Yes, Alaska, probably the state that one could benefit the most from having satellite radio in their vehicle. There's no signal, none, nada, nothing! Well, except for the end of the Homer Spit, 4-1/2 hours southwest of Anchorage.

Let it go for a couple of weeks just to make sure it wasn't some weird atmospheric condition. Nope, still no signal. Did dome research, I'm not the only one, a lot of new cars come with an exemption from satellite radio.

So I call today to cancel, should be easy enough, but NO! Explained up front what the issue was and why I was cancelling, it was an absolute endless verbal diarrheic flow of additional add-ons, extensions, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah I get it, it's your job to try and retain customers. But it shouldn't have to come to me yelling, "JUST CANCEL MY FUCKING SERVICE ALREADY!"

Their CS is pretty horrible in the lower 48 as well. They’ll do anything to avoid cancellations. It’s mind numbing.

Years ago XM refused to cancel service on a vehicle we sold after repeated promises to do so. I finally called my credit card company and at my request they cancelled the auto pay to XM for ALL the XM radios we had.

XM has mind bogglingly bad customer service. (And their idiot DJs also talk way too much.)

Yeah, but the sales guy told me that you can go to your account online and unselect the auto renew.....

I never signed up so don’t know if that would work.

quote:

it was an absolute endless verbal diarrheic flow of additional add-ons, extensions, blah, blah, blah.

Yup, I dealt with that oh 13 years ago with Xm Radio.

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
Years ago XM refused to cancel service on a vehicle we sold after repeated promises to do so. I finally called my credit card company and at my request they cancelled the auto pay to XM for ALL the XM radios we had.

Same here - I finally just cancelled / "lost" the credit card that it billed to and forgot about it. They never got another charge through.

But XM actually kept one radio running for about 2 years until the battery in the car died. Once restarting it was done.

Oh well, I don't see the attraction to satellite radio - Especially when you can stream audio from your phone (either data plan or downloaded music). Yes I was out west for awhile with XM and even in the mountains it would drop sometimes, which is why I really wanted it.

quote:

Originally posted by 2Adefender:
They’ll do anything to avoid cancellations. It’s mind numbing.

They sure as hell will.

Trial period ended on the wife's Highlander and they called and e-mailed and sent letters. I ignored all of them. Told the wife they'll come back with a ridiculous offer. Sure enough one day they said 3 months for $2.50 for all 3 months so I signed up.

When that's up, I'll cancel and wait for their next offer.

I have an hour drive to/from work so I have time to waste on my drive.

My guess is that the satellite signal is not getting up to you.
When I made a complaint to them about signal dropout, an amazingly honest CS Rep told me that the signal is optimized (aimed?) for below the 45th Parallel.
The Yoop is solidly in the 46th Parallel.

I bought a 2018 Nissan Titan about 6 weeks ago . Came with the 3 month trial period . I just got an offer in the mail to renew my ALL ACCESS package at $50 for 6 months . Helluva deal if I was interested . I'm not .

quote:

Trial period ended on the wife's Highlander and they called and e-mailed and sent letters. I ignored all of them. Told the wife they'll come back with a ridiculous offer. Sure enough one day they said 3 months for $2.50 for all 3 months so I signed up.

That sounds splendid, but after you try to actually cancel now you'll realize that if they moved the decimal and paid YOU $25 per month for that 3 months, it's still not worth it.

Their model is so committed to making enemies of every departing customer whether temporary or permanent it boggles the mind. I have since declined any sort of activation on new cars and will do so until the end of time. If they weren't complete assholes I might actually give them a shot again, but given their "service" model they can burn in a flaming heap of channel listings as far as I'm concerned.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
My guess is that the satellite signal is not getting up to you.
When I made a complaint to them about signal dropout, an amazingly honest CS Rep told me that the signal is optimized (aimed?) for below the 45th Parallel.
The Yoop is solidly in the 46th Parallel.

It's not optimized for below the 45th parallel per se. It's more a case that the satellites are in geosynchronous equatorial orbit, so they work better the closer you get to the equator because the satellites are more overhead. From most of Alaska, I would be surprised if the satellites are even above the horizon. It would require the use of tower repeaters to provide service in AK, but then it would just be another radio service.

You can complain all you want about the service, but it is not going to make them launch more satellites or build out expensive tower repeaters. The only thing that's left is to basically ignore the complaints and hope the people in AK forget to cancel a useless service.

When I cancelled them years ago, they called my cell phone about 5 times a week for 1-1/2 years to try to get me to renew.

Talk about annoying!

Similar story with me. Called to cancel anticipating the "offer" which I was obliged to renew. I sit on hold for over five minutes after jumping through their phone system hoops and then got hung up on. I was furious so when I finally got through I just said cancel my service until they did so. Took a while but I was done with them at that point...just not worth the hassle.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
My guess is that the satellite signal is not getting up to you.
When I made a complaint to them about signal dropout, an amazingly honest CS Rep told me that the signal is optimized (aimed?) for below the 45th Parallel.
The Yoop is solidly in the 46th Parallel.

My guess as well. I have a distant relative who owns an island (or rather part of one) just south of Homer. No phone or anything out there so he has a sat phone. It only works, sort of, sometimes. They told him it was due to the latitude relative to the orbit of the satellite.

Satellite radio is obsolete. I can listen to anything I want on my cell phone w/ Bluetooth to the radio. Of course I don’t live in Alaska.

5 years ago we got a new Explorer. It came with a 6 month free trial of Sirrus. We never did sign up after the free trial ran out. 4 1/2 years later, we still get LAST CHANCE letters from them every couple months.

They're evidently real slow learners.

I called last spring to cancel my car's service,
told them why, car was totaled,

do I want to switch to another vehicle,,
well, maybe, once I settle with the insurance and buy one,,


took about 10 minutes to get the guy to understand the reason I was cancelling was not because I did not like XM, but because the radio was not detachable, and the damned Mini Cooper was totaled,,


the light bulb went off finally and he cancelled it for me,

Yep Z, it's not a thing up here in the great frozen north....no satellite radio. You can get DirecTV or Dish at your house though. The dishes are pointed at the ground, LOL. But satellite tv works great.

As I noted earlier, the word “smarmy” was created so that the business practices of SiriusXM could be described more concisely.

Don't ever give them your crefit card.

quote:

Originally posted by NK402:
Don't ever give them your crefit card.

or cancel it and get a new number if you do!