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XM Satellite Radio Consumer Reviews - Page 2

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Worst Company Ever!
By -

I had been a customer of XM Satellite radio for approximately 2 yrs. When my subscription expired at the end of June I wasn't aware it had expired until I was not able to get a signal & called to have the signal resent. I called them 2 different days attempting to get a signal with no luck. On the 3rd day I was told that my subscription had expired at the end of June (this call was placed on the 21st of July) & through the double talk & broken English, I was able to decipher that I now owed them $20.75 for the time they allowed my service to run over before they decided to interrupt my service.

The operator attempted to get me to renew my subscription for 3 months for around $45.00. I told her that I had been on a yearly plan & asked how much that was. I have paid approximately $180.00 a year for the past 2 yrs. & was not expecting to hear that my grand total would now be $309.55. I told her not to charge anything to my account at this time as I wanted to confer with my wife to see how much she had originally paid for the service. She stated that my card would not be charged & gave me a reference number & we disconnected.

Upon speaking to my wife, she stated that it should not have been that much & that she would call them & see what she could accomplish. After attempting to haggle with them over the price, she concluded that our lives would not be negatively affected by canceling the subscription, which I wholeheartedly supported. I found out a few days later that XM had charged my credit/debit card for the $20.75 that I told the operator not to charge but that they had further charged the $309.55 for the one year subscription that we clearly stated we had no interest in.

I understand that there may have been a bit of a language barrier between myself & XM's operators, but when a customer states "I want to go ahead & cancel my account, I do not authorize any further transactions on my credit card" & they charge it anyway, that is just plain illegal. The other 3 cents I have about this situation is against our judicial system who fails to protect its people from corporate predators like XM. If an individual had taken my credit card information & charged $309.55 they would be prosecuted for Credit Card abuse in Texas.

Since XM has corporate lawyers that can run the prosecutors in circles for God knows how long, the judicial system writes it off as a civil matter, because they are either simply too lazy or too afraid to go after the corporations. I was a police officer for 9 yrs. & have built & testified & worked with prosecutors on cases like this, so I do have some "behind the scenes" knowledge about what goes on behind the closed doors of the Judicial System.

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Customer Service and Billing
By -

I am very upset with XM Radio. Two months in a row now they have overcharged my account. In August my monthly fee went up due to the royalty charge, which by the way was never notified about. When I called about the overcharge in August, the girl I spoke with told me how very sorry she was that I was never notified and that she would credit the overcharge back to my account and then offered me a deal that if I signed up again for another year that I would only pay $12.80 per month. I said, "O. K. that sounds good." Thought all was taken care of... Wrong.

My September payment time rolled around and I was checking my bank account online and what - to my surprise I find a charge on my account for $128.00. That was 3 days ago. I called right away to get this reversed and credited back to my checking account. The woman I spoke with said her name was Justine and could help me. She offered me a free month for the inconvenience and gave me a reference number for that. She then proceeded to process the credit to my checking account.

I asked her how long it would take to go back into my account and she said it would be credited back to my account by Friday. I told her that I hoped so because I had a bill that was out there that was part of the money that had taken out of the account. (There is a bit of difference between $12.80 and $128.00.) She said no problem and that she was processing the credit as we spoke and also gave me a conformation number for that and said the money should be back into my account by Friday. Well, here it is Friday. I checked my account and NO CREDIT. SURPRISE, SURPRISE.

Oh, by the way, the check I had told Justine about went through my bank as of last night, and due to the money not being all there, I now have a $25.00 Returned check fee!!! I called XM Radio immediately and spoke to a representative by the name of Arme. After I told her about my call to them 3 days ago and what was supposed to happen, she proceeded to tell me that the person I spoke with before never processed the credit. I told her that she gave me a confirmatin number. I gave Arme the number and she proceeded to tell me that there was no such number. I said, "So she lied to me!"

Arme said she was going to process the credit herself and then she gave me a confirmation number. I asked to speak with a supervisor several times and was put on hold several times. Each time Arme came back on the line I was told the supervisors were very busy. I asked about another number I could call and she said that there was only the one I just called. I asked for a location that I could write to and she told me that I would have to send it to South East Asia.

At this point I am about ready to boil over. I can not believe a business can be run this way and continue to stay in business. I am considering canceling my subscription and writing to the BBB and FCC concerning their business practices. This is not right and from the majority of comments I have seen on here, there are a lot of unhappy customers.

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The Worst Liars I Have Ever Talked To.
By -

I called XM over the online radio and since my mom had an account already on her Hyundai so I thought we could get it free. I was wrong then the lady said that we are having a promotion and that you could have a $200 dollar radio for $19.99 and it was the SkyFi3. I thought it was a good deal and so I listened and thought I got all the information I didn't.

She said, "Sorry but we don't have that in stock. That "We sold the last one but I can give you an express EZ for $9.99." Well I thought wow that was a really good deal and then she said, "You have to have a three month subscription for $8.95 and we will not charge you for activation or shipping" so I said, "OK" and I gave her my card number. She said, "We are sorry for the long wait on getting your code for the order that you purchased and I will call back." And she never did.

I got a hold of a new person and this time he said that it didn't go through. I said, "What do you mean" and he said, "I will reorder it for you except this time amazingly the SkyFi3 was back in stock" and I said, "OK that was fine" because it had more than the Xpress EZ and then he said that the bill was $14.99 for the activation, $15.00 for the shipping, $8.95 for the 3 year subscription per a month, and then I paid $19.99 for the radio. I told him that it wasn't $55.98 that the lady said it was blah blah blah. I called the supervisor and she said OK we will get rid of all the fees and will put them as credits in your account so I said, "OK I will take it." Big mistake.

When I got it, it didn't even work so I waited on then and waited for someone to answer so then I received another radio the Xpress EZ that I didn't want so I told them to cancel the SkyFi3 and moved it over to the Xpress EZ and they said it wouldn't be no charge. I got a statement saying I owed a lot of money and I called them to find out what happened and they said we owed this amount even though we paid for everything before we got it.

I told the lady that "If you didn't straighten this out" that I will get a lawyer and sue their asses then she said, "Sir, sir we aren't going to do anything." I told her that "You will take this to a collection agency and I will be the first one to it before you cost my mom her credit rating and make it worse." She said that "We are transferring to a manager" and finally got everything straightened out.

Now we sent in the SkyFi3 for our money back and yet we still never received our check or credit whatever they were planning so now I have to call them and UPS to find out what happened tomorrow because it is too late here. But if I don't get my money back then I will be the one to file a class action lawsuit and you all will be included.

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No Response to My Letter - Sound Familiar?
By -

I write you this evening after having been put on hold by your XM associates for a total of 109 minutes. I have three XM radios. I have been a subscriber of yours for more than seven years. I recently lost my job and one of my cars. I, therefore, no longer need one of the three radios. The ID of the one I want cancelled is **.

I have spoken with no fewer than 8 of your associates this evening. After explaining my wishes they said they could not take care of it and would have to transfer me. Each time I was transferred and being on hold each time for 15 minutes or more, I told them I wanted to cancel one of the three radios I was disconnected. I finally wanted to speak with supervisors and was told there would be a minimum wait of 30 minutes.

When I complained to one of your associates that XM had run this 100+ minutes from my cellphone account, she told me I had dialed a toll-free number. Someone needs to explain to her toll-free numbers do not make the call free when using a cellphone. Because I have lost my job I now have a small cellphone plan, therefore each of those minutes will cost me 25 cents (times 110). You can do the math.

I want this one radio cancelled immediately (effective June 1, 2009) and for my nearly two hours of my time, suffering with horrible customer service people, some of whom I could not understand due to their location in India, as well as the over $25.00 in cell phone costs, I am insisting on one free month of service for the remaining two radios.

I also, under the circumstances, refuse to pay any cancellation fee for any reason, including this one radio not having been in service for a year. Again, I have been a customer of yours for over seven years. I believe this is the least you can do to even come close to calling it respectful, respectable and reasonable customer service.

Also, while I have your attention, your recent marriage with Sirius is the worst thing you have done since I began my subscription. We have lost the weather channel, you are now combining cities (which make no sense together) on your traffic and weather channels, the morning “team” on “Nashville” channel 11 is horrendous – They are no better than a local small-market country station and now we have to listen to all the commercials in addition to the poor product?

So convince me why we listeners should have to pay for that when it's available anywhere in the country. The announcers on the seventies channel are a joke. They read this terrible attempt at humor and it's laughable, but not with them. To demonstrate how out of touch you are with your programming, why could you possibly believe the “Open-Road” Channel (now Road dog) should have promos for Martha Stewart! On a trucker's station???

When I first bought into your company the big deal was commercial-free music. It is anything but that today. There are commercials all throughout your programming not to mention these “mini-sermons” (religion) we are forced to listen to. Just what are you trying to accomplish? Who do you believe your audience is? How much more do you think your listeners, your customers can take?

I could go on but XM has taken up enough of my time tonight. I plan to not send another dime until I receive a positive response from your offices with regard to my request and to my comments about the product. I thank you for your time and await your response.

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XM Service Good - Customer Service Lacking
By -

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- I have been using XM for about 5 years or so. I use the service in my car and for most of those years I drove a lot and found the service works great for me. I listen to a lot of talk radio and it worked great. On several long trips (18 hours) or so the service stayed on continuously. Before XM I would listen to a lot of AM radio but would lose the station when out of range.

Prior to 2009 when Sirius/XM changed their pricing I had myself plus 2 family members and 1 friend under a family plan where my radio was $12.99 plus theirs were $6.99 per radio. It was a good deal. I believe the additional radios went up by $2. I was a single person until recently so I had a lot of alone time in my car and at home. I had a Roady XT that I would move the radio from the car to home which I think works well and saves you some money. For me, if you will be listening a lot then it is worth it.

Regarding customer service (CS) though I do agree with some of the people here I have not had any real problem with CS. The only time I would need to contact CS was to change a radio. Myself and family members switched equipment a couple of times so I would have to contact CS. At one time we had an extra radio we were not using. I contacted CS and asked to have the service disconnected. They told me they could give me 3 months of free service. I had not planned on using it but I ended up getting the free service and let a friend borrow the radio.

After the 3 months were over my (unemployed) friend kept it and I ended up paying an extra 2 months since I did not call back XM to cancel the radio for good. Canceling a radio is not an easy process but you can do it. You cannot do it online. This would be great if you could. They do allow you to add a radio online. When you call in it takes about 10-15 minutes before you talk to someone. The first person you speak with will take your information and talk to you but if you tell them you want to disconnect a radio they will transfer you to a second person. This whole process takes about 20-30 minutes.

They will offer to give you free service. If they offer this you need to watch your bill. Their website is pretty good and allows you to check your service and billing. The last time they did this for me they credited my account for the free service on my first bill then the last 2 months I was charged for the full service. It balances out but if you are looking at it monthly I would prefer to get credited evenly over the 3 months.

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Customer Supportless
By -

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA -- I am a 7 year customer of XM Radio. I have had minimal pain until now. My wife pays our bills so I didn't have a chance to notice that XM Radio had been double billing me since Sept 08. After waiting on hold for over 40 minutes a customer serviceless representative said "hello". This was pretty much the last word in English that I understood. Unfortunately I don't speak Pakistanian.

After trying to explain the error to him 3 times I asked him if he actually understood what I was saying. He immediately grew terse and told me "don't you ever speak to me in that tone again." It's funny how the phone gives you instant courage! I know had he spoken that way in front of me there would now be a dentist in Pakistan counting his money for fixing this guys teeth! I digress. I didn't get in a spitting contest with this foreigner. I just asked to speak to any supervisor on the floor. I was put on hold and I knew that would be the end of anyone speaking to me.

I went to another phone of mine and dialed the customer serviceless line again while on hold on the other line. After being on hold again for over 30 minutes I asked the agent politely if I could speak to a supervisor on the floor. Amazingly I was only on hold for ten minutes. A supervisor came on the line and I explained both situations; the billing issue and the customer serviceless representative who put me on hold and that I was now on hold waiting for a supervisor on the other line for 1 1/2 hours!

Surprisingly, she said "let me check" and within a few moments the other line finally went dead after the hour and a half! She knew who it was! She said she would speak to the offender and of course that made me feel a lot better (can you detect a hint of sarcasm there)! I explained the overbilling and here is where I wanted to go "medieval" on XM Radio. She said I needed to "fax" the bank statements to them. FAX? Who has a fax machine anymore?

I suggested to her that I just scan them and email them to her and she said (are you ready for this) "we don't have an email address that we can give you." This is a company who put a satellite in space and they can't accept emails??? Even after all of this nightmare it just had to go one more. The fax number 313-203-5240 wasn't working! It wouldn't accept any faxes!

I ended up having my daughter fax it from her work and I'm still not sure if it went through as I have not received a response from them. What is most irritating is that I can't drop them and go to a competitor. I travel a lot in my car and the actual radio service is OK. I would go to Sirius but then that wouldn't accomplish too much now would it?

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The Worst Company - Misleading Information
By -

MIAMI, FLORIDA -- Bottom line: beware. They will not tell you that the subscription is non-refundable and that a breaking the contract fee will be applied. Customer service are like robots and supervisor very rude with no communication skills. Save your money, time and effort and take your business with some other company. Detailed story below:

I bought the XM boombox and car kit from Best Buy the other day as a gift for my wife, and had it installed at Best Buy. I called XM and activated the service the next day I noticed that I was not getting the full channel line up so I called XM again. The lady I spoke to was nice helped me fix the problem and told me about a promotion; free XM radio. So I thought "Sounds like a good idea". Towards the end of the purchase it turns out that I will have to subscribe to 3 months, pay shipping, and activation fee totaling $47. I asked the lady if these 3 months would go on top of the 1 year subscription I purchased for the car kit, she said yes.

So we completed the transaction. Before hanging up I asked if I had to make the payments myself she said "No the payments are automatic deductions from your credit card." So I asked if that meant that the subscription will automatically renew and she said yes. So I thought You know what it wasn't free (had to pay $47) and it's a whole hassle so I'll just stick to my car kit and boombox." So I requested that we cancel the service (this was 10 minutes after placing the order from the same person) and she said I'll have to transfer you to cancellation (notice that she didn't say we cannot do that).

Cancellation department customer service said that we cannot cancel the order. I explained that the person I spoke to did not mention that it was non-refundable or that there were penalties. She said "Sorry we can not cancel" (like a robot). So I hung up called my bank and stopped the transaction and changed my card.

Before writing any reviews I thought I'd call and speak to a supervisor. I called (three days after) and was put on hold. The supervisor picked up and said "hello my name is.... I have your account in front of me and let me tell you that I will not tell you anything different than what you have already been told" so I replied "OK I thought I'd try one last time before writing reviews online, thank you." Here I am, very upset at the treatment I received from a huge company like XM. I have never ever received such treatment.

If you are an XM employee and would like to investigate this, refer to customer service call log that took place between 9:00 am and 9:20 am eastern time on the 7th December 2007. Please learn from my mistake and avoid this company. Good luck!

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BAD Customer Service
By -

CALIFORNIA -- My XM radio broke so I called them to cancel. The rep said I could buy a new "Roady" for only 30.00 since I was an existing customer. I agreed to that and they sent me one. I followed all the instructions to activate (I've done this before, remember) but the radio would not activate under any circumstances. They sent several signals to activate but nothing would work. In the meantime, I researched XM radio options and decided to buy a car stereo that already has XM built into it and then have it activated instead. Here is where the crappy Customer Service started.

Besides the usual "wait on hold" for way too long, each phase of the process requires you to tell the next CS customer all your personal info, why you're calling, etc. After going through this torture the last time I got put on hold it just hung up on me. Calling back, went through same tedious process and after finally getting to discuss the issue I really started getting pissed off. They tried to tell me that I could not return the Roady because it was a "promotional" item.

I told them the guy did not tell me this when I agreed to purchase it, that I wasn't trying to get out of my XM subscription and was fully prepared to remain a customer but that I didn't need the Roady and wanted to return it. The CS rep insisted that I had no choice but to replace it but under no circumstances could I return it for credit. I demanded to talk to someone else, explained it again to some upper level CS rep who once again told me "no way".

After trying to reason with these idiots they finally said it would be processed up to the next level and they would review the phone calls to see exactly what was said during the purchase of the Roady. Someone would call me back. OK. I waited over a week with no callback so I called again went through the same phone hell again and the person there once again said they could not take it back. I objected loudly enough that they gave me the number of the home office in Wash DC (I think) I talked to someone there, got same runaround, told them they sold me a defective radio and at no time was it ever mentioned that it was a non-returnable item.

I expressed my great disappointment that I had been a customer for 3 years, always paid on time, and still wanted to keep the service but they were going to let all that go for the price of a $30.00 radio. I talked to a Bonnie ** who said she would have to send this up the chain and somebody would call me back. So far that has not happened. Needless to say, I would NEVER recommend XM radio to anyone after dealing with their so-called "customer service".

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WATCH OUT for XM Radio billing! WOW!!!
By -

DETROIT, MICHIGAN -- I pay annually for XM service. This past October (09) was when my latest annual subscription was up. Due to the economy, I decided not to renew. I wrote "cancel" on the renewal form, mailed it in, and thought everything was finished. Boy am I surprised now to get a COLLECTIONS notice!!! This is for the past three months apparently as they have continued charging me! I called and thought I could explain the situation and get it resolved. No way. These folks didn't even want to listen. They kept repeating their standard talking points concerning having to "call in" to cancel.

Apparently, no written or other form of communication is allowed to cancel. You have to call or else they continue your service until they realize you aren't paying. Then they cancel the service and send you a bill and a collections notice for the remaining amount due. What a total rip off! I had planned on renewing my subscription at some point as the economy turns around, but YOU CAN FORGET THAT NOW XM!!! I am now a walking advertisement "against" XM or SIRIUS radio service. I figure I can at least affect a few folks regarding their service. Dear XM: Is this really worth $51.39 to you? Wow.

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XM Satellite Radio Rating:
Star Empty star Empty star Empty star Empty star
1.0 out of 5, based on 1 ratings and
119 reviews & complaints.
Contact Information:
XM Satellite Radio
1500 Eckington Place NE
Washington, DC 20002-2194
866-962-2557 (ph)
202-380-4500 (fax)
www.xmradio.com
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