A year ago I bought a Sportster Replay from Sirius for my truck. It worked great for about six months until the lights started going out on it. So I contacted Sirius and was told that they were out of them right now but one would be out to me as soon as possible. I give Sirius a lot of time, months of time and still never receive a radio. So I call them about three weeks ago and ask whats going on, wheres my replacement radio. The lady tells me that the woman I talked to the first time didn't know what she was talking about and I had to put down a deposit to get a new radio and such. So I said, gave her my information and I received a new radio within a week.

Well one of the first things that really irritated me was that I had to pay to ship the broken radio back. I've never had a company make me pay for shipping when it came to replacing a product that was defective. So I have been waiting a couple days until payday to send the old radio back to them through UPS. So tonight I'm driving around and notice the radio is making a really loud buzzing sound. Not only does it make a weird buzzing noise but also is causing the music to sound really crackled. I have the receiver plugged directly into my car stereo so it's not just being on a bad radio station frequency for a transmitter.

I am really irritated with Sirius right now for making me pay to ship their defective equipment back to them and for shipping me more defective equipment in return. I had the same thing happen about two years ago now with XM Radio with their MyFi unit. I went through 4 MyFi's until I finally had one that properly worked. It would always either be that the antenna did not work or the part where you plugged in the head phones. The worst part of that is once I finally had a good one I dropped it a couple months later and it was no longer useable. The thing is though, atleast with XM they didn't make me pay to ship the darn unit back and forth.

This situation really drives me crazy because I love my satellite radio, I don't know what I'd do without it. The regular air radio around here (Norfolk, VA) is awful, it's a bunch of stations that play the same 10 songs in a row.

Sorry had to rant...

 

i personally wouldnt buy a radio direct from sirius or xm, id go to a good electronics store that you know will be there for quite a while., thas my opinion though, it is too bad that they would do that though.

 

Actually I purchased it through Circuit City, should have purchased a warranty but it was some insain amount of money. I could have almost purchased another radio for as much as they wanted to cover it.

 

Its not just sirrius, its XM too, but I'll post that rant another day

 

It's not just them but it is ALL customer service in my opinion. Another example is: I wanted to get my wife a new phone for christmas (Treo 700P). Her contract with Verizon expires on Jan 04, 2007. Verizon refuses to give me the upgrade price for the phone ($250) and wants me to pay full retail ($700) for the phone because my contract is not up yet! I have been a customer since they were Airtouch and they won't even budge to help me..

So I feel your pain with bad customer service.

 

Sometimes telling them you plan on jumping ship as soon as the contract is over will get them to listen to you. I had a similar situation with Verizon and when I threatened to leave them, they relaxed a little bit. They don't want you to leave them, nor do they want you to tell your friends what bad service you got from them.

 

I did. I have a Ipod and download from Itunes. They also have pod cast etc. Better rotation than any radio station. Its better that a subscription IMHO.

 

That suprises me about VZW I used to get upgrades at the 18 month mark in a 24m contract

 

I used to have an XM radio in my truck -while I was out of town in August mom borrowed the truck and it was broken into at a sporting goods store parking lot. I called XM to let them know the radio was stolen and to cut off the signal. I spoke with "Chip" who was obviously a call taker in India. I don't blame him, he was just trying to make a living, but I couldn't hardly understand him and he sure as hell wasn't understanding what I was trying to tell him. I canceled XM right after that and switched to Sirius. While I think the music on Sirius is light-years ahead of what is on XM, the service is equally horrible. When are these companies going to figure out that saving a few dollars now by sending some jobs over seas is going to cost them much more in the future from all of the customers who ditch them due to lack of customer service?

 

My favorite thing about customer service, especially over the phone is when you get to talk to the next employee. That's always where you hear the famous words, "well they didn't know what they were talking about."

I had a fun experience at AutoZone one time where I went in and spent a couple hundred bucks. I paid with my debit card (swipped and keyed my numbers) and the guy said it did not go through properly the first time, so I reswiped and keyed the card. Later that night I check my checking account balance and I'm a couple of hundred dollars short. I call the bank to ask where the money went and the woman told me that I had made two transactions with AutoZone both for a couple of hundred dollars. The bank told me to go back to that store and ask for the manager who could refund me for the double payment to straighten things out. So I go back up there (actually had to go a few times to run into this guy, took 2 days) and said if it went through twice then I'd have two receipts and he wanted both. After arguing with this guy for a few minutes I finally called the bank and put him on the phone with them. I finally had my money returned to me after all this. You know after working in retail for a while it irks me now that the guy didn't even give me something like a discount on a future purchase or something. I figure if you barrow my money for a few days you could atleast toss me a bone or two.

I have had thoughts about switching back to XM after dealing with all this. It just went through my head though that I'd deal with the same crap if I switched back like I had done before. TXPSD, I totally agree with you on the music selection, especially in the rock genre. I could never find a rock station on XM that I could just sit and listen to for a couple of hours. Now I do think that XM has a better selection of country music, it's made me miss it a couple times, that and baseball. Then I started listening to the new NASCAR station the other day and it's really good. I just wish there was a way of getting the MLB packege on Sirius but MLB has a long term contract with XM.

 

That is a red mark against an otherwise great product.
I have never had to deal with Sirius' customer service, so I can't comment on the quality.
I have dealt with customer service of other outfits and much of it is a disgrace.

 

I have Sirius radio and I haven't listened to regular radio since I got it. My radio is a cheapie from wally world that is supposed to mount on a visor or where ever else.

Works great and I have had it since June. If it goes bad, I'll just buy another one.

As for customer service with Sirius, I have never had to use it. My only complaint with them was that they were running a deal where if you gave a radio to a friend and they activated it, you got a free month's service. One free month for every radio gave away and activated. Tell me how many people will go out and buy a 50 dollar or more radio and expect to save 13 bucks on the service?
They should offer that value of the radio...in my opinion.

 

drumman, i think its supposed to be, "hey, this radio is great, maybe i'll get some for christmas presents, and hey, awesome, i get a free month for myself because of it" i think that offer is really great, i realize you dont save that much money, but i have a few relatives that do a lot of driving and still have not gotten a satellite radio, so this deal works out real great for myself and them. jmo