The complaints are true, stay far away from Sirius !

After reading complaint after complaint about Sirius Radio billing dept. on various internet forums, I decided to subscribe, but pay by "MAIL INVOICE ONLY". That way, if they were as bad as people say, then they wouldn't have my credit card number to bill without my permission.

Later, I called to Cancel my subscription about a month before the renewal date. They asked for my telephone number, and then told me that I couldn't cancel my account because I didn't have an account.

Then I got a bill in the mail that had my account number on it. I called just before the renewal date, and specifically canceled by providing the account number.

A month later I got an email saying that I owed them overdue payment. I called and spoke with a supervisor: He said that he saw the record of my earlier call requesting to cancel the account, but that I had failed to ask for the "Cancellation Department" and that until I spoke with them, the overdue amount would continue to increase, and that they would hand the bill over to a collection agency. Then he hung up on me. (That was a Sirius supervisor!).

I called back and spoke with a different supervisor. I explained that I had been trying to cancel over and over, and he said that I didn't really have to speak to the cancellation dept. He said he would cancel the account and delete the balance due. (Thank You Pedro for at last canceling the account!) He also said I could verify that he had cancelled it and deleted the balance due by logging into the website, with a new ID and password that he provided.

Finally, I'm done with Sirius, and my advice is the complaints are true, stay far away from Sirius!!!

Thinking of subscribing to Sirius or becoming a shareholder? Here’s what you’re investing in:
I’ve been a Sirius subscriber since 2004 and I promise you that their customer service is the absolute worst of ANY company I have experienced! Worse than any airline, worse than any healthcare provider, even worse than any insurance company! I buy a new car every other year, and the WORST part of that experience is getting the Sirius service changed from one car to the next. I’ve had service that I paid for unexpectedly cancelled for no reason, only to have to call and wait on hold for 45 minutes to speak to someone in India who BARELY speaks English. I’ve been scolded by Sirius employees FOR HAVING TOO MANY ACOOUNTS! I’m not joking; I’ve been told “If you didn’t have all these accounts, you wouldn’t have these issues”. I’m so sorry I spend so much money with your company!
Today I attempted to log on to my account to avoid the whole call center situation, and my password no longer works! It’s the same password that I’ve used since 2004, oh well. So I called in to the customer service center. I waited on hold for nine minutes with “music on hold” intermittent with a ladies voice coming on every couple of seconds urging me to use the website. Very frustrating. But now, for the last 36 minutes, I’ve been listening to dead air. The call is still connected; I assume I’m on hold, but no music, no annoying message, nothing! I decided to Google “Sirius Customer Service” to see if there was another way to contact while I waited in the dead zone. Hundreds of consumer complaints popped up. I clicked on customer service scoreboard.com. I read several of the consumer complaints and then one of the employee responses. The response was from siriusspEgypt posted on 4-12-10. I was amused to read his/her letter regarding his/her attitude toward customer service and his/her job at Sirius. Here are my favorite excerpts:
“As for being put on hold for so long doesn't mean that we refuse to take your calls. I Work 8 hours a day and we take calls consecutively!!! Meaning that as soon as we're done with your call we receive another one RIGHT AWAY...So you might be on hold for 45 mins but i probably took more than 20 calls during that. Also keep in mind that the calls get transferred automatically meaning that we don't have the option to "pick up" the phone. Besides, Sirius have more than 22 million subscriber. Imagine if just 10% call us in one day...and yeah we're expanding our call centers to be able to absorb all that number.
- Regarding being double charged or payments that doesn't go through. Please understand that we work on computers and on systems. There's always a space for mistakes and system glitches. We all encountered that at some point. We do out best to assist you if it was our mistake !!!
At the end of the day you should just relax even if its a bad customer care service. After all, Sirius is Entertainment. ;)
This clears up a lot for me. I never thought to look at it from the call center employee’s point of view. We should just relax, it’s only money and time, something we Americans have way too much of anyway! They have WAY too many customers to possibly give a damn about one customer’s issues! They have a job to do after all, just be patient! If you don’t like it, you can just cancel. Wait, you need to speak to someone to do that and then they actually have to do what you ask them to do! If you don’t like it, what are you going to do, listen to free radio? That’s just crazy!

After buying and returning one of their radios (which was the worst purchase I’d ever made but that’s another post) the store told me the radio would be deactivated and it was. However, Sirius kept charging me for the subscription. Although I would only listen to Sirius satellite radio on the Internet, they still charged me for YEARS for a deactivated device. Once I brought this to their attention, all they did was try and sell me another device. PLEASE DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO SATELLITE RADIO. DO NOT turn over your credit card/bank account information to a bunch of thieves. Feel free to contact me if you would like to contribute to a website that I plan to start warning people about Sirius Satellite Radio.

I emailed, called and wrote to request that our Sirius Radio subscription, which has never worked for us at all (no reception whatsoever on the DC Amtrak), not be "automatically renewed" on our anniversary date. They sent back an email ***thanking us for renewing***! (The prior phone call resulted in a hanging up on me by the "cancellation representative" who told me only on *one particular day* could this non-renewal action be accomplished without fees- the anniversary of the day I activated the account-!). I have already called Visa to dispute this future charge, but I am reading online from others that Sirius then send the account to collections!!

DO NOT EVER GIVE THIS UNSCRUPULOUS COMPANY YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION!!! It is apparently IMPOSSIBLE to extract your card from their hands!

I just had the WORST experience with Sirius. I am a long term Sirius users. 3 subscriptions, some 2-3 years old and 1 is 1 year old. Recently, a radio was stolen. When I called, I was told I could put the sub on hold AND get a new radio from for $10 when I decide. Period. No new activation fee, no radio swap fee.. simple. But at the time, we could not make the decision as we were on the way out of town, literally. In the meantime, Sirius sends me 2-3 times a week emails offering +2 months if I activate a new radio & no fees to reactivate. Now, I call to get that $10 radio, to replace the stolen one, and activate it on my on hold sub and I am told not only can I NOT get the +2 months bonus offer but I MUST PAY a $15 radio swap fee and I CANNOT get the $10 radio I was first offered as that requires at least a 3 month subscription despite me having an open sub. Now, not only does this contradict their emails, it contradicts their original customer support persons offer and claim to me, but I already have an account on hold that has a not used subscription tied to it. But, now I see clearly. They are going to take advantage of my misfortune, since the radio was stolen, and make some sort of money off me for my loss. Period. That is their goal. They will not honor the claims they made to me, they will not give me a break since the radio was stolen and not charge me the $15 radio swap fee nor give me the radio at $10 like they said you would. On top of that, the night before I waited on hold for 1 hour and got disconnected because their hours of operation ended - while I was on hold! No mention of hours in the dreadful recording, no mention of how long my wait time is like most modern hold phone services can do. So, here I am, trying to get a radio to replace my stolen one, conduct business with them, and they make it painfully hard on me. So, let me clue them in on the big picture. Their lack of desire to wave all the fees associated with activating a new radio to replace my STOLEN one (about $15), their lack of desire to give me the $10 radio at the $10 price and not force me to add a renew period on top of that since I already have one on hold for a radio, is going to cost them much more than what they could have saved by just helping me out and making it easy on me. In 2010 I have a year renew coming up... I will not renew. That means, they will loose 3 radio subs.. and 3 radio subs I have had for years and might have kept for years more. So, their desire now to not be flexible in their policy, to charge me petty fees now, will cost them so much more revenue in the future = hundreds if not thousands of dollars of years worth of possible renew sub fees on 3 radios. You know, I do not NEED a radio I pay for. It is a luxury, not a necessity, and even more so in these economic times. You would think they would work to keep me, but instead they push me away with petty fees, misinformantion, changing stories, inflexible requirements, and hoop jumping. Talk about not looking ahead or at the big picture.