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Really Sirius/XM really?

Deacon

Deacon

Humble Servant
So I have been a somewhat happy customer of Sirius satelite radio for around 8 years now. I say somewhat cause there has been some glitches along the way, for example when my mobil 'Roadster' unit crapped out. I called Sirius/XM about it and all they wanted to do was sell me a new radio for $99. I turned them down and went and bought a new head unit for my truck that had satelite capability. Sirius then tries to charge me a $12 switching fee cause I switched from their component to my own. After much haggeling back and forth they only agreed to drop the charge after I told them to cancel my subscription.

When my wife bought her new car it was equipped with satelite capability. Getting her subscription going was a major headache and there are still some channels that she doesn't have access to. Namely the sports, etc. that she does not care to have anyway and I don't drive her car enough to fuss about it so we let that ride.

Well things changed last week when $300 vanished from my account. After checking the statement and seeing that it was a subscription payment to Sirius I was hot. First, the account is set up with a requirement for Sirius to send a bill when renewal is due. It should not be an automatic transfer. I never received a bill or notice or anything from Sirius. Second, both our accounts had been $79 per cycle and now all of a sudden the bill has (roughly) doubled to $150 each. I have been paying $79 per for the entire time I had the service (8 yrs) and the wife for the past 3 yrs. When I called them all they would do is hem and haw about how I haven't been paying full price all along and that this was the actual price I should have been paying, blah, blah, blah....

So they left me no choice but to cancel my subscription and they told me my money would be returned once the order is processed. That was on a Friday. My service stopped working on Sunday. I didn't get my money refunded until Thursday and the sorry jokers subtracted $12 claiming it was prorated usage. So I guess they got their switching fee after all.

Now I really miss my satelite radio but I'll be damned if I will go back to it at those prices and I just lost patience with their constant nickel and dimeing tactics. :handgestures-thumbdown:
 
That sucks. I feel your pain. I really do. I'm sure this will be of little comfort to you but you really were getting a great rate. I became a subscriber in 2011 and I've been paying $150/year ever since.

On the bright side, once you cool down, and if you're still missing the service, you'll likely be considered a "new customer" if you decide to return and you may reap some financial benefits.
 
Yeah, I wish I could say I liked the company. I like the product, but the company REALLY pisses me off.

On the bright side, the geniuses FINALLY are allowing you to merge accounts. In the past, if you had XM and Sirius radios (not hard to achieve since different automakers use different ones), you'd have an account for each "side". You couldn't get family radio pricing on the Sirius radio if you tried to add it to your XM account. They said it was a computer problem, and for a couple years after they merged, they stood behind that. So I had to manage different accounts for the services.

A few months back they finally merged things... naturally, the bastards didn't tell their customers. I just found it when I was checking to see if they'd done anything about it yet. At least the merge was easy enough to get done.
 
What will happen to Sirius once Howard Stern retires? He is pretty much the only reason I have Sirius.
 
Mr.6 said:
What will happen to Sirius once Howard Stern retires? He is pretty much the only reason I have Sirius.
Click to expand...

Nothing all that significant. I never listen to him and I suspect I'm not alone. They're paying him a ton of cash, and while I do think they'll lose some subscribers like you, they also lose a significant expense. So I imagine they'll probably be at least even.
 
Akula said:
Mr.6 said:
What will happen to Sirius once Howard Stern retires? He is pretty much the only reason I have Sirius.
Click to expand...

Nothing all that significant. I never listen to him and I suspect I'm not alone. They're paying him a ton of cash, and while I do think they'll lose some subscribers like you, they also lose a significant expense. So I imagine they'll probably be at least even.
Click to expand...


I think they will lose a lot more.

unless they change their pricing then I might stay.

We'll see when he retires.
 
I had a run in with them a few months ago when my subscription came up. After free 3 months with new car , I called and told them I wanted the deal that others I had talked to were getting here in Canada. 79 a year.. Oh no cant do that is the reply. Ok...goodbye I say. Months roll by without it and an offer comes via email for this deal 79 a year . Call up ...ok I'll take it. Everthing is hunky dorry!! My year comes up and they send me a bill for 200 bucks for next year. I call up and the CSR says , yep thats the fee. I say can't we do a deal like last year? Nope she says!! Cancel I say. She say she has to put me through to the subscriptions department or some such thing. She puts me through the lady asks "WHy are you cancelling?" Its too much I say. I want the same deal as last year! Ok she says, we can do that!! :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:
My guess is, I will have to go through this exact same thing next year upon renewal. These guys remind me of the cable company!!!
Mike
 
Didn't they used to have a one-time upfront lifelong subscription fee? Maybe I dreamt that...
 
I do enjoy the service, but they are a bit pricey. They are the only game in town, sort of. Most of my use is car. But i do listen via my SB. That being said I also use Pandora, my own library and SKY.FM. Now it is just as easy for me to plug my phone into the USB in the car and have all except Sirius/XM if cancelled. This includes my library as I use Play Manager where my library is in the cloud. Hopefully they will get off their high horse. It is going to take loss of market to get them to do something.
 
I dumped them because I was sick of coughing up $150 a year when I can just use Pandora on my smartphone. The big problem is that they make you pay for device, which is a completely outdated model. If I pay $8/mo for Netflix and can watch it on all of my devices, pay $8/mo for Hulu Plus and can watch it on all my devices, pay $80/yr for Amazon Prime and can watch it on all of my devices, why the hell should I pay $150/yr PER DEVICE for XM Radio? Stupid.
 
Haywood said:
Why the hell should I pay $150/yr PER DEVICE for XM Radio? Stupid.
Click to expand...

THAT and the fact that the XM/Sirius sound quality bordered on painful is why I've never had a subscription.
 
Towen7 said:
Haywood said:
Why the hell should I pay $150/yr PER DEVICE for XM Radio? Stupid.
Click to expand...

THAT and the fact that the XM/Sirius sound quality bordered on painful is why I've never had a subscription.
Click to expand...

Sound quality is comparable to FM radio, which is what it was designed to compete with. The web stream is a lot better at 128kb. I enjoyed the variety of programming, but it just wasn't worth the cost in a world with so many web based services that are either free or significantly cheaper.
 
I was never really happy with the Sirius sound quality. Though, I got used to it and enjoyed it for years.

And, I'll admit, the one thing I surprisingly liked was that bass sounded punchier on Sirius than it did on FM radio. But everything above that sounded like a low quality 32kbps web stream. Well, OK, maybe a low quality 64kbps web stream. Kinda garbly, regardless.

Pretty sure I won't ever go back to Sirius. Mostly because of the sound quality. But also because the price kept going up and up. I was annoyed when they decided to start charging a $1.79 royalties fee on top of the $13 bucks a month I was paying. Nothing like raising prices while pretending you didn't just raise prices. Like they weren't paying royalties before??? Just seemed fishy.

Oh, yeah, and cancelling was a big ol' pain in the caboose.
 
Wow you guys are getting screwed. When their lifetime service fee came around (about eight years ago). I jumped all over it. I paid 400.00 and have never seen a bill since. My GF actually as a gift bought me the XM head unit and car and home kit and she paid for a year. The next year on my birthday I called to renew my subscription and they said they were offering for a limited time a lifetime plan one time fee of 400.00 and this included two free head unit replacements if used within ten years. I have yet to replace my original head unit as it works great. My GF paid half the plan as a birthday gift I paid the other 200.00 and have been happy ever since.

Btw there are several ways to improve sound quality. First is use a direct connect cable from the player to your head unit. Next buy the direct connection antennae dongle for a much stronger signal. Both did wonders in improving my signal and sound quality. I was having issues using the FM signal reception but direct connection to my cars head unit worked wonders.
 
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