Sirius XM Is Sued by NY Over 'Frustrating' Cancellation Process (bloomberg.com) 59
Sirius XM Radio was sued by New York state for making it difficult for customers to cancel subscriptions to the broadcaster's online radio services, in violation of state and federal consumer protection laws. From a report: A probe by the AG's office found that Sirius trains employees to keep customers seeking to cancel on the phone or in a chat for a "frustrating" six-part conversation that includes asking them a series of questions and pitching as many as five "retention offers," New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday in a statement.
Dear Sirius (Score:5, Insightful)
THIS is why I'll never sign up in the first place. Terrible Business Practices leads to people not ever trusting they can escape their prisons.
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desperately hanging on, trying to figure out some way to keep from going out of business.
That also goes for the companies needing my two longest cancellation calls: Vonage and TiVo. The TiVo call was very impressive as I had no cable service at the time, so there really was no earthly reason to start paying for their service at the end of the initial contract.
Re:Dear Sirius (Score:5, Interesting)
Canceling any service should not require a phone call or chat.
It should be a checkbox on a website.
I am okay with an "Are you sure?" confirmation checkbox, but that's it.
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I think there's legislation in other jurisdictions that cancelling a service needs to be done through the same mechanism as a sign up. I think that's fair.
I mean, ideally it should be like you said; just a simple online process that doesn't involve arguing with Pajeet in broken English for an hour. Or mysterious auto-bill payments taken out of your checking account *purely by accident* after the termination date (in which case they should be liable for reimbursement x2 and any fees associated with their ham
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Agree, but up here in Canada this approach is not that unusual. I have gone through this with a couple of different businesses -- even being passed through a series of agents who were all clueless as to why I might want to discontinue their wonderful service. At least this time with Sirius I discovered that my account profile had a little check box about autorenewing the subscription. Clearing the box makes it quietly go away. Worked. The service was fine, but way too expensive for the amount it was used. A
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Wait till you try to cancel a gym membership. Many require 30 days notice in writing posted to some address in Timbuktu via certified mail. Gyms are notorious for having lots of hoops to jump through in order to cancel.
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Canceling any service should not require a phone call or chat.
It should be a checkbox on a website.
I am okay with an "Are you sure?" confirmation checkbox, but that's it.
This, people can accidentally hit a button.
This is where the bank really should step in.
An email stating, "please cancel my account" should be the second last resort. The last resort should be contacting your bank and either stopping the direct debit/standing order or if paid by card, disputing any charge taken past the contract termination date. This is exactly the kind of thing card chargebacks were designed for.
Unless you've signed a contract for X payments, in which case you're legally on the h
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When I bought a new vehicle about six years ago, it came with a six month subscription to Sirius XM. I found reception so spotty in my area that after a few weeks I just never used it again, but they kept hassling me to renew for two years afterwards. Fortunately, as it had come with the vehicle, they didn't have any payment info, so the most they could do was endlessly spam me.
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I got a few months free with a new auto. When it expired they started spamming me to subscribe. It slowed down a bit, but then there was one month free just granted, and I used it during a trip, and the spam started right back up.
If this was a person, someone that needy really needs to seek therapy.
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go after comcast 6 is better then what they have! (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
good info (Score:5, Insightful)
so their speech is 6 retention offers. if you're a sirius subscriber, you need to call NOW to cancel, and do the dance, and wait for the 6 offers, and then accept
you'll probably walk away with a 50 to 80% discount. this is what I do every 6-12 months with all my subscription services.
Re:good info (Score:4, Insightful)
you'll probably walk away with a 50 to 80% discount.
It costs them the same to beam the signal to a million customers as to one customer. Their marginal cost is $0. So even if they give you an 80% discount, it's better than losing you as a customer.
Re: good info (Score:3)
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Those costs are tacked on as an additional fee above the base subscription cost. You don't get a discount on that part.
Ended up that way as a weird quirk of the Sirius & XM merge. FCC allowed it but banned price increases for a certain number of years. They ended up splitting the licensing fees out into a separate cost so they could pass them on to customers instead of eating the loss.
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Those costs are tacked on as an additional fee above the base subscription cost. You don't get a discount on that part.
Ended up that way as a weird quirk of the Sirius & XM merge. FCC allowed it but banned price increases for a certain number of years. They ended up splitting the licensing fees out into a separate cost so they could pass them on to customers instead of eating the loss.
Thanks. I was not aware of tehir unusual pricing arrangements.
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Hmm.. I seem to recall when all this satellite radio malarky started, that the FCC required Sirius and XM to NEVER merge before they would approve licensing.. Interesting.. Now we have SiriusXM, kinda looks merged to me.. But then I'm just a nobody..
Re:good info (Score:4, Interesting)
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Pay for a bit more data and use your phone with a streaming service. More choice, modified clients block the ads, and if you subscribe it's usually only a couple of clicks to cancel.
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Re:good info (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually even worse than this. If you try to use their website to cancel while their call center is closed, their website pretends to be having technical issues. Very deceptive. Even in California where you're supposed to be able to cancel online I believe if signing up online is an option.
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I've never been able to cancel on the website. Any time I try, it just tells me to call.
I've been doing the "try to cancel then get a big discount" thing for many years.
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I've found that the Rocket Money app, which has a feature where you can ask them to negotiate a lower rate with whatever subscription you have, and if they're successful, you pay then 30-50% of the amount they saved you over a year for the service. I use it every year to whack down that pesky SiriusXM subscription that they get reduced to $5/mo and a year later its back up to $23/mo.. Just noticed its time to sic them on to SiriusXM for the next year. Their service saves me going thru the bullshit that is r
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their website pretends to be having technical issues.
Can confirm. The site pretends to allow the user to cancel, but then presents a "oops, technical problems" error. I just cancelled SXM after having been a subscriber since 2008. Had to call to do it and was surprised they didn't pitch me. They asked why, told them SXM was redundant and that was it. The fake technical problems bit on the website is greasy as fuck though.
Why I cancelled and didn't go back (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't going to use it for awhile and was tired of it. I might have signed up again at a later time but it was SUCH A PAIN to cancel, it was obnoxious, no option to cancel online, had to wait, had a 30 minute call as they kept putting me on hold to come back and try to offer me a better deal and I got fed up. I had to tell them just cancel the damn thing and I won't sign up again this is obnoxious, if you don't put through a cancellation you're getting a charge back, and they finally did it.
Then of course tons of marketing to try and get me to sign back up.
The dumbest part is, except for having to deal with them their service was fine, I just wasn't really using it anymore at the time, if it was easy to sign back up for a year, I would have once I was looking to listen more again, but due to that experience I've stayed away from it 1000%. They are their own worst enemy.
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Yeah exactly this. I even thought about signing up a year ago for about five seconds, and instantly remembered what a pain it was, so instead I worked on my playlist for the streaming platform I use.
Five retention offers (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if the sign-up process included five attempts to get you to not sign up.
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Imagine if the sign-up process included five attempts to get you to not sign up.
I fully support remedy for violations in cases like these is the process in reverse!
According to another poster, price now starts at $4, but if you try to sign up you'll just get quoted a new higher price and Sirius wouldn't be allowed to sign on new subscibers until they've completed the six cycles of price increase.
They never give up (Score:2)
If you do manage to cancel, they will continue to send you offers indefinitely. We had a trial subscription with a new car, and were still getting spam from them when we sold it a few years later.
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Just wait till Starlink gets Cell service and can stream exactly like Sirius, except with any phone you might have anywhere, including places your car can't go.
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I've started that adventure with DirecTV. Unlike the streaming services I moved to, you can only cancel DirecTV over the phone. Naturally, not before they hard-sell you in "retention". I told the woman what I would be paying for streaming vs. my current DirecTV bill. She did some math and came up with an "offer" that was just a little bit more than double the expected streaming cost and seemed astonished that I didn't jump at it.
Sure enough, I'm already getting junk mail offers for about 10% less than the "
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Sue their ass under CAN-SPAM act and in said lawsuit make one of your requests for relief include an injunction against Sirius/XM from internet streaming their stations off their website. Watch how fast that spam stops.
Let me take a guess (Score:2)
I'm going to guess that their sign up and billing process is very prompt and easy.
Just stop paying (Score:3)
Years ago I had this problem with Sirius. After several long "conversations" with their sales people, they still would not cancel.
So I went into my account and deleted my credit card information.
They whined and complained and tried to get me to continue to pay but I refused. Eventually they gave up.
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Their next move will be sending it to collections, though.. So unless you don't give a crap about your credit report, they still have their hooks into you..
And many more calls to get you to subscribe (Score:5, Interesting)
Bought a new car a while back, and since it's recent enough, has Sirius built-in its radio. Vehicle comes with 6 months of Sirius service automatically activated. And of course as part of my purchase had to give out a phone number.
Within a week of taking ownership of the car, the daily calls from Sirius started to get me to subscribe (yup, the "trial" wasn't even close to being over yet). I of course never answered their calls, but they kept coming daily so after 3 weeks, I simply blocked their number on my VoIP service.
Wouldn't be surprised if they were still trying to call me.
Yearly song and dance to renew as well (Score:2)
They'll try to charge me full price (300$+ a year) and I'll say no, then they counter and I say no again. I'll ask for the same price I'm paying now which is around 10$/month or I'll cancel. They wouldn't budge and I got as close to the cancellation department this year. I got a final offer of $10/month or so and I accepted as that was what I wanted initially.
Every April or so I cringe since I
Eventually it'll all be GPT (Score:3)
The surefire cancellation (Score:5, Funny)
The best way I have found to bypass all of the offers to get you to stay is to just say you are going to prison. Suddenly they don't bother trying to keep you on the line and just want to get cancelled and off the line as soon as possible.
Not Surprising (Score:2)
SiriusXM continues to pay huge amounts of money to celebrities so they can do shitty radio shows that nobody listens to.
Re:Not Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
They merged 15 years ago. The FCC dragged out the merge for years before approving it, and both companies stock prices tanked due to the uncertainty.
The argument from both Sirius and XM was that with the rise of internet radio, there wasn't a large enough market for two satellite companies. They probably were right. Both companies lost money before the merge, but they're profitable now. Not crazy profitable, but solid.
Those radio shows drive a huge chunk of subscriptions tho. You have to move up to a higher subscription tier to get access to them, and there's not much point in the higher tier otherwise, so they're actually really valuable.
Who eve signs up in the first place? (Score:3)
I never understood the value proposition of SiriusXM in the first place. Even at their advertised price, not inclusive of the bevy of extra fees and surcharges they absolutely refuse to actually quantify before you sign up*, it's still more than 2x the price versus Apple Music or Spotify; both of which are much better services to boot. Even without the scummyness of the company, I just can't fathom any reason I would want their service past the free trials that came with my last two cars.
Maybe it's all people who peaked in their 20s and want to keep reliving the 1990s when Howard Stern was still considered cool. Because, so far as I can tell, his show is literally the only content that's on Sirius but not easily and more cheaply available elsewhere.
(* At one point they sent me an offer for $4/month for 3 years. I actually considered it for that pittance. But then I read the fine print and the "plus fees and surcharges" bit, which included the actual dollar value for exactly ONE of the same, and not even a dollar-less list of said fees and surcharges. Nope! Full disclosure in advance or fuck off and die.)
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Some people drive.
For example, I drive. There are no good radio stations near me. Worse, I used to drive many hours across my state, so even if I picked a semi-tolerable radio station, it wouldn't still be in range a few hundred miles later.
Also, I don't want to use data on my phone, and I sure as hell don't want a company to collect and sell data about my listening habits.
So, SXM was a good deal.
I dropped it when I built a raspberry pi to ride around in my car, using liquidsoap to feed a facsimile of a n
How about (Score:2)
How about we go after the ENTIRE INDUSTRY as a whole instead of just one company at a time? Create a hard law that states a CANCEL SUBSCRIPTION button must appear predominately on the home page of any company offering services. Clicking that button will easily and immediately cancel the subscription. While on the phone all a customer would have to say is CANCEL NOW and no more conversation is needed, required, or allowed above and beyond the cancellation process.
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Create a hard law that states a CANCEL SUBSCRIPTION button must appear predominately on the home page of any company offering services.
But then the services will whine like the little bitches that they are about implementing this makes it too easy to cancel, and because it's so easy it means it's easily done fraudulently by someone else that hacked into a user's account, so no one should be able to cancel so easily because "won't someone please think of the children!" (or some such lawyer-conjured up nonsense).
Virtual card (Score:4, Insightful)
After fighting the local paper over this after they tripled the price, I found I *could* change the payment info and switched it to a virtual credit card I then cancelled. Any new subscription services will be set to use an independent virtual card and I won't have the problem again.
Privacy.com (Score:2)
I've had Sirius before numerous times over the last 20 years, so I know how it goes. I used a virtual card from Privacy.com to sign up at a $7 a month promotional rate for one year. I was working in an area where cell service is unreliable and terrestrial radio is awful, so I did enjoy having Sirius in my daily travels. When I called to cancel, they claimed I owed them for one month at regular price. I asked them to back date my cancellation to prevent the additional charge. Nope. Then I told them to
Cancel Sirius XM w/o the retention phone call (Score:1)
2. Change Sirius XM billing to use the cheap debit card.
3. Send them a certified postal letter saying you cancel. Keep a copy and the records they got it.
4. Once Sirius XM gets the postal letter, use the remaining debit card balance to buy groceries.
5. Their next billing won't go through. They'll send you email, postal mail, etc.
6. But you've already canceled, and owe nothing.
Europe. (Score:2)
That is complicated and long process.
In Europe, sat radio does not exist, and we just switch off the car, and the FM or DAB radio stops.
No need to have a 6 step process or anything.
Good. I hope they lose hard (Score:2)
Good. Finally someone going after them for it. I hope they lose *hard*. When I went through that process, I ended up getting very rude by the end of it. Very rude. One or maybe two retention offers and I will hold that in check because the person on the phone isn't responsible for the script they have to follow. But There is a line after which my patience no longer exists. My experience was made worse by the person on the other end of the phone having barely intelligible English.
Not I (Score:2)
A SiriusXM customer for 15 years or so, I just cancelled as I found I was hardly ever listening to it. Yesterday was my last day. I had no difficulties cancelling. It was not an onerous process
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Tell it to Comcast/Xfinity (Score:2)
Tell it to Comcast/Xfinity. Basically, the only way to get off the phone with them is if you agree to keep the service at a lower price, or if you tell them it's actually impossible for you to have Comcast service (because you're leaving the country or something). Lying doesn't come easily to me, but you pretty much have to lie to quit Comcast.