XM Radio: Xtremely Mediocre in every way

Originally Posted on 11/20/07

Big companies often take advantage of the consumer and get away with it. I'm sure most people out there have been shoved aside by a phone operator with your personal bank or credit card company, maybe over-looked in a negative way by your internet or cable provider. Some may have even been repeatedly charged too much for various services. The problem is we as consumers normally don't have any course of action and often just deal with it to iron out the situation quickly. That way we can get on with our day to day lives. Well, this time I'm sharing my story on how I got taken advantage of by a big company, XM radio.

XM Radio, a great invention and new source of entertainment in various categories including all genres of music, sports, weather, traffic, talk radio and so much more proved to me they have no clue when it comes to customer service. I don't see myself ever going back to XM (maybe another satellite radio but not XM). After all, they owe me $27.46, an apology for making me call them four times over a ridiculous bill (that should've never existed in the first place), for sending me to collections and finally for continuously sending invoices and notices to an address I changed with them months ago! You see, it was a cycle of wrong doing that resulted in many calls and apologies from XM supervisors only to never end until I just paid a bill that didn't exist. What a consumer nightmare... Let me start from the top so that my fellow XM Radio users can be considered warned.

It started over two years ago when I purchased / leased my first car on my own. It's a nice car and happened to come with a FREE subscription to XM Radio. Well, after a few weeks I found that I really liked this new found radio option and really enjoyed the XM Baseball station with 24-hour baseball news and channels with all the games from around the league. So I decided to keep it pay the $12+ dollars a month, which usually invoiced for three or four months at a time for the next few months of service.

Subsequently things were great for the first two years of the relationship. Then we hit a slight bump in the road as my lease was up and I decided to start a new lease with a different car but the same make. This car didn't have the FREE XM offer but did still have the capability of hosting a satellite radio provider. This would however require more work on the dealers part and I just didn't have the time. So later that week I made the call. I called XM to explain the situation and see if they could activate from the car itself or if another option existed? When I realized this had to be done by a dealer I immediately phoned XM to tell them I wanted to cease service until it could be activated again. It was actually perfect timing since my service subscription was paid through that month (July 07). I explained I would be back but would have to start from scratch when I have time to schedule an activation through my dealer.

Well, a couple of months go buy and I start to get calls from some random number. I answered it a few times but it was a recording that didn't state who they were just that they weren't a telemarketer. I thought to myself, yeah right, I'm not calling you back. The calls kept coming and finally I got so feed up that I did call to complain. It turned out it was a collection agency seeking $27.46 for XM Radio. I have no clue where the amount came from as I hadn't received an invoice in months. Reason being is somehow the invoices were going to an old address. I figured that out when I called and my new address wasn't in the system any longer.

To trim this awful story down, I called twice and sat on hold, got bounced around to probably every supervisor there but was always told don't worry about the payment, we will take care of it and contact the collection agency. This same call took place in back to back months and yet I was still getting calls from the collection service. You could imagine my frustration and lack of enthusiasm to jump back on a 45 minute call with XM out of principal. I almost did but decided screw it, I'll pay the damn bill with the collection place and move on. But I did want to warn all XM users as I've been pulled around a few times by card companies or cable providers, etc... but this was the worst! Hands down, XM needs to figure it out! Thankfully the bill wasn't much but I believe in good customer service. I'm glad Sirius is winning this war and hopefully when and if they do merge, it will be with the Sirius name and not XM!