Sirius XM vs the "other guys"

I wish there was more bandwidth so I could enjoy listening to it better in a foreground application. With my broadcast background, I am sensitive to codec artifacts and can hear them pretty well.
The web based application offers a much higher selectable bitrate. Admittedly, it's not like Tidal HiFi, but I use it mostly at home for new music exposure anyway.
 
Reporting in on the price of renewing, something I track carefully. This is cross-posted from the XM Fan board, which I highly recommend to S/XM subscribers.

My car was due to roll over next week, and when I called in tonight to get the six month deal - which is what I've had - I got it again with no argument. With taxes and fees it came to $56.70 for all-access. (Car + internet.) The breakdown was $50 for the service, the balance is taxes and fees. This is the exact price S/XM is offering to turn on new radios or reactivate lapsed ones, but as always, you have to ask.

What I don't understand about their fee structure is - subscribing for a year is more than twice as expensive as subscribing for six months, and not by a small amount. Using the numbers which were pitched to me when I called in it would cost me $120 plus taxes and fees for a year, or $20 more than two six month renewals. That's a 17 percent premium.

A company in a competitive marketplace would pay me to subscribe for a longer period, i.e., discount off the rate for the shorter renewals. That's obviously not the case with S/XM, and I assume they're trying to capture people like me with the allure of not having to renew every few months. I'd even go for it if the difference was marginal, say, an extra $5. But $20? No way.

Or maybe the answer is - they know most people are math challenged and just plain won't notice.

s.
 
What I don't understand about their fee structure is - subscribing for a year is more than twice as expensive as subscribing for six months, and not by a small amount.
However smarmy it may be, that's the "genius" behind auto-renewal subscriptions--which I gather is for 1 year.
Or maybe the answer is - they know most people are math challenged and just plain won't notice.
Don't notice...yep. It's whip or be whipped and in the long run they are just playing short odds .
:whip::music:
 
The web player has no extreme option. I bought a Macbook just to try it out and no big difference.
Indeed. FWIW....there is no SQ adjustment option for the web player. The web player’s standard quality (ad supported accounts) is AAC 128kbit/s, and 256kbit/s for Premium accounts.
 
Good day to renew.

I called in to re-up my wife's car for $25 for 5 months and was offered $69 for the year. (Obviously, this is Select, not All Access.) Rep said it was a one day special.

$69 included everything, taxes, fees, etc. It's maybe very slightly more than the $25 for 5 deal, (which was really $27 and change when taxes and fees were rolled in) but close enough that it's worth it to not have to call for 12 months.

The deal was not available for All Access.

s.

(cross-posted from XMFan)
 
Good day to renew.

I called in to re-up my wife's car for $25 for 5 months and was offered $69 for the year. (Obviously, this is Select, not All Access.) Rep said it was a one day special.

$69 included everything, taxes, fees, etc. It's maybe very slightly more than the $25 for 5 deal, (which was really $27 and change when taxes and fees were rolled in) but close enough that it's worth it to not have to call for 12 months.

The deal was not available for All Access.

s.

(cross-posted from XMFan)
One day special, my ass. They are bugging me constantly to renew after I dropped both of our cars.
 
Quick story about my $69 deal, noted above. I'm not sure it really existed.

Back on the 5th, I re-upped my car for, (rounding), $56. That's All Access, 5 months.

Today, I called in to renew my wife's car for five months Select, for what I figured would be roughly $27. Instead I was offered the $69 yearly rate, which I took.

Late this afternoon, I noticed I was no longer able to stream. When I looked at my accounts (I keep everything on separate accounts) S/XM had applied the $69 annual to my car, thus negating the renewal of a few days ago and killing my streaming service.

My wife's car, meanwhile, was not renewed and would roll over in two days.

Now in fairness, maybe the mistake was mine. Maybe I gave the S/XM rep the account for my car, not my wife's. I don't think so, but anything is possible.

All that said, I spent a miserable 45 minutes on the phone untangling the mess - do they have any native English speakers left? - but ultimately got my car reupped as All Access for six months, and my wife's car for five months.

And the rep who straightened things out could find nothing, nothing about a discount rate today. I wonder if the original rep saw that my car had just reupped and offered me a 'deal" of $69 which essentially wiped out the $56 I spent a few days ago. S/XM stood to make $130 off of me for a year on my car, had I not caught the problem.

S/XM is a hassle, whether you're paying full price or doing what I do, constantly negotiating for a better rate.

s.

edit - And...I as right. There was no special "43 percent off" deal today. When I got my purchase confirmations back from S/XM this evening, the first transaction of the day shows me buying a Select package for $109 plus $15 for music royalties, offset with a $56 credit for my renewal of a week back.

Mind you, the rep on the phone described this as a 'today only deal' for $69. All it really was, was something close to their regular discounted price, minus what I paid a few days back. I should have realized what was going on from the git-go; that said, the guy who sold me was on the far side of deceptive with his pitch.
 
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I spend a lot of hours in my car each day so I couldn't live without my Sirius. Not that it sounds great but I like the variety.
 
braincramp -

I agree, though the sound quality continues to be pretty near a deal breaker. Do you negotiate with them - I hope - or pay full list?

s.
 
I wish there was more bandwidth so I could enjoy listening to it better in a foreground application.
Me too. I've been listening to more metal music on SiriusXM, content which I am intimately familiar with, and I can now clearly hear the difference between SiriusXM and my home system. It's a bit of downer but overall I'm happy with SiriusXM for car audio.
 
braincramp -

I agree, though the sound quality continues to be pretty near a deal breaker. Do you negotiate with them - I hope - or pay full list?

s.

No, I don't haggle. For the package I get I'd save about $75 a year. It's just not worth it to me.
 
Anyone see the new web player for XM? Can't seem to like it no matter what, the old one worked and looked 10 times better than this new one....my 2 cents...:cool:
 
So the latest thing now is SiriusXM using robo-callers. I have had a call each day this week now. Did a reverse trace and found many complaints about this telephone number and it being a sales robo-call. I had considered activating the 60 day trial in our other car now, but now I won't bother (especially with the horrible sound quality I had on my last trial). I reported the number as spam and it is now blocked, as of today. They have turned into a true bottom-feeder with that move, IMHO.
 
I rather like the new UI. I select the "Expand" view. Enjoy the progress and jump indicator at the bottom.
 
I canceled my Sirius XM account only because of their predatory marking practices. 1) "Start your service now 6 months for $34.10, after 6 months your account will be AUTOMATICALLY RENEWED AT THE THEN PRICE!!!! 2) I received multiple bills for $130 that had absolutely no information about what I was buying. 3) I got the deluge of daily robo-calls.

I like 3 to 6 channels enough that to continue service at a reasonable price. But I DUMPED THEM!
 
I got a free trial with my most recent car purchase. Out of 200+ channels, 190 of them were of zero interest to me, and of the remaining dozen, most just played music which I already had in higher quality on my portable player. There were maybe 2-3 channels which potentially brought new music in, but the audio quality is beyond awful. The channels which ought to have higher bandwidth - the classical and jazz programming - are run at such a low bitrate that you can hear artifacts on almost any instrument (something that sounds like a tremolo modulation) and with the HF rolloff apparently set around 2-3K.

There's no point in subscribing just to use the web app, because the only place I'd even be remotely interested in having access is in my car. $100 per year will buy me a fair amount of high quality CDs or downloads which I can put on my portable. Interestingly, their system screwed up some time back and I was receiving 'free' service for a couple of years. When it finally straightened itself out, I barely missed it. That convinced me I didn't need to send them my money.
 
Personally, the only redeeming content on Sirrius/XM is their talk/sports/comedy. As for music discovery, it's lackluster and tired. Much better options with other free and paid providers. That said, they do have a following with novice users given it's ease of use "built in" presence.
 
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