 12 months which included taxes and applicable service fees. Fuck that!
I told the customer service reps that I knew people were getting the same plan at a significantly lower cost. They proceeded to tell me that there were no promotions and to try back again. I did that, and again, no specials. I was baffled. How could they keep telling me to sign up and call for new deals when there never were any? Didn’t they want to sign on a new customer, even at a discounted rate? I mean, Sirius/XM’s churn rate is insane and would be even worse if they didn’t broker deals with current customers to stay on board.
I finally asked to talk to a manager who told me he had some special promo code that the initial reps didn’t have. It didn’t quite make sense to me, but when he offered me at a deal for all the channels at $109, I said I’d take it. I had to call back with my radio’s ID number for them to activate it, so they made a note on my account.
When I called back, they told me the $109 subscription was for a selected plan – one that doesn’t give you all the channels the satellite radio giant offers. Um, hello, if I am paying for a service I can get for free (kind of), why would I only want some channels and not all? I explained this to the rep who said he couldn’t do anything for me, so he put me through to a manager. Suddenly, she had a deal for $131 for the premium subscription plan, which was still more than my mom and neighbor were paying, so I protested. They couldn’t match those deals or do much better.
I was curious why only the managers could get me a deal and the initial sales rep could only offer me something for $200+. When I asked, the manager declined to comment, simply saying she was sorry. I went on, asking why all the managers had a code for a promotion that was locked to my radio purchase, yet when I called to subscribe, no one was able to offer me what apparently I was “entitled” to anyway.
I kept at it, demanding an answer from the manager about why I wasn’t told I could get a deal by the first 10 reps I spoke to. She hung up on me. Bitch. I decided to call back and the next manager I spoke to read from a pre-written script, apologizing for the trouble and brokering me a yearly premium channel deal for $185.
Excuse me?!? $185? That is $50 more than the manager who hung up on me offered. I asked her how this was possible and she was just as dumbfounded as the rest. Finally, she gave me a deal at $124 for everything I wanted, but told me I had to pay $4/month for internet access to stations and buy another dock to listen to the unit in my home, which would run me about $39.99.
After all this shit, I thought to myself, why do I need to pay for radio? Yeah, it’s a luxury and a convenience, but the hassle and bullshit that I went through to get it, along with the unfairness, left such a bad taste in my mouth, so I told them I was no longer interested. I mean, why would I want to pay more than other people, and why should other people pay more than me? I’m not trying to sound cheap, but the whole thing is such a scam. If I had service previously (which I did and conveniently, they couldn’t find my account despite a myriad of information I provided them), they would have done whatever they could to keep me to lessen their churn rate. I have friends who call every three months to broker a new, cheaper deal. So Sirius XM, what gives?
Sorry to hear about this, it does make an awful story. What I believe is happening is a problem not just with Sirius XM, but many more. The list will continue to grow and the reason why I believe this is happening is because of the rapid change of content delivery for many companies. Adapting how content (specifically media such as music, movies & TV series) is being delivery to users in newer ways that are much simpler and internet based. Simpler, because you can get this same service and content in an all-in-one device, like your mobile phone (why Sirius XM is losing height and becoming desperate, you would think they make their services cheaper, but no). Internet, because all we do is be online and stay online, which we are already paying good money to which ever Internet provider we individually have. A lot of companies are getting hurt and this affects the way they do business. Direct TV just got hit, we’ll see soon what happens to customer plans and services. Optimum was on the same boat. The new internet era will impact many clienteles for the better or for the worst and if certain companies don’t adapt with the new ways you will see crappier customer service. I am surprise to still have Netflix; this will change real soon for me. For music, I have had better luck with Spotify. Now that they have added Padora-like radio + you can listen to any songs you think of and make your own playlist. It tops and ceases Padora services (Another Service that plays the same songs over and over). Yesterday I switch the auto renew subscription to off on my Itunes settings. Survival of the fittest.
do not give xm a cc because once they have it the charges will not stop. xm has not provided me service since i talked to them a year ago and cancelled upon my 1 years free subscription with a purchase of my chev.However i did subscribe for an additional year and paid for this in advance. the year has past and another and some and now I have been sent to collections because my credit card expired and they could not continue charging it. i have refused to provide them with the new expiration due to the fact i dont want their shitty service and have been paying for a service in which i had refused for too long already. I never signed a deal with them ever, but only with the dealer who provided me with a 1 yr year free subsctription of service. Now they are looking for additional funds for service in which they claim i recieve in which i have not other than the preview channel and in which i cancelled over a year ago.These people feel it is thier god given right to charge anyone for any amount for the customers which they feel have no have right or say. I will not pay them for this brutally dishonest and ludacrus poor business conduct.
Beware of “automatic renewal” which I just learned the hard way. When I called to cancel, they told me I had to pay for the “extra time” they left the radio on. I asked why they did – if I hadn’t paid the bill, shouldn’t they have shut it off then? They threaten collection, which I do not want for a $25 bill, but I feel totally screwed (and not in a good way) for having to pay this. It does say on the back of your bill that you are automatically renewed unless you cancel, so beware! I thought I could just throw the renewal bill out and I was good. What a rip off. And when you call to cancel, you have to listen to their sales pitch a million times. I finally yelled at old Jose and he shut up. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, he told me “he was with other customers (I’ll bet he was) and would take 15 to 20 minutes to get to me.” Good one Jose!
I bought the extra radio for myself because I believed from the promo that I could connect it on my plan. So long story short I opened the box never set it up and found out today that they are charging both of our accounts AND to cancel my husband’s(which we never activated) it will cost $75 to break a contract that I never knew we had. So I never got the additional months that I thought I was getting and have a useless radio and docking station!!! amazing!!! The number of care people that I dealt with was over 20 and I was disconnected twice. NICE!! My husband says if it is too good to be true it will cost you> Shame on Sirius XM> They lost this customer!!!!
Our Attorney Generals should be on this!