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User Review for Sirius XM satellite radio service
Serius disappointing
It To A Friend?: Maybe
Just turned on the love channel (70) and they had Barry Manilow as DJ. Terrible, when you want to listen the great love songs, and instead you get blather from Barry
Best To Avoid
It To A Friend?: No!
With them for several years and finally opted to cancel. Too many other options out there. So called fully 10 days before due for auto-renew and they cancelled, or so they said. Provided "confirmation number" and all.
Then, on the day after our subscription was supposed to have ended I get an email with a bill. Basically it says that I need to phone in to update my billing information and that I still owed for the renewal since I didn't cancel.
So I call them again. First guy, clearly not in US, takes my info and waste my time for about 10 minutes. Then transfers me to another rep, also not in US, who takes info down and "cancels".
When I asked her about my previous confirmation number it didn't matter. No record on file of previous call.
My advice:
1. Do NOT provide them with an active credit card or bank account. Period.
2. Do NOT sign on for autopay or automated renewal.
3. Best to just avoid them. Just not worth the hassles frankly and like FTD this company has become one to avoid.
Customer service reps
It To A Friend?: Yes
I called yesterday during the day and had to speak to a call center in India. They couldn't understand what I was saying and had to transfer me to another rep that I couldn't understand what he was saying. Why do companies have to go the cheap route and not hire people in the US?
Sketchy
It To A Friend?: No
I called for help setting up my radio in my new car. Aggressive up sales. I would also call it deceptive and would warn you to stay away. Yes, Howard Stern is great but....they need to clean up their business model.
Thankfully I escaped!
It To A Friend?: No
Where to begin?
Feb 3, 2018 I bought a new Jeep. There was no mention of SXM on the window sticker. The radio was on FM when I took delivery. Nobody mentioned SXM. I found out about it when I received the letter in the mail.
I tried it, but it was stuck on the preview channel. I had to call them to get it turned back on. I park my jeep during the week because I commute by bicycle. Every Friday it was back stuck on channel 1 again. I read about the problem on the internet (a lot of people have it). I lost my patience and told them to keep it.
I read about how they stalk customers. I went online and deleted my account as best I could.
Today is Feb 3, 2019. I have not heard from SXM, and I could never be more pleased with that!
I am trying to get the radio swapped out with one that does not contain an SXM receiver because the stupid message keeps popping up asking me to subscribe.
Marketing Harrassment
It To A Friend?: No
They just wont stop sending me mail/calling to the point that's it's extremely annoying and spammy. Their most recent attempt was disguised as "Important Information Enclosed". How many times do you have to say no for them to understand?...way to many. Wouldn't ever subscribe. THEY'RE HORRIBLE.
Horrible Customer Service
It To A Friend?: Absolutely not!
When trying to cancel the subscription for one of 3 vehicles (I'm selling it), I was passed through 3 diffent people and had to keep repeating my request each time. They did not want to accept the fact that I'm NOT buying a new vehicle and would NOT be transferring the subscription. The final representative said he would process the cancellation then rudely and abruptly hung up on me. Due to the high cost and the horrible customer service, I will be cancelling ALL SiriusXM subscriptions.
Still Lazy After All These Years
It To A Friend?: No
Listening to SiriusXM radio has been like living in a music prison where one is being punished for subscribing to their service rather than being rewarded. The company has become a monopoly in satellite radio delivery and as such, has no reason to attempt to even compete with anyone else, including FM radio.
I have been a satellite radio subscriber for 14 years now. I was one of the initial subscribers of XM RADIO when it first launched. It was a remarkable satellite radio company who truly wanted to make music fresh again for those willing to subscribe. XM RADIO executives encouraged online music DJs and programmers to be original, break out of the mold, and avoid the daily repetition of playing just the "hits." In addition, the sound that emanated from car stereo speakers was nearly CD-QUALITY.
However, in 2007 all that was about to dramatically change when XM merged with a company called SIRIUS. SIRIUS had been in existence for almost as long as XM, but most people who knew music didn't look at them as a big competitor. SIRIUS had a dramatically different attitude towards the music it played. SIRIUS thrived on limited playlists, playing the same familiar songs over and over again. Their philosophy was that satellite radio was only heard during short commutes and as such, only the most recognizable hits would be played. Additionally, with limited bandwidth at its fingertips, upon its merger with XM RADIO, the newly formed SIRIUSXM decided to add more than 200 channels in their core service that would reduce overall sound quality to its end listener. If you have listened to SIRIUSXM on a very good car or home stereo system, you probably have noticed how hollow and tinny it sounds. It is estimated that music is broadcast at a mere 31-33kbps. To give you something to compare that to, most reputable online music download services offer 256-360kbps. For SIRIUSXM to offer an eighth of that quality in its music delivery should indicate just how awful it sounds compared to CD music.
If you really want to know how disgustingly awful SIRIUSXM is, you should be forced to listen to it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This is the predicament I find myself in. I work in a warehouse setting. Its concrete walls inhibit any kind of FM reception. In order to provide constant music to our workplace, we stuck a satellite antenna outside one of our windows. For the past two years, SIRIUSXM has been our only source of daily music while we work.
Sometimes I wonder what is more of a chore -- the actual work that all of us do in our warehouse, or having to listen to SIRIUSXM radio. Every single day, the same selection of music is repeated over and over again across every single channel. We have exhausted listening to most all of their music channels, only for the fact that within a week, we are extremely bored by the repetition. We attempt to find a new music channel, and once again quickly find ourselves fatigued. We find ourselves listening to a single channel for a day, only to return it to it months later, to hear the same short list of songs being played.
I did some quick research to find out what a SIRIUSXM radio programmer makes in salary. It's about $25k per year. That's little enough to make one hate their job and it absolutely shows. These music programmers, either by lack of self-interest or directives from their bosses, have an absence of drive or imagination. It seems they load about 100 songs into a computer playlist and let it execute in an endless loop.
As an example, let me start with one of my most listened to channels, TOTALLY 70s. It basically sticks to the same top-charting hits, only diverting away once in awhile to anomalies from that era in a feature called "Jukebox of Dy-no-mite." Rarely will you a hear a song that will make you think, "gee, I haven't heard that one in awhile." There are some songs that never get played on that channel. While I realize "Stoney End" by Barbara Streisand or "All I know" by Art Garfunkel may not be chart-toppers --- they still represent the music of that era and should get equal play. There's no reason I have to hear "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees every single day just because it charted higher. The only time, in fact, that one gets to hear lesser-known hits is during the weekly broadcast of Casey Kasem's American Top 40. It's the only airplay on that channel that seems "fresh."
This past year, SIRIUSXM introduced two new noteworthy channels, The Beatles, and Pop Rocks. On paper, these both seemed like outstanding additions to the line-up.
Listening to The Beatles channel this very week, my co-workers commented on just how many Beatles songs are NOT played each hour. While I don't mind the channel playing solo hits by the Fab Four, they muddle the selection of music by playing songs that inspired the group. In addition, they add cover songs by other artists. One might think this is all well and good, offering a wider variety of music to the channel. Truth be, it just means fewer songs by THE BEATLES are actually being played, and when they are, it's the same limited selection over and over again. To their credit, there is some original programming offered on that channel that plays deeper cuts, but as with the overall music being played itself, it is also limited.
Things get even worse when listening to POP ROCKS, a channel that celebrates rock music of the 90s and 2000 era. If ever a channel stuck to limited playlists, this is the one. It literally plays the same hundred songs over and over again each day. Sometimes, it will play the same song (such as Thunder and Lightning by Imagine Dragons) twice in an 8-hour span. In our workplace, this has become one of the channels we have voted to ban due to the fact that our ears have become completely fatigued from its daily repetition.
This is what happens when you are the only satellite music delivery service in town. When you become a monopoly, you don't have to worry about competing. You can be that lazy, unimaginative program director who loads a hundred songs into each of its channels and keeps it on auto-play all year long.
Here's the biggest kicker of all....
Every year or two, SIRIUSXM raises their subscription rates under the guise of "higher music royalty costs." What that means is that the service is hiking up the price of their music when they are only offering you a limited selection of it. I absolutely refuse to play full price for a limited selection of music and I often have to resort to deals to keep my subscription active.
Dishonest business practices
I am very frustrated with the customer service and business practices of Sirius XM. We had to replace our stock radio in our 2007 Yukon XL due to the clock not functioning and the system randomly shutting off. When my husband called Sirius XM to transfer our subscription he was told he would have to pay a fee to do so. Apparently, the offer we agreed to was only for cars made before 2009. But because we had to replace our radio it no longer reads as a vehicle older than 2009. No one in retention, including the manager he spoke with, was able to waive the fee or cancel our subscription and make us the same offer we had. In our agreement there was no mention of my offer only being available to specific radios. We had to pay an additional fee to have an XM tuner put onto our new radio we purchased. Because of Sirius XM’s lack of disclosing this information In our agreement we refused to pay the fee to transfer our subscription and canceled all together. We are now out the money we had to pay for the tuner and have no XM service.
It To A Friend?: No
I had service on 2 vehicles with differing renewal dates. I tried to cancel both in December when I received a call from Sirius. The lady on the other end told me she couldn't cancel because I owed them money. My account said I was paid up. After my subscription expired I contacted Sirius through their website chat & was able to cancel. I received 2 cancellation messages (for each vehicle). However, they said I owed them money because they did not cut the service right away. Fine, I sent them a check. Today I get another bill. What a scam!