XM / Sirius Radio - Who's still got them?

[SnowAviation]

I was wondering who is still with satellite radio? The last two times I renewed

the price went up and frankly spending $12 a month for the service when I first

subscribed was pushing it, with the latest $2 increase it was up to around $17

a month, too much for me - "I'm Out!" It's not that I can't afford it but they

just merged and promised no price increases, then out of no where there pops

up this "U.S. Music Royalty Fee"? Yeah, right.

When my subscription was up in November I said sayonara to the monopoly.

So I got to wondering: how many folks still think it's a reasonably priced service?

 

[Harvey]

My subscription ran out on December 31st and I will not renew.

It's just not worth it.

 

[jmdaniel]

I got an XM Skydock for Christmas, which allows me to move XM from vehicle to vehicle, using my iPhone as the tuner, so to speak. That will allow me to cancel the subscription in my Corvette. I like the service, as I think local radio sucks, and I hate commercials.

 

[Randy]

They have me hook, line, and sinker. I can't let it go.

 

[johndaub]

I was wondering who is still with satellite radio? The last two times I renewed the price went up and frankly spending $12 a month for the service when I first

subscribed was pushing it, with the latest $2 increase it was up to around $17

a month, too much for me - "I'm Out!" It's not that I can't afford it but they

just merged and promised no price increases, then out of no where there pops

up this "U.S. Music Royalty Fee"? Yeah, right.

When my subscription was up in November I said sayonara to the monopoly.

So I got to wondering: how many folks still think it's a reasonably priced service?

I bought the lifetime subscription for my Garmin at $400. This was before the royalty fee so I have not had to pay that. The royalty fee would have forced me out if I was monthly. I dropped XM in both cars and used the credits from that to subsidize the lifetime subscription on the Garmin. Anyhow, I can just move my Garmin to the cars so I really have lifetime in all 3 vehicles.

 

[BwanaDik]

I too think it's getting overpriced. But as said above, the local radio sucks worse than the overpriced XM. I also hate the "DJ's" jabbering between songs since the merger. But I also can't stand listening to the Farm Report and religious wingnuts on the radio when I get into the hinterland. Maybe just listen to the wind instead?

I'd cancel if there were some sort of competition to change to. Is there a complaint area at the FCC?

 

[Alex]

A few friends go under my account for service so I have 5 lines. I asked to drop their service after the ridiculous price hike and they offered 1 year for $77 on each line. Their customer service now reduced to phone prompts eventually leading to a rep reading from a screen. I've been a customer since they started providing service and it seems like the company has gone downhill since.

 

[r1byker]

I've got it in three vehicles and plan on keeping it. So far, the convenience and variety outweigh the price increase for me. Besides, I don't think my wife would let me give it up, and she's the penny-pincher.

 

[Randy]

The way I look at it, there are many months where I spend more time on the road than I do in front of the TV. I spend over $100/month on cable (hi def, premium channels, etc). I spend a lot of time in rental cars in unfamiliar territory and my Garmin 2730 w/XM (same one I use on the bike) gives me the nav I need and the XM to listen to rather than trying to find one of the 3 radio stations in farm country. The few bucks I spend on XM seems like a bargain when you look at it that way.

One of the reasons why it's such a hard pill to swallow is that we spent most of our lives having free radio.

There have been mentions of XM/Sirius being a monopoly. Not quite. If you say the product is satellite radio, then yes, they are the only source (well, technically, Muzak still exists as a satellite offering). However, the product is audio entertainment and there are many other sources of audio entertainment.

 

[JT 384]

I live in the bush so far I have to come out to hunt. I don't think I could go without it. We have one local station and its really bad, when Sat radio came out I signed up right away and that has been almost 6 years now. I couldn't go back to local crap.

I wish the price was lower, but like everything else its going up.

 

[bmwhd]

I too am a hopeless addict. I have a portable setup for the bikes in a tank bag that moves with me. Also at home and in the car. Worth its weight in gold out on the road.

 

[djon]

I had XM in one vehicle and sirius in another and wanted the multi-radio discount 6 months after merger. That wouldn't work because billing is seperate. Hmm Then they added royalty fees and I dropped to new talk and sports on one, and had I paid attention that one of the news channel is a premium channel and was not included, go figure. Pulled an old Roady 2 out of the junk drawer and signed it up to XM for multi-radio discount and dropped sirius.

If i could do 2 sirius radios that would be my preference, but hardware conversion is the stopper on that one for now.

Now I will setup bike for the roady 2 to handle the Scala Rider G4's when they come in , it has changed again to sometime in Feb. or March.

 

[JamesK]

I too spend a lot of time on the road, on the bike and there really is not much of an alternative, you can only listen to the same songs so much. Also the basic XM Weather is helpful...

 

[Ignacio]

I too spend a lot of time on the road, on the bike and there really is not much of an alternative, you can only listen to the same songs so much. Also the basic XM Weather is helpful...

Ditto this case with my rallies. 750MB of MP3 files just ain't enough to get by for me...I would go nuts. The weather part helped strategically multiple times.

I activated XM and used it only for June to September of 2009 and then turned it off. Their making it easy to sign up online and burying the phone-number-only method to turn it off generally pissed me off. Then when they woke me up the other morning from a sound sleep to get me to come back....I'm loathed to think about going back. They represent the absolute worst in customer service and shenanigans.

If I could live without the weather I'd go for an Ipod for rallies.

 

[johnny80s]

30 gigs on my ipod works fine for me. Most of the time I just run off an 8 gig card in my zumo and never have come close to filling it up. I change stuff up a lot too and download free podcast and such to listen too.

Free is good.

 

[juniorfjr]

I always had trouble with the reception with the XM and then Sirius. Also didn't like what I had to do to amplify the Sirius to the Autocom, boostaroo, batteries, etc. So I canceled and bought the Jensen AM/FM radio, which works fairly well until I get in to the mountains. But then I have a I pod shuffle, and Ipod touch with lots of different music choices.

 

[Steve in Phx]

For those of you who signed up for the $77-per-year deal, go read the fine print.

When the contracted period is up (is it one year?), the rate goes up to something like $37 per month unless you change your plan back.

I forget the details but this was just last week when I purchased only one month to try it out instead of the $77 deal.

 

[Crash Cash]

I originally bought it for the "no commercials" and now just about every one of my favorite commercials had ads of some sort or another. That doesn't fly when I'm paying out the bunghole for it. So I canceled it.

Interesting thing is my card expired soon after, and I got an email from Mastercard that they'd attempted to re-up my subscription w/o my permission. They are truly scum of the earth.

 

[3000psi]

Got rid of it. Replaced it with last.fm which I get anywhere I have a cell signal or the Internet. If you are in an area that you have good cell reception it is better than satellite in every way. First it is free (you can pay a little if you want to get extra features, but not required). You can make your own custom stations (virtually unlimited). You can skip songs. It is free. You can build playlists. You can get it on any of the popular cell phone platforms (symbian, iphone/touch, windows mobile, and I believe crackberry). You can log in anywhere you have Internet available. No special hardware required. Did I mention that it is free? It remembers what songs you like and will recommend songs for you.

It is similar to Pandora and some others that are now available. Last.fm happens to have the client s/w for my devices that I like.

Unless XM/Sirius radically changes their business model, I believe they will not survive. There is just too much excellent media content available on the internet and technology to deliver that content anywhere is not far off.

I did mention that it is free, right?

SS