XM - Recent Renewals?

[Qjake]

...after I bought everything to make the Sirius radio work in the tC, I found out that they were going to charge me and extra $175 to switch the subscription to the new radio

I had Sirius when I bought my 4Runner called them up and had my subscription transferred to the XM radio in the Runner for no charge and no questions asked, not sure where or who told you $175 but that's outrageous!! They are the same company. I renewed the same subscription 3 months later for ~$79.95/yr. I'm up for renewal February 1st so we'll see what they offer then.

 

[gadgetguy1288]

I had Sirius when I bought my 4Runner called them up and had my subscription transferred to the XM radio in the Runner for no charge and no questions asked, not sure where or who told you $175 but that's outrageous!! They are the same company. I renewed the same subscription 3 months later for ~$79.95/yr. I'm up for renewal February 1st so we'll see what they offer then.

Yeah, I tried having the sub switched over to the Radio that came in my tC(it was a 2011 and came with XM as well) But I was told by both Sirius and XM that "even though they are now owned by the same parent company, that thay were still separate businesses, and subscriptions could not be interchanged between the two.":bash::bash:

It didn't make sense to me either but after I found out that XM has a few dead spots in my area I'm kinda glad it didn't work out. I love the Sirius radio that I have, it can store artists and songs and will alert you when they come on, on any station. And I like that I can just take it out of the truck and bring it in the house or shop and plug it into the one of the two home bases I have and listen to it there as well.

 

[Qjake]

Very strange :shrug:

I bet if you called and canceled and asked for a refund they suddenly would be able to xfer anything you wanted and give it to you for half the price to boot.

Good luck with whichever you choose!

 

[TheOnlyQP]

I just renewed my new TE and my wife's car for the 5/$25. If your "contract" is still in force you may as well ask for customer retention from the start.

 

[tacobill]

Called 3 different Sirius reps.....no deals. $!59 a year for commercials. No thanks. They'll have to drop their rates before I re-up. Love my iPod.

 

[1000MPH]

I've been listening to the hometown broadcast of Giants baseball all season long, at work, on my iphone, and in my 4R. Well worth the 88 bucks IMO.
Go Giants!

 

[nglayton]

6 months for $25

I let the service lapse and ignored all the threats and phone calls for about 3 months. Low and behold I get a letter in the mail.

6 months for $25 + taxes. It came to about $27 something. with on offer for a full year at $86 plus taxes.

1-877-575-3258 is some sort of renewal line, they answered with "Hello, I can help you renew today" Just call and tell them you got a letter.

Make sure you use a credit card that expires before the 6 months is up or they will auto renew at the current rate.

I used a ShopSafe number from BofA with a $30 limit and 2 month expiration.
After the 6 months I'll just wait it out until I get another 6 for $25 deal.

 

[Shogun]

I have had XM in 2 vehicles for 5 years now. I only pay by bill pay through the bill me option and never give them a cc unless you want to battle them when it is time to renew. I have never paid more than $110 per year for both vehicles over the 5 years. This year when it came time to renew I told them just give me the same as last year and tack on the balance to my trial subscription on the T4R. No dice. They quote me $12 p/month for EACH radio. They said they can't do it this year. I can understand going up 5-10% but 300% over last years rates. Oh well, Goodbye XM.

 

[jam46283]

The first guy I talked to was unhelpful to say the least but the next day I spoke to a woman who gave me the 77 a year that renews annually at the same rate.. I think after all fees it was $96. Don't be afraid to hang up and call a different rep!

 

[Kraeken]

Holy crap that was the most roundabout, convoluted Indian customer service I have ever experienced! I let my subscription lapse due to forgetfulness. I called to get the 6 mos./$25 promotion. They had to transfer me to someone to take care of my past due balance. This person also denied there was a promotion and charged me full price for two months of service without my permission. I called back the other number and they said they couldn't give me the promotion because my radio was active (from the unauthorized subscription the previous knucklehead just signed me up for.) They had to transfer me to someone else to take care of that. The person who finally picked up told me they had to transfer me to someone else to cancel my current service to take advantage of the promotion.

At this point I had enough, I stopped her and told her she will be doing all of this without transferring me again. Amazingly she said ok and straightened everything out. Then she tried to sell me an extra radio for $20, one time offer. I said no thanks...

So I got 6 months for $25 plus tax, and I tacked on the internet access for an extra $3.50 per month. I listen on my phone and my wife's iPad a lot at home so its worth it.

I hate that they make people jump through hoops for this nonsense every six months.

 

[axxman]

Holy crap that was the most roundabout, convoluted Indian customer service I have ever experienced! I let my subscription lapse due to forgetfulness. I called to get the 6 mos./$25 promotion. They had to transfer me to someone to take care of my past due balance. This person also denied there was a promotion and charged me full price for two months of service without my permission. I called back the other number and they said they couldn't give me the promotion because my radio was active (from the unauthorized subscription the previous knucklehead just signed me up for.) They had to transfer me to someone else to take care of that. The person who finally picked up told me they had to transfer me to someone else to cancel my current service to take advantage of the promotion.

At this point I had enough, I stopped her and told her she will be doing all of this without transferring me again. Amazingly she said ok and straightened everything out. Then she tried to sell me an extra radio for $20, one time offer. I said no thanks...

So I got 6 months for $25 plus tax, and I tacked on the internet access for an extra $3.50 per month. I listen on my phone and my wife's iPad a lot at home so its worth it.

I hate that they make people jump through hoops for this nonsense every six months.

this is why I let mine lapse, I was just thinking today how nice it would be to have XM now that hockey is coming back but this post has me reconsidering.

 

[stevec5000]

Even though XM and Sirius are now the same company they still use different transmission methods. XM uses a few satellites that transmit to ground repeater stations, so with XM the signal may not be any better than with a normal AM or FM radio station depending on how far you are from your nearest ground station, and in my area there are quite a few "dead spots" with XM.

Sirius on the other hand uses solely satellites, and has more of them to transmit the signals across North America, so there aren't any dead spots that Ive found with my Sirius radio, and I drove from Bellingham WA to Central FL 2 years ago when I got transferred.

Nonsense! Neither of those statements about Sirius and XM transmission methods are true! Both services use satellites as the main transmission method and both have ground repeaters in major cities. There aren't any "dead spots" with XM so it's better than normal AM or FM radio anywhere you go. Here in AZ and NM and Texas, both satellite signals are quite strong and have total coverage areas everywhere I've driven. In Phoenix the XM ground repeater is a lot stronger than the Sirius one and has wider coverage though. If you are having reception problems you most likely need a better antenna. I've found the round ones with the metal disc in the center have more gain than the little 1" square ones and will still work underneath trees while the ones built into a lot of cars aren't as good as either one.

 

[bigbillyt]

My Awful Experience with Sirius/XM

VERY long story, as abbreviated as possible. They charged my wife an I each around $100 a year after the trial period expired in our Ford vehicles (her Mustang, my Escape, respectively). I renewed my year in June of 2012, and they upped the charge to around $140. I made the mistake of using a normal valid credit card. They then charged me an additional $30 to my card for no apparent reason, my wife saw the charge but forgot to say anything to me. So, when I traded my vehicle I called them with the new number for the radio to transfer my account. It all seemed to go fairly smoothly. The refunded me for a prorated amount of around $125 and then opened a new account for the new vehicle and applied that amount and charged me the difference plus some service fee, for a total of around $25. The there was an unrelated suspicious charge on that card and it was cancelled and reissued with a new card number. This is when it gets interesting, they then tried to charge me another $35 for no apparent reason. When the card they had on file didn't work they started e-mailing me and saying if I didn't give them a valid card they were going to cancel my service.

Okay, this is the really long part, truncated for your comfort. After going around and around with their customer service on chat, e-mail and the phone, I find that THEY have no idea why they tried to charge me the additional fees either, NONE. So I told the last, and only semi-intelligent, knowledgeable customer service agent that I wanted to cancel my service and requested a refund. She was then able to promptly "waive" the cancellation of my service and "allow" me to continue service with no active credit card on file. I may, or may not renew at all in the future. Based on what I see here and elsewhere I was significantly overcharged.

Bottom line, they are essentially a monopoly and think they can get away with these crooked business practices indefinitely. After some research I found that they are being investigated by the State's Attorney General's office in several states, including Florida, for these billing practices. So, I submitted my case to the State and we will see if anything ever comes of it. I suspect at some point there will have to be a class action suit to begin to fix this.

Thanks for letting me vent, hope this helps.

 

[brockeverly]

Just renewed mine for $32 total (6 months). Word of advice for you guys having issues, if you credit card company has an option for virtual account numbers then use it. I always do that and then add an appointment to my Google Calendar to remind me to call in and threaten to cancel to get the lower rate. If for some reason I forget, they try to charge the full amount and it gets declined as it was not a real account number. :brushteeth:

 

[desertred]

These stories sure make me happy I opted for the lifetime subscription when my trial period expired. I may have ended up paying slightly more (~450, IIRC), but I avoided the headaches with periodic renewal.

 

[Okki]

Noticed the Auto-renewal today at $182 called to get the charge reduced to the $94.99 I paid last year. They said they couldn't do it......... until they got to the "last screen" when they were cancelling my account.

I could have done $25 for 6 months or $101.67 for the year. Not having to deal with this crap for an extra 6 months was worth going with the $101.67 (plus the wife enjoys XM when on road trips).

It's a bit more than last time, and really the upper end of what the service is worth to me. I guess we'll see what happens in 360 days when I call them before they frikking auto-charge me again (you can't turn that off apparently).

Okki

 

[brockeverly]

These stories sure make me happy I opted for the lifetime subscription when my trial period expired. I may have ended up paying slightly more (~450, IIRC), but I avoided the headaches with periodic renewal.

Until you get a new vehicle, then you will be :boom:

 

[desertred]

But, I plan to keep the 5th gen for several more years (unless I just have to trade it in on a TE). Then, I believe an appropriate fee will transfer the subscription to the new vehicle's radio, so I hope to be looking good into the future. Of course, the best laid plans........

 

[RonMAIDEN]

We got a 6 month sub with our Focus and we let it expire after offers of $115/year and then dropped to $86/year and just refused then a few weeks later we got an offer of $28 for 6 months so we took that but we'll see what they do when we let it expire again.

 

[veloindy]

Is anybody upgrading the trial service, what are you paying for Premier? They offered the $86 for a year deal, but it didn't include Howard Stern, and other Premier channels.