Sirius: The Worst Radio On Radio
Published by M2J under Rants on December 29, 2008I try to usually try to avoid airing personal grievances here, however, this is one I just feel the need to vent.
My troubles started one morning while on a drive. I was listening to the 80s station on my Sirius radio. Suddenly, I realized there was no longer any music. I now had “Call to Activate” on my display instead of the song and artist names. This would mark the second Sirius radio I had that apparently stopped working for no reason.
I called Sirius up to see what I could do, failing any decent solution, to order a new radio. Of course Sirius could not do anything right by me. My radio was out of warranty, so the basically told me I could buy a new radio. The most they could offer me was a new radio at a new subscriber discount. Big whoop. Of course, I would need to pay a new activation fee, because they were technically canceling my subscription and I’d be a new customer. That was a little frustrating. So I see they have an “Al La Carte” service now, for about half the monthly fee as before ($6.95/month). I was down for this. Only one radio supported “Al La Carte.” It was $130, but they gave it for me for $100. Of course “activation” was $15. So there goes that. The Al La Carte stations charged an additional 25 cents for “premium” stations. I asked the representative for the Howard Stern stations (100 & 101) for the extra 50 cents a month. They said that was no problem. I ordered the radio.
Upon receiving the radio, I called to activate. They told me my radio didn’t support Al La Carte. …I double checked the box.
Anyone see that there? Well after an hour and a half of being on the phone with Sirius, they finally gave up and had me send the radio back. They told me that they would send me the new radio as soon as I called them back with the tracking number of the old radio coming back to them. I shipped it, called up, the representative told me that she was aware I was told they’d ship out the new radio as soon as they had the tracking number, but that was wrong and wasn’t gonna happen. I had to wait for them to receive the radio. Once they received it, I called back to find out if the new radio had been shipped, the next representative informed me that the replacement radio should have been shipped out as soon as I gave them the tracking number after all.
Finally, I got my radio. Would this be the end of my misery with Sirius?
The cost of the Al La Carte package was not $6.95 + 50 cents, but $12.95! $12.95 was the same price as the all inclusive package I was paying for all these years. Well, now I could just pay that again, but I purchased this particular radio under the pretense that I didn’t need to be paying the same amount anymore, especially since, I don’t listen to bluegrass or Korean talk radio and didn’t need them. I don’t know how Sirius justifies this monthly fee for Al La Carte plus Howard, it costs the same as the full Sirius package, except includes about 80 less stations. So after arguing with the representative for a while, he granted me the $7.49 price for what I wanted…for a month. I feel completely snubbed by Sirius and think that within a month, I will no longer be a subscriber and will send this radio back for a refund. Thank you Sirius, you have done wrong by this customer. It’s no wonder your stock is in the toilet.
