XM Radio and why it sucks
A couple weeks back, someone rudely hit my car as it was parked on the street in front of my house. As a result, I’ve been in rental cars for a couple of weeks now. One of those rental cars was a brand new Cadillac DTS.
That car came with XM Satellite radio, and that gave me about a week to try it out.
Let me tell you, XM Satellite Radio is crap. I’m not even going to say that I think it is crap– I’m going to outright say that it is crap. Let me explain.
First, it just does not work very well here in Downtown Savannah. As I drove through the squares– very common for locals and even more common for tourists– XM cut out every 60 seconds or so, for at least 5-10 seconds at a time.
Now I know that trees block the signal, and I know that we have a lot of trees. But, I also know that local AM and FM radio stations have no signal problems here in Savannah. I also know that XM bills their product as digital radio. Fine, it’s digital. But who cares when it is basically unusable?
Every time the signal dropped, it showed me that XM is really a step backwards.
Another reason: Their music sucks. I basically listened to six or seven stations. Blues, reggae, classic rock, 60s, 70s, CNN, and some talk station.
I heard zero BB King songs on the blues station. I heard zero Buddy Guy songs on the blues station. I heard zero Muddy Waters songs. I heard zero Robert Johnson songs.
I heard many, many “new” blues songs by artists with less soul than the whitest white guy you’ve ever seen. Imagine Larry Bird singing blues. Or maybe Conan O’Brien. I imagine that would sound a lot like the crap XM plays.
Not only did XM play a very crappy selection of blues, but also in a week I heard several songs repeat several times. Blues is a huge genre. Let’s not repeat until we’ve played some of the classics, OK?
Another reason XM sucks: Their DJs suck. I don’t know where they got these guys, but they’re just terrible. They’re annoying, their sound quality is poor, and they fail to provide anything of value to the broadcast.
Here is the main reason XM Radio sucks: XM Radio sucks. OK, to expand: The sound quality sucks.
It really does. If you disagree, that is either because your ear is weak, or you are in denial that you were suckered by a marketing pitch and are paying for less-than-FM quality radio.
I’ve done some research. The research indicates that XM’s average bitrate is 64kbps. Their minimum is 32kbps, and their maximum is 80kbps.
NONE of these equal the quality of FM radio.
This is just like the digital cable myth. Everyone thinks that because it is digital, it must be better. Well, folks, I hate to break it to you but digital cable is actually digitally delivered cable. Basically, it is the cable companies’ way of saying, “Please, pay us more for lower quality.”
Don’t believe me? Fine. Just go ahead and keep watching your crappy digital cable with its poor picture on your overpriced lcd/plasma tv that can’t produce a picture at the same quality of a tube tv.
Ignorance is bliss, and marketing is gospel.
Mike
I agree 100% i just got a vw gti w/ 3 months of free xm included. To be honest I wasn’t even gonna give it a chance, but it was good to listen to world cup broadcasts while driving to work or somewhere else.
The quality sucks really bad, it’s staticky like a mis-tuned FM radio station. You can really tell when someone says the letter ‘S’ in a word (e.g. success). It sounds terrible! And you’re supposed to pay for this? There’s apparently XM HD or something which delivers 5.1 sound, which is kinda cool, but it’s still not every station and that makes it not worth it at ALL
128kbps mp3’s sound a lot better than the normal XM stream.
I gotta say i was really dissapointed.
I agree completely. I think that XM overstates the quality but I would comment that it is better that regular FM. My biggest problem with XM (I need to vent right now) is that the music selection sucks. When I first got XM I thought I was going to be enlightened. I thought I would be opened up to a whole world of great music I hadn’t heard before. Well there is a great deal of music I haven’t heard before but for the most part it is crap. Almost all of the stations have very limited play lists that are recycled over and over again. Many times I see the same song being played on 2 or 3 of the same stations at the same time. I stopped listening to xm for a while but when my ipod was stolen I was forced to revisit the hell that is XM. I have found myself driving to and from work (30 min each way) searching for something to listen to, as if I was up at 3 in the morning channel surfing on the tv. Many times now I have considered tossing the f*ing thing out the window and ridding myself of the torment I XM puts me through. I will not be renewing my subscription and I would suggest that anyone interested in XM borrow a friends for a while before purchasing an annual agreement.
Totally agree. Although, I have to disagree with the poster above who thinks the sound quality is better than FM. Its horrible here in Boston. FM sound quality is significantly better than XM.
I had a similar Ipod death experience, and ended up burning 6 cds of songs rather than listen to XM… Hah.
Just another testimonial to the bad sound of XM. On talk channels,every “s” ends up sounding like Stephen Hawking`s speech machine. You can run the treble all the way down,and then you get muffled audio that is over-sibulant! I decided to listen to talk only on AM,because even though treble is low,it at least sounds natural. Music on XM is sometimes passable,depending on the channel and song. But most music sounds watery,like “cooked” MP3s.
I have had XM for over two years and the sound does suck. (flat, tiny, dull) One reason is becuase they use crappy processing equipment and second the bandwidth is so low. Every new station means less bandwidth for the others. Most FM radio stations use a well known signal processor that begins with an “O” and ends with a “D” XM decided to use a cheaper brand. I hate listening now.. It drives me up the wall. Flat,tincan sounded crap..
I recently re-activated my XM for a road trip. I had a 3 month free trial when I bought my car but didn’t listen to it much. So I got online and it said try it month by month for $12.95 a month. I got my bill and they had charged me $55.00. After calling and waiting forever I got a guy named Jorge in Panama City Panama. Could hardly speak English and kept giving me the run-around and telling me I had signed up for the 3 month plan (even though my XM receipt states clearly MONTHLY. He said he would credit the difference back to my credit card and never did. Called back same story. When I asked the persons name in Panama this time I was told it was Susie. I asked for her last name for my records she said she couldn’t give it to me so I asked for her extension #, empluyee ID, first letter of last name and so on. Nope can give you any of that info. I asked her how many Susie’s worked there and she said a lot. So if I don’t get a credit this time who do I tell them I talked to? Just tell them Susie she said Anyway I’m cancelling as soon as get my credit. Oh by the way when I listen to XM there are commercials galore!! I thought it was supposed to be commercial free?? It’s all crap
Yeah I just got a new car with XM factory installed. I’ve had Sirius for years. Sirius is better in every aspect than XM. Reception is improved in large cities with repeater stations that allow to hear uninterrupted signals even in parking garages in downtown Austin. The programing and songs are 100% better and the DJ’s have a real background in music. If ever faced with the option get sirius.
pretty soon, none of what any of you are talking about will matter when these two join forces.
as a sirius subscriber, i’ll have to pay the price. i’m sure they’ll make everyone buy new equipment that has sirius (being the smaller of the two companies).
i’ll also have to listen to commercials on the xm music stations, where as i didn’t have to with sirius. everyone knows xm’s programming is terrible compared to sirius’.
xm even has their own music in between songs… who the hell wants to hear that? one time listening to it on tv (through direct tv, i believe), the rap station was on and i was listening to a guy rap about xm. you tell me if that’s not the most moronic thing you could possibly hear on a service you’re paying $13 a month for.
as soon as sirius becomes tainted with xm’s crap, that is when i will pull the plug on it and go back to burning cds to play in my vehicle.
I have to agree with you all on the sound,,a freind of mine brought in his sirius for us to listin too,,and my god,,it blew my xm away,,,i was sorry for getting it and listining to it for the last 2 yrs,also i reason i bought it was to here opie and anthony,,and thinking that you could say anything on it,,well,,how wrong was I,,they were suspened for 30 days,,what a bunch of shit,,xm does suck
The worst thing about XM is their customer service, or lack thereof. Everytime I call, I get someone in Calctta or Bangladesh who I can barely understand– or who is unkowledgable and/or outright lies to me just to get me off their line. The last time I called, I demanded to speak to someone in the United States and was hung up on. I called back and was finally given a number in Washington, D.C., which was a voice mail. I left a message and no one ever called me back.
I am tied into a contract for one year, and after that I am canceling the service for good.
After my three free months with my new car, I called to sign up for a year. Service lasted about a month, then I kept reactivating my radio online — no luck. I finally called XM and somebody in India told me I had CANCELLED my service when I actually called to START service. I politely said, “no, you’ve made a mistake. I didn’t cancel service, I started service.” And she insisted that “XM radio doesn’t make mistakes!” !!?? What? So she said I needed to pay an activation fee to start service and that it could not be waived. I told her I would not pay an activation fee for their mistake, but she said there was no other way to start service. I told her I would dispute the fee with my credit card company and make sure it was written into my “mistake proof” account that I would not be paying the activation fee because of their mistake. She was absolutely impossible to understand, and when I asked her to repeat things more clearly and slowly, she told me that I was not smart enough to know what was being said. Sorry, I don’t speak Hindi. XM radio is a a customer service nightmare. I never been so rudely treated by a company. My prediction: They will be out of business. There is no way people will put up with this kind of service to simply listen to the radio. My advice: pay for an iPod adapter in your car and listen to your own music without forking over exorbitant fees to a company who couldn’t care less about their customers.
I totally agree with this article, or blog entry, whatever you call it. I picked up a Skyfi2 receiver for next to nothing. Signed up for 3 months of service, and got bored of it in about a week. I did discover some good music on it, but I will agree most of it sucks so bad, I find myself turning on FM and finding better tunes. The 80’s station plays the worst tunes of that era, as does the 90’s station. The electronic music selection is really monotonous and could be much more diverse. I also agree about the blues station; they could play much better tunes.
The sound quality is the main reason I lost interest. There is no sound quality. I’m a bit of an audiphile, and I just can’t listen to it. The sound is compressed, often distorted, lacking in dimension, and with the odd digital artifacts every now and then (pops on transients, etc). I honestly prefer the sound of FM; analog still beats digital.
The reception for me also sucks, I get dropouts all the time. As soon as I “use up” my subscription, I am selling this unit.
XM sucks big time! I had it for almost a year both in my car and at home. Today I cancelled my whole account. Since end of July the signal in my car’s radio has been terrible. In fact during one song I lost the signal 5 or more times making it impossible to listen. I have been between the car dealer and on the phone with XM many, many times. The dealer says is XM problem and XM is telling me that it is the unit or antenna. I am tired of paying every month with no signal or a weak signal almost 100% of the times.
I hope many others cancel too.
JAT
I just subscribed to XM because they were boasting “near CD quality sound”. What a laughable, gigantic crock of S#%*!!! XM’s audio quality sucks donkey schlong. It doesn’t even come close to FM broadcast audio quality and it’s only marginally better than AM radio!!!! What a huge dissapointment.
We have had XM Radio for about 1-1/2 years and have invested in equipment for two cars and a motorcycle. At this point, I have not listened to XM Radio in my car for almost a year! The reception is absolutely terrible! The signal cuts in and out like crazy in northeast Ohio. We have not yet cancelled the service because of all the money we have invested in equipment, but I think we should just make the decision and get rid of this aggravation. We are very unhappy with XM Radio!
Just to let everyone know, “built-in” XM radio or “satellite ready” radios also suck. The sound quality isn’t any better than tuning your radio to an FM station. XM advertises itself on every channel which is very annoying.
Ok, lets go back to FM and hear the same crap (that is between idiot DJs, commercials, and stupid contest) we have been hearing for the past 30 years! Led Zeplin, ZZ Top and all the rest of the party smoker crap music. I mean give me a break. Is is going to kill u to hear something new? XM is ok with me.
I have had XM for a number of years now and no problems yet except the radios could be a bit better. I’ve known people that have had sirous and made the jump to xm just because the programming is better but that in itself is a matter of opinion. I do find it annoying to speak to someone in india or wherever their call center is they seem to speak the language pretty good but they definitely don’t understand it!!!!
I have had Sirius service with and S50 unit for 2 years now and it is awesome. Great music selection. Great portable unit that looks nice in my Audi. Very little DJ talk. Good reception. However, I recently bought a new car with built in XM radio and it is terrible. I don’t like the talk on the stations. I don’t like the music (I hear one or two good songs in 30 minutes). To top it off, half the time I switch on the sat radio, it says SAT RADIO NOT FOUND or LOADING or I only get the previews. I have tried re-synching the radio 3 times now and it won’t refresh the stations. Tech support is like “I dunno, uh, take it to the dealer”. When I called about the problem, the tech support guy tried to get me to sign up for 3 more years and sell me a new radio!?!? I am like, dude, my radio doesn’t work – DUH!!!!!
Go Sirius – Die XM
Had a rental in Las Vegas last weekend. XM sucked enough that I was pretty sure that googling “xm sucks” would find me a web site. Sure enough.
Dull sound. Many song repeats.
And… what’s with the commercials? Their web site states clearly “commercial free”.
I am extremly pissed at XM. I bought a RoadyXT 2 years back and the last 6 months their reception has been horrible. Cutting in and out and it said there was a ANTENNA problem. So I bitched to XM about the unit and they said it was my brand new home kit. So after wasting another $80.00 on a home kit guess what, it still sucks. So there was a huge boxing day sale and I got a new Roady for a steel with home kit and car kit, but this new Roady is worse than my old one!! I have Sirus on my satilite at home and seems to be good programming. But I love Opie and Anthony and as long as they are one the air I will support them.
Customer service sucks and the programming and DJ’s are each persons prefferance.
XM blows goats. O&A are keeping XM alive.
Lemme tell ya about their customer service: It is in Jamaica mon. How about some gonja mon. You’d have a better chance of scoring it than any satisfaction you will get with this customer service. XM radio’s customer service is in Jamaica. You can barely discern any English word as spoken by this pack of Jackels. XM’s CEO Gary Parsons is the leader of this menagerie and he should be taken to task (fired) for this operational debacle. The service is pathetic to say the least. I had to cancel my credit card because they decided to bill my card quarterly instead of sending me an invoice quarterly. I had my credit card changed to stop its unauthorized use by XM Radio. I told them if they wanted me to continue with their service they need to send me an invoice and I would pay by check. They in poor broken English informed me that that service will require a two dollar a month fee above the cost of the service. I PROMPTLY CANCELLED ANY FURTHER SERVICE. I suspect if this company had its operations and customer service in the United STATES their little extra fee wouldn’t be neccessary.
All customers of any so called United States Companies should demand that the company they are doing business with operate within our own countries borders. Outsourcing customer service outside this country should be outlawed and the least punishment should be a long lasting boycott by everyone bearing citizenship.
I couldn’t agree more with the complaints listed above. That is why I canceled my subscription today. The customer service guy starts asking me questions like, “What stations did you like?” and I tell him I want to cancel and not answer these questions. He asks why I’m canceling so I tell him, “It’s too expensive and your programing sucks.” So he tells me I can have all radios activated for $77 dollars a year. Now I’m mad because I really feel like I’ve ripped off – I’ve been overcharged by more than 100 bucks in the past. He tells me this is a special offer since I can not afford XM anymore. Now I’m angrier, “You have no idea what I can and can’t afford and if you remember I told you your programing sucks.” Nothing stops this guy and I keep telling him I just want to cancel. I’m not kidding when I say it took more than half an hour just to cancel my subscription.
Avoid! Avoid! Do not use XM!!!
Got xm today, thank god I did not activate it. It came with 3 radio stations (Politics, News, and some other channel) the sound quality was HORRIBLE! Also, it would drop out every few seconds, even though I had the home antenna connected to it. I decided not to get xm, stay with FM people!
Beware the automatic subscription renewal. When they call you for a renewal, the sales rep cannot take a cancellation no matter how many times you demand it. They will then give you three months automatic at the highest subscription rate. XM marketing is a scam. Any other outfit would have wound up in court already.
You do realize that yes it IS digital, but it says right in the documentation you receive when you sign up that you need a clear view of the sky for best service… Just like any other satellite service. Does DirectTV work if you put the dish under a bunch of trees? Nope, it sure doesn’t.
Thanks for the comment, Ryan (and everyone else I haven’t thanked!).
The satellite television analogy doesn’t really apply. Satellite TV is not advertised as a mobile service, nor has the public used it as a mobile service for decades like they have with radio.
I just checked out the XM site. I went through the order process as if I were a customer, right up until the point where I put in a credit card. Nothing about trees, clear view of the sky, or anything of the sort. So I read their FAQ. Surely “how is the reception” has to be a frequently asked question. But no, nothing about it in the FAQ.
As a matter of fact, of all the people I’ve talked to who have XM, more than half are disappointed in the reception of their XM system. I’m yet to have one person say, “But when I signed up they clearly explained to me that the reception might not be that great, so even though my XM doesn’t work as I expected, I’m still a satisfied customer.”
What I did note at the XM website, however, was that the product is called “XM Radio,” and that it is billed as “Beyond AM, Beyond FM.” Well, maybe, just maybe, that slogan could hold true, but only in a very limited scope.
A radio’s primary function is to receive signals, amplify those signals, and output those signals via a speaker. In terms of comparing XM to AM, I can see two advantages that XM might have, only one that takes it “beyond” radio. There is no skywave in XM radio, something that plagues AM radio, particularly at night. That is a benefit. Likewise, AM and big cities don’t mix well. Try picking up the 50,000 watt WLS-AM from a skyscraper in Chicago and you won’t get that great of a signal, especially considering you’d be within 30 miles of the transmitter. Of course, if your window doesn’t face the satellite, reception would likely be negatively impacted. Likewise, if a skyscraper sat between you and the bird, your signal obviously cuts. Sure, they have FM backup in some markets. But receiving my music via FM doesn’t scream “beyond FM” to me.
I’ll stick with my good ol’ trusty AM. I can get local coverage at any time of the day from anywhere in my house and anywhere in the city with no dropouts and, most importantly, no monthly fee. It sounds just about as good as the talk feeds on XM to most people, and to me it sounds better. AM is warmer and softer, while satellite radio is cold, sterile, and fatiguing do to insane over-compression.
Thanks for the comment!
Hi folks, Mike here (this is my blog
).
It’s been 22 months since I last tried XM. As you may recall, I had a $40k – $50k Cadillac as a rental for several weeks as my car was being repaired, and it included XM.
Well, I’m trying XM again.
Now, I’m not paying for it, of course. I bought a brand new car, and it includes 3 free months of XM. So, for the next three months, I will reevaluate XM.
So far, after about a week, I am just as disappointed as I was before. I had hoped that their antennas had improved. I had hoped that they had increased their buffers a bit to prevent dropouts. I had hoped that the sound quality had improved. I had hoped that the number of commercials was reduced, or at the very minimum maintained.
My hopes were wrong.
Take, for example, the 2.9 mile ride I made today from home to the dead center of downtown Savannah. In the 2.9 mile ride– 5.8 miles round trip– XM dropped out no less than a dozen times. The dropouts ranged from about one second all the way up to about 20 seconds. That is pretty bad. In the same amount of time, judging from past experience, I would have had zero dropouts for a total of zero seconds with either AM or FM. Beyond radio indeed.
I realized another disappointment with XM, though, that I hadn’t noticed before. I was on the road this morning before six o’clock. I had looked up the programming at that hour, and learned that XM rebroadcasts my favorite radio show, Coast to Coast AM, at that time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember exactly which channel the program was on.
That left me channel-flipping, quite a dangerous proposition while driving. So before I pulled away from my house, I tuned into the talk section. There are four or five channels in a row, all dedicated to talk. This is when I noticed the problem.
When XM goes to commercial– and talk programs do it often– the information provided by XM changes. Hit the info button during a commercial and you’ll likely see the display say “Dinovite,” one of the current products being advertised heavily on syndicated talk radio.
Come on now. These folks can send me audio signals from space, but they can’t realize that when I hit the info button, I want to know which program is running, and not which commercial is currently on? Lame.
If I’m flipping through stations, do I care what commercial is running? I think that is a big, resounding, universal “HELL NO.”
In my eyes, XM still sucks. Sorry. Maybe it’ll improve in the next few years and I’ll try again. But I’m not counting on it.
Mike
I just want to add why I think XM Sucks bigtime. I have tried to cancel my subscription and have been hung up on 4 times. What a great company this is – so professional.
Hello all. XM Radio is the most unprofessional corporation in the county and I would like to personally put on a campaign to take them down! I have just spent two of the most frustrating days on the phone with these bastards and they are the most crooked individuals I have ever worked with in my 61 years on this planet.
If anyone can give me some pointers on how to irritate them as much as they have irratated me, I would greatly appreciate it. The lied to me several times and transferred my calls over a dozen times to different departments , etc, just wishing that I would give up. It was unbelievable.
Any ideas are appreciated. THEY SUCK!!!
Greg,
You are right – of all the companies that have done bad to this nation, the one that messed up your phone transfer is clearly unAmerican. I mean come on! I cannot think of any other company who has lied in the United States PERIOD!
I also think that this is the worst company in the whole country – not just your county.
Big Deal – The real deal in NH!
Go Reagan!
XM Does Suck – They advertise selling the service at a monthly rate, then bill you in full (I selected 3 years at $9.99 MONTHLY RATE – they billed my card $360). When I called to complain, the said the “monthly rate” was just an illustration of the average of the cost spread over 36 months. I said I understand basic math, and if they wanted to show a really low rate, why not just divide the $360 into a by-the-minute rate, then it will look really low. Bottom line – they are deceptive. I hope a meteor slams into their satellite.
Good luck trying to cancel XM. You cannot cancel online, OH NO, This would lead to Zero users. You have to call to their outsourced support. But you cannot really call it support. You best have a good hour to talk to a live person, their music on hold was enough to make be scream. My advice, music online is free, has a much better mix, and most of all… NO CUSTOMER SERVICE PEOPLE TO TALK TO. Avoid XM radio at any expense. Don’t even go for the 3 month trial, you will regret it.
Agree 100%. It’s no mistake that this industry of satellite radio is losing money. They don’t have their customers (or had millions of ex-customers)best interest at heart. Music selection totally sucks. Who wants to hear 19 channels of baseball? Zero NFL coverage. The audio coverage is terrible even on a clear day. Go under a bridge or overpass & the signal drops out. Customer service…..horrible. Their service agreement contract is very shady on it’s terms & guidelines. They even have a built-in section totally devoted to resolving disputes & how much they want to control the terms of the arbitration hearing. I’m hassling with them over $30 of fees that I don’t owe but it looks I’m not alone & will have to pay it to avoid the negative collection on my credit.
I’ve had xm for about a week, listened to it 1/2 hour and was done. What junk music, nothing good. 100+ channels of junk. Bad sound, bad signal, bad djs. Funny thing was the fight to get a discount, I started off hating them for their sucky customer service. Finally signed up on line, found some codes to get a discount and still hate it. If xm was free I still would not listen to this sorry excuse for a company. Guess I better get started cancelling now.
I had xm radio subscription for the last two years, i tried to cancel my service. Every time i called to cancel i would be on hold upwards of 20 minutes each time i called to cancel. I was a full year subscriber and paid by the year. I was issued a new credit card that wasn’t on file so i let my year contract lapse because i couldn’t get a hold of a live person to cancel. So then i started getting an automated call every single day. I would answer than be directed to a live person after holding for a few minuted. Than i would explain my story and then again they would need to transfer me to yet another person in order to cancel the service. Which i was on hold for another 10min, so i would hang up i don’t have time in my schedule to be on hold for 20 min to cancel a service thats already been canceled due to my credit card. They called again today, so i went through the whole hold process and talked to the first person who than transferred me to the second person, who tells me that i have a $12.43 balance on my account. How can that be if i paid for the year. They said we left your service on and you need to pay for what you used. Why would they leave my service on if they cant charge me for it? So i asked the customer service lady (Gabby) and her response was because we left your service running. I said so you leave people on hold for an hour and they have to wait to cancel your service and if they hang up its their fault, her response was surprisingly ‘yes’. You cant expect people to hold for 10min or more just to cancel their service, and i was on hold much more than that. Thats my money i pay for phone service to stay on hold to try and cancel a service thats already canceled, just to find out i have a $12 balance because they decided to leave my service running without my permission.
I got a new Camaro SS and XM SUCKS RAW
never loaded after more than 6 attempts, they can GTH, their answer is to take my car back to the dealer, well ‘FY’ XM.
The agreement for xm radio reads like a bad credit card agreement. They automatically extend your contract and write all the rules. I’m glad i read it before i subscribed. I will never use their service. It is a scam of the worst type. Xm radio is an organized unethical scam on the customer.
BEWARE OF XM RADIO – XM RADIO SUCKS, THEY HAVE THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER AND THEY RIPPED ME OFF TO BOOT!!! THEY OFFERRED TO REPLACE MY LOST SKYFI 3 FOR $9.99 THEN CHARGED ME $39.99. I CALLED THEM UP IMMEDIATELY (LITERALLY WITHIN MINUTES OF PLACING THE ORDER AND SEEING THE ACTUAL CHARGES) AND I TOLD THEM TO CANCEL THE ORDER, DO NOT SEND THE RADIO AND CREDIT THE CHARGES BACK TO MY ACCOUNT. THEY REFUSED AND TOLD ME TO RETURN THE ITEM WHEN I RECEIVED IT (UPS). I RETURNED IT BUT THEY ONLY REFUNDED THE COST OF THE RADIO PLUS TAX AND NOT THE SHIPPING FEES. HAS ANYBODY EVER HEARD OF A COMPANY THAT TREATS IT’S CUSTOMERS LIKE THIS??? THEY MADE THE ERROR SO WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO PAY SHIPPING FEES???
Anyway, I bought a new car that came with the 3 month trial. I had planned to keep the service, so I put my credit card on file, and was told that it would be billed at the end of the trial. No problem so far. About 2 months into the trial, I changed my mind, and called XM to cancel, which was done with little fanfare. 3 month trial ended, and my service was disconnected about a week later. All is great, then a month later, my online banking showed a charge of $16.12 from XM. I checked my radio in the car, and there was no service, so I called XM, thinking it’d be a simple fix, “oops, we’re sorry, we’ll get that refunded right away.” That’s not how it happened. At first, the automated system found me quickly, and sent me to a csr, who wasn’t able to find my account. Not with my phone number, my radio ID, my email address, but finally with my name and address, she found me. My trial expired on April 26, 2009 and that charge was for late fees. Well, except for the fact that my trial BEGAN on April 26, because that’s the day I got the car. 20 minutes on the phone with these people, two transfers, and no explanation, other than that it’s late fees. Finally, I just told them to ensure that my account won’t be charged again, and they assured me it won’t, since I’d canceled service. Maybe this is how XM is staying afloat… Charge people petty amounts that nobody is going to take too much time to argue over, and train your CSR’s at the school those monkeys on the careerbuilder.com commercials are trained at, and you’ve got it made. XM sucks, and I wish more people would realize that XM and Sirious now have created a monopoly that won’t get any better.
X-M really sucks. Received letter in the mail on Saturday, it said we want you back. I thought Thank God, my service was finally canceled for good. On Tuesday my bank account is debited for an entire year of XM service. I call screaming of course, I was told the transaction is pending and they can cancel the debit. Then of course she sold me 5 months for 20 bucks, I fell for it. Today (Thursday) the original transaction was not canceled and now I have another debit for 20 bucks. Again I call, pressed zero for operator because I refuse to talk to 20 different people. They answer I say cancel my service now, they said what is the problem, I say you suck cancel my service now. It will take 4 to 7 weeks to receive my refund. That is how they are still in business, earning interest on everyone’s refunds. I also filed a complaint with the better business bureau.
I am a ex-supervisor at one of the call centers that sales XM radio. I have started a boycott against XM. Visit my web site for more info noxm.8k.com
I just got hung up on by a customer service rep after 46 minutes of talking and being on hold. They mistakenly deactivated my account, and now they can’t figure out how to re-activate it. This is the third time I’ve tried to straighten it out with them over the past 3 months. XM radio customer care sucks!
Am I the only one that thinks the DJ’s on 70’s on 7 are total idiots? Their jokes are about as interesting as listening to a first grader.
I have had XM for years now, dont remember DJ’s in the beginning. Subscription expires in November. DJ’s go or I go.
I liked the service. I tried to renew on line. Gould not gain access. Renewed by phone. When operator could not provide access she & he (her “supervisor”) opened a new account. When the new account continued to show a balance after many calls, (and broken promises regarding no more bills), I canceled. I have not received the refund after numerous calls, including those in which I was placed on hold, on which the operator hung up and on which the operator claimed that the request was never made. This company’s business has gone from providing service to screwing the customer.
Thanks for the feedback I have read. I agree – There is bno customer service and the phone calls are routinely put in lombo unless you are calling to send them money. I just hung up and will forgo ever activating after my tial has ended.
THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST WORST COMPANY I HAVE DEALT WITH…they give nothing but constant frustration and unanswered or vague answers to my questions. XM customer service tells you one thing and then when you press them they give you a different answer. Also the “supervisors” are NEVER available. The one representative hung up on me today. She refused to answer my questions regarding billing. $2/statement for paper billing? Exhorbitant additional charges for monthly billing? What they are hoping is that they can run the credit card payment through on autopayment and you will never notice the improper billing because you’d have to take the initiative to log into their lame site with vague billing info to review the charges.
They are very shady for such a large company and it seems to me that the listener care-LESS department is filled with incompetent people who barely can speak english. They have overcharged me and made such a mess of my billing that no one can make sense of it or explain it. Also, I tried to update my contact information and credit card info at least 3 times to no avail. Then they turned off my service for non-payment because they can’t seem to figure out how to do data entry. The online account management and website is a joke. They had to send and resend the signal 3-4 times before the nav traffic would turn on. Just pathetic!
I HATE XM CUSTOMER SERVICE with the white hot passion of a thousand suns……………… I recently rid myself of my 2001 volvo S60 since it was starting to cost me more then it was worth. My new car has a built in XM tuner, so, naturally, it would make sense to transfer the service. Well, XM thinks its okay to charge a transfer fee of $15 to send out their signal to the new radio. I didn’t add or change anything to my account except my car. It’s a one radio to one radio move and they feel its okay to bill me for that. Pathetic.
To make matters work, the assbags at xm can’t get it right the first time. Of course not, so, in addition to wasting money on this transfer, i wasted over an hour of my time on two separate occasions.
I can say i truly hate XM customer service. I look forward to the day they have some competition. I will be jumping ship as fast as you can imagine. ScrewYou XM. I hope you continue to lose more customers……. cause you just lost me. Hope that was worth $15 dollars to you.
Thank you all so much for your comments. I have just purchased a new 2011 Honda Accord that has the XM option that I will NOT be taking advantage of. I hope XM is listening here. Bad customer service & bad product means no more new customers!!
XM Customer service is non-existant. After holding several times I finally got a guy with very poor English in India that could not find my account, then would not get me to a supervisor (no available). Told me someone would call, WRONG. These guys are terrible. I am cancelling my XM.