[HN Gopher] New York's attorney general says SiriusXM's cancella...
___________________________________________________________________
New York's attorney general says SiriusXM's cancellation process is
illegal
Author : rntn
Score : 183 points
Date : 2023-12-21 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| chewmieser wrote:
| Oh great, Letitia James' office is on a roll!
|
| It's well known how annoying this process is with deal
| communities, to the point that everyone recommends using
| temporary cards (like Privacy) to avoid the hassle with
| cancellations.
|
| Unfortunately that doesn't stop the mountain of sales outreach
| they'll try after you're no longer a subscriber.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I'm surprised someone hasn't started a "Warehouse POBOX" style
| address location where you can just maintain like a 5 dollar
| address as long as you complete appropiate paperwork.
|
| Obviously, that'd be abused, but man, all these lawless
| corporations acting with impunity to common decent regulation
| enforcement makes some aweful work for no particular value to
| society.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| virtual mailing addresses are real. I have one for my LLC
| (they bin spam and forward on real correspondence) and there
| are more involved services for RVers to forward batches to
| their current location or do mail-to-email.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| There's a ton of services like that. You pick one of the
| physical addresses they offer, get a unique mail address to
| you, and whenever mail arrives they scan the envelope, giving
| you the choice to either shred, open and scan contents, or
| forward.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > they scan the envelope, giving you the choice to either
| shred, open and scan contents, or forward
|
| That's nice! Can you suggest one (or more) services you
| like?
|
| Does it have to be in the state you live in? (ex: matching
| the driver license address)
| hiatus wrote:
| In my experience, there is a bit of friction as you need to
| get a form from the post office and have it notarized
| before a third-party can accept and forward mail on your
| behalf.
| davchana wrote:
| I hope (& have suggested) that USPS themselves should offer
| virtual po boxes like domain name, which themselves should
| have an underlying forwarding address (with no leakage to
| companies like data lists, forwarding address requested etc).
| Company sends a letter to me at that virtual po box, usps
| scanner systems see it, slap a yellow (or brown) sticker with
| correct/forwarding address.
| angryjim wrote:
| This is why things like Rocket Money exist-which itself is hard
| to cancel.
| apwell23 wrote:
| now do nytimes. Not sure how it compares to sirius but its one of
| the most ridiculous process i've personally experienced
| js2 wrote:
| In the past you had to chat with a rep, but for at least a
| couple years now you can cancel your NYT subscription with just
| a couple clicks.
|
| You can also pretty much perennially keep your sub at $1/week
| w/o talking to a rep just by starting the cancellation flow
| when the promo rate nears expiration.
| garfij wrote:
| Thanks for this, I"d been meaning to work up the energy to
| deal with their retention ops, but this was super easy.
|
| For anyone else looking to do this, the trick is to choose
| "Other" instead of "Too expensive" or "My rate is going up"
| as the reason for cancelling. The later will just result in
| them trying to sell other standard subscription offers to
| you.
| rurp wrote:
| Same for The Economist. I was about to enter my payment details
| for a subscription but then thought to check what the
| cancellation process was. Turns out it's one of those sleazy
| processes that's way harder than signing up.
|
| Just to be sure I contacted their customer support to see if
| there was a way to cancel online. They confirmed that there was
| not, and then had the gall to say that this is because it's
| _better_ for customers this way.
|
| The content itself is good but I will never ever give money to
| a company that treats its paying customers this way.
|
| Substack probably has a similar customer base and does things
| the right way. A paid subscription can be cancelled with an
| easy to find button. The money I would have spent on The
| Economist instead goes to several substack authors that I like.
| bryan0 wrote:
| Hah I went through this last year. I canceled Sirius/XM with an
| agent over chat. Basically you just need to paste: "no thanks, I
| would just like to cancel my account" to everything they say.
| After about 10 times they will actually do it.
| seiferteric wrote:
| Same here, but just said I want to cancel, and am screen-
| shotting the conversation, if it is not cancelled I will file a
| complaint, and they ended the chat and cancelled it. Pretty
| egregious that you have to resort to that. Also they have the
| audacity to send me letters every couple weeks to sign back up
| for like $4 a month. I might consider that if I knew I it was
| easy to cancel... so they lost a customer over it. I think they
| must be desperate with how everyone can just stream music
| almost everywhere now.
| op00to wrote:
| If you have a modernish smartphone you have no need for
| SiriusXM unless you like to listen to sports or talk radio in
| the middle of nowhere. I stopped paying XM after getting
| tired of the cancel and get a cheaper offer dance, and never
| once missed it.
| dboreham wrote:
| Waving from the middle of nowhere...also some content
| besides sports is annoying to acquire via IP (CNBC for
| example).
| wzy wrote:
| Save the sale.
| defparam wrote:
| This is exactly why I place SiriusXM on a virtual credit card and
| a throw away email. I sign up for $6 per month SiriusXM promo
| with a $7 per month ceiling on the virtual card. When the 7th or
| 8th month comes around and the offer expires they have the
| audacity to charge $22+ for this content. The overcharge is
| caught and they don't get my money, and I'm happy to receive the
| disconnect signal.
| bogomipz wrote:
| I'm curious why do business at all with a company who has such
| practices and requires such special workarounds?
| digging wrote:
| Not the person you're replying to, but when you get in this
| mindset the workarounds are pretty easy.
|
| I don't trust _any_ business to act responsibly with any
| information I give them, so I also use a lot of virtual cards
| and spoofed email addresses (actually I just use a catchall
| on my domain most of the time which is less secure I guess,
| but does most of what I need).
| defparam wrote:
| It's because generally I do like their product at a $6/mo
| price point. It's leagues better than FM radio. I just don't
| like their billing/promo practices and so these are the
| tricks to protect yourself as a consumer.
| bogomipz wrote:
| I see. Might you or others recommend some virtual credit
| card products?
| tomcatfish wrote:
| Privacy.com is what I've used the past half decade
| davchana wrote:
| Capital one credit cards kn website, or with google
| chrome auto generated cards if you add C1 card to it.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| As another person said, this has become standard practice for
| me. It's less about doing business with shady companies and
| more about insulating myself from shady practices. I've had a
| few cases where I've been on a plan that suddenly changes
| with only a few day's notice, or I get "graduated" to another
| tier because the previous one is going away. In all cases, I
| was charged more money than I initially agreed, and the
| virtual credit cards saved me.
| knicholes wrote:
| Sorry to glom on to you, but how do you set that up?
| ghayes wrote:
| Capital One offers a product Eno for virtual cards. Or you
| could try prepaid gift cards to cap total value.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| privacy.com has cards like that.
| ksd482 wrote:
| You can go to privacy.com and create an account. You then
| link your real credit cards or bank accounts for payment
| source.
|
| Privacy.com also has a browser extension and a mobile app. So
| it's easy to create/manage virtual credit cards per service.
| You can also create single use virtual credit cards that
| automatically close after a single transaction with a limit
| that you can set.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Unfortunately privacy.com requires the use Plaid, which
| demands your banks auth details and grants Plaid the
| ability to scrape your bank accounts (they pinky promise
| they do not for the account verification product). I
| thought it undermines the whole "Privacy" aspect.
| slipheen wrote:
| From what I recall when I registered some time back, it
| was possible to simply use any debit card for the
| process. This meant there was no need to share login
| details with anyone.
|
| Their documentation may provide more current details than
| I can though.
|
| https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/7970157169943-...
| ksd482 wrote:
| What's a good alternative for virtual CC's?
| LoganDark wrote:
| They don't exactly _require_ Plaid, they can also use a
| debit card or ACH. You have to email support for the
| privilege though.
|
| I had tried Plaid at first, but quickly switched when I
| found out that they would watch your bank balance and
| disable your Privacy account if it went below $50. They
| would require you to prove a balance of at least $50 in
| order to enable the account again. Fortunately, both of
| the other methods don't really care, and as long as you
| disconnect Plaid while your balance happens to be over
| $50, your account will stay enabled.
| davchana wrote:
| Better than privacy, many credcards themselves now offer
| virtual card(s), and can cancel them. Capital One is my go
| to for these. Google Chrome offers capital one virtual
| cards on the fly if you added the actual capital one card
| to google pay.
|
| Using privacy.com requires me to give them access to my
| bank, and I lose points, cashback, any charge back
| protection.
| paxys wrote:
| This isn't as much of a hack as people think. Plenty of
| companies will continue to provide you with service for many
| months even if the card declines and then send the unpaid debt
| to collections, resulting in infinitely more headaches for you.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| SiriusXM is also in violation of GDPR/CCPA. Before shutting down
| Stitcher, they failed to respond to multiple data requests within
| the required 30 day window. Then, they contacted requestors 20
| days before Stitcher shut down to direct them to complete a
| _separate_ , redundant form for their request. They never
| responded to that form, and presumably they will claim that
| because the service was shut down within 30 days of that second
| form being completed, they have no obligations to provide the
| data anymore.
|
| Pretty scummy stuff.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| SiriusXM doesn't operate in Europe - so I don't think GDPR is
| among their concerns.
|
| https://www.siriusxm.com/help/service-outside-us
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > SiriusXM doesn't operate in Europe - so why would they care
| about GDPR?
|
| SiriusXM is a holding company that operates many products,
| some of which are sold in Europe, and in California, so as a
| company they are beholden to both GDPR and CCPA.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| Which products are available in Europe?
|
| The only other major service I can see is Pandora - which
| also does not have a presence in Europe.
| yumraj wrote:
| This should apply to AT&T, Xfinity and such also who force you to
| speak with the retention department.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Do gym membership cancellations next.
| seanw444 wrote:
| My truck came with a short SiriusXM trial, and they have not
| relented in spamming me with physical mail, email, and phone
| calls, all to try and get me to renew. I'll stick to my
| downloaded music and Spotify.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I had a similar experience when I had a trial with my previous
| car.
|
| I got the calls to stop by changing the phone number on my
| account. For e-mail/physical mail, there was an opt out that I
| found and to my surprise, they actually stopped.
|
| But yeah, it was ridiculous. I'd get mail a minimum of once a
| week asking for me to come back. So much wasted paper.
| brewdad wrote:
| Honestly, if SiriusXM would simply offer a fair price for life
| I would pay for it. I refuse to do business with companies that
| force me to play the "threaten to cancel" game every year just
| to keep a fair price. My time is worth more than that.
| davchana wrote:
| Dont click any link in the emails, dont scan any qr code, don't
| call any numbers on postal mail, and they will stop in about 2
| years (as in my case, no paid membership, used car came with
| some free trial, I didn't even used it once).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I love my European laws that would fine them if they were to do
| something like that.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I would be thrilled if there were repercussions for this kind
| of scammer in the US.
|
| I keep getting "SECOND NOTICE" physical mail from scammers
| who have 1. never sent a first notice and 2. never had any
| business relationship with me (they have been trying to reach
| me about my car's warranty). Those make me so furious that I
| always report them as mail fraud.
| sarajevo wrote:
| I hope Ooma is paying attention. Took over 40 minutes to cancel
| the other day...
| javier_e06 wrote:
| This is good news. LA Fitness should be next. Is super-easy to
| become a member online. Enter CC ... click on agree ... done.
|
| Want to cancel your memebership?? ... well, please drive to the
| nearest LA Fitness and try to find a manager ... not a rep taking
| new members but an actual manager, the reps can't help you to
| cancel. I went twice to my neighborhood LA Fitness to try to
| cancel my membership and the manager was 'not available at the
| moment'.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Chargeback time...
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Gyms are notorious for sending unpaid dues to debt
| collection. Even if the designated cancellation process ought
| to be illegal, you still have to end the contract to end your
| legal obligations.
| akomtu wrote:
| But there is no contract to begin with. Anyone can enter
| your credit card number on a LA Fitness website.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There's still a contract between LA fitness and the
| person stealing your identity. The debt just happens to
| get incorrectly assigned to you for collections because
| we allow "identity theft" to exist. Separate issue.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > There's still a contract between LA fitness and the
| person stealing your identity
|
| There's a contract between LA fitness and someone
| commiting fraud with my CC. My identity can't be stolen
| because I still have it - LA Fitness has been defrauded
| by a 3rd party and they shouldn't involve me in their
| mess.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If it's real fraud, sure. If not, that _might_ work in
| the first month or two.
|
| If you've been going for nine months, good luck. They'll
| pull up all the photos they automatically took of you
| entering the doors to check in.
| xg15 wrote:
| If you sign up and immediately cancel, maybe. But if you
| actually visited the gym a few times and made use of
| their service, I doubt any judge would follow that logic.
| akomtu wrote:
| LA Fitness won't stand a chance in a court. You'd show
| the judge a email demanding to cancel the subscription,
| and LAF will show a scammy "terms of service" implying
| you can't easily cancel. That's why scammy companies like
| this want binding arbitration and try to avoid any real
| scrutiny.
| xg15 wrote:
| I'm absolutely with you that their games around
| cancelling are beyond shitty and hopefully illegal - but
| my point was that those are two orthogonal legal matters
| and it's not a good idea to start playing games of your
| own if you suspect the other to do so.
|
| In this case, your argument was that you never had a
| contract with them in the first place. But this would be
| hard to believe if you actually used their services. Your
| cancellation email would undermine this argument even
| more, as you don't request cancellation if you don't have
| a contract.
|
| So a court could perfectly well decide that the gym acted
| in breach of the law by making it deliberately hard to
| cancel, but that you acted in breach of the law too by
| stopping payment without even trying to cancel.
|
| If you argue that you made your best effort to cancel, as
| documented by the email, that would be a more convincing
| argument I think (not a lawyer tho) but that's a
| different argument than claiming there never was a
| contract at all.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| This is actually a very good reason to not tell them your
| real name, but go by an alias.
| gruez wrote:
| Congratulations! Now you're committing fraud.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| It's only fraud if the Feds care about it enough or for
| them to sue you.
|
| I'd know, I've won 17 Nobel prizes.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| They'll get your name from your credit card. There's no
| way to pay with cash or an anonymous visa gift card.
| kaibee wrote:
| They can/will send you to collections.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of privacy.com's virtual cards. I create a new
| one for every service. I can place time based /absolute
| limits so nothing can be surprise overcharged, and can just
| kill the card anytime.
| gosub100 wrote:
| see my reply above, Planet Fitness requires a checking
| account.
| gosub100 wrote:
| kind of a tangent, but about 3 years ago I was thinking of
| joining Planet Fitness (inb4 "they're the worst gym ever",
| perfect-enemy-good-etc) and thought "I know, I'll outsmart
| them and use one of those _burner_ credit cards so if they
| block me from cancelling, I 'll just shut off the card!".
| Well this must may as well be a class in Entomological
| Evolution because as soon as _Consumerus Cardioworkii_
| evolves a thicker exoskeleton against _Gymnascus Financialus
| Capitalus_ , _spc. Captialus_ evolves a defense against
| credit cards and goes checking-account only.
| striking wrote:
| You can send them a letter. Way more painful than it should be,
| but worked for me.
| kgdiem wrote:
| A _certified_ letter, can 't even go drop it in the mailbox.
| brewdad wrote:
| Well you can stand in line at LA Fitness and still not get
| a resolution or you can stand in line at the Post Office
| and successfully cancel.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/...
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p064202_negativ...
|
| https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2023/03/pros-and-co...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CWbc6pekd8&t=1310s ("We have a
| complaint database, we collect information, and are always
| eager for information" -- FTC Chair Lina Khan at Y Combinator)
| frankdenbow wrote:
| Same with Planet Fitness, they got me for a year with this
| strategy
| ecshafer wrote:
| LA Fitness you just go to the website, click cancel, then print
| out the letter and mail it in.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I feel like being forced to print a letter, find an envelope,
| and mail the letter is a bit much in this day and age. There
| have been times in my life when I did not have a printer, or
| any spare envelopes. Should people like me-back-then not be
| able to cancel their gym memberships? Should we have to track
| down office supplies to be able to do so?
| brewdad wrote:
| My public library will let you print for 10 cents. The post
| office will sell you an envelope or maybe even give you one
| for free depending on the level of service you are paying
| for.
|
| It's far from ideal, and the process _should_ be easier but
| keeping the membership is costing you actual money and a
| solution is possible with a little extra effort. That
| effort shouldn 't be necessary but we live in the world
| that exists not the world that should exist.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I don't think we are trying to figure out how to print
| their letter, we are discussing why it should be illegal?
| ta988 wrote:
| This is called creating friction.
| beretguy wrote:
| Replace your payment card with privacy.com card and pause
| payments. Wait until gym will reach out to you for nonpayment.
| Then cancel.
| myself248 wrote:
| Doesn't work. I tried this with a NYTimes trial-rate
| subscription, to make sure it wouldn't renew at the
| $exorbitant rate.
|
| Apparently there's a thing called a "force post" that the
| merchant can do, which blasts right through Privacy.com's
| veil. I didn't understand this until they explained it to me:
|
| > From: Sigourney (Privacy)
|
| > Jun 1, 2022, 5:21 PM EDT > Hi, [Name]
|
| > I've been reviewing your dispute and wanted to touch base
| with you to explain what happened.
|
| > It appears that the disputed charge is a "force post" by
| the merchant. This happens when a merchant cannot collect
| funds for a transaction after repeated attempts and completes
| the transaction without an authorization -- it's literally an
| unauthorized transaction that's against payment card network
| rules. It's a pretty sneaky move used by some merchants, and
| unfortunately, it's not something Privacy can block.
|
| > We are refunding the transaction to the original funding
| source used for this purchase. You should see this refund
| reflected in your bank statement in the next 5 business days.
| However, please note that since this merchant uses force
| posts, they will continue to do this monthly until the
| subscription is cancelled. Please contact them to have the
| subscription cancelled.
|
| > Let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
|
| Okay, so Privacy refunded it, and I'm not clear whether they
| ate that cost or if they pulled some lever to claw-back the
| money from the NYT, but the fact that this is even possible
| in the first place is alarming, and it completely shattered
| my idea of what Privacy.com is even good for.
| gruez wrote:
| Did you deactivate/close the card or only pause/lock the
| card? If it's deactivated, I'm not sure how they can go
| after you. Sure, for a service like privacy.com the card
| itself is attached to someone, so there's theoretically
| someone to go after, but prepaid card exists as well. If
| you "force post" a transaction on those cards, who's going
| to be on the hook? The bank?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Gym contracts are often set up so this results in the account
| going to collections for either the remaining monthly fees or
| the cancellation fee.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| They charge your card because legally you owe them. Failure
| to pay your dues is a crime. Use this at your own legal risk.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Failure to pay your dues is a crime.
|
| No, it's not.
| plagiarist wrote:
| LA Fitness don't have a leg to stand on if someone went to
| a location in person and were unable to cancel.
| kgdiem wrote:
| shameless plug, I made https://byebyefitness.com so you can
| send them the cancellation letter from home.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Great site! Surprised it doesn't list the prices
| transparently. Are you charging differently per region? (I
| saw you charge less than a month's membership - which is
| great, but clearly that varies locale to locale as I'm sure
| your costs do as well)
| kgdiem wrote:
| I showed the prices on the home page initially but got some
| feedback to remove it.
|
| More of a value-based pricing thing, LA fitness costs more
| per month than Planet Fitness and is also a much smaller
| market.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i got in a situation like this once with a saas company. I
| called my cc and told them what happened and to block all
| payments to the vendor. It took some convincing but they did
| it.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| you can buy an airhorn for about $20 and your cancellation will
| definitely be processed in a single visit. $20 may seem like a
| lot but it can be reused for just about any disagreement you
| have at any business. It's an investment for the future,
| really.
| gruez wrote:
| What are you going to do? Blast the airhorn until the manager
| shows up? Sounds like a great way to get ejected from the
| premises and possibly get charged with disorderly conduct or
| similar.
| hjvkbn wrote:
| a great way to get banned from the business, you say?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I had a similar experience with 24 Hour fitness. Serving them
| notice that I was taking them to small claims for ignoring my
| attempt at cancelling my membership turned out to be easier.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Proving they know full well what they are doing is illegal.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I hate to defend them, but I'm honestly sharing my experience:
| circa 2020, maybe '21, I called them (L.A. Fitness), said I
| lost my job as the reason, and they let me cancel. Maybe that
| was a fluke, maybe it's different now, I just want to share
| counterpoints to "X is impossible", because it's not always the
| case.
|
| Somewhat tangent, but everyone says "nvidia doesn't play nicely
| on Linux", I've never seen that! I've installed cuda, switched
| to cuda drivers/nvidia proprietary (non-cuda) drivers, FOSS
| Nouveau drivers, ran x11, wayland, never seen a bona fide
| issue. I'm not denying others' experiences, but dont make up
| your mind before you try. worst I've seen is laptops that have
| dual video cards (nvida + intel, for instance), but that's on
| par with any other Linux snafu you could have, it goes with the
| territory.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Nvidia drivers on Linux used to work flawlessly for me until
| I switched motherboards, then somehow that caused issues.
| Still confused to this day.
| tacheiordache wrote:
| How about changing the CC number? Or using throwaway CCs?
| ww520 wrote:
| Cancellation on gym membership is definitely a pain in the ass.
| I usually just go with the annual prepaid packages and never
| give them my credit card.
| binarymax wrote:
| Wasn't there proposed legislation that stated cancelling needed
| to be as easy as signing up? What ever happened to that?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| California passed a law that took effect in 2022.
| kevincox wrote:
| I've always wondered what the best way to prevent this is. There
| is clearly little motivation on the company's side to prevent
| this.
|
| One idea that keeps coming to mind is that the company should be
| forced to pay for the customer's time. I don't know how to handle
| this in the general case but for things like cancelling a
| subscription, making a warranty claim or fixing some other
| service issue that isn't the customer's fault the company should
| be required to pay for any time spent. You ask me 30min of
| questions before letting me unsubscribe? I look forward to my $50
| in the mail next week. My warranty claim requires 3 calls and 2h
| to resolve? I'll take $200.
|
| Obviously implementing this would be super difficult. What if the
| customer talks slowly or ambiguously to get more money? But I
| feel that the core idea has merit. If the company is wasting my
| time they should be forced to compensate me.
| briffle wrote:
| My local west coast newspaper (Owned by USA Today) used to pull
| this crap. Offer a $8 subscription for 6 months with a simple
| click, then automatically switch to monthly billing at
| $15/month and you had to call, during east coast business hours
| (again, I live on west coast) and if! they answered, they would
| work very hard to make sure you didn't cancel.
|
| I started using the virtual cards from Privacy.com, and only
| authorizing the original purchase. its been a game changer.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| How about every charge they pass you after you contact them in
| any verifiable way (including submitting a support ticket to
| their website and taking a screenshot, sending their support
| email an email, or writing a letter) requesting cancellation
| they have to pay back to you triple.
|
| Then the ball's in their court. You're happy to let them keep
| charging you, it's an investment.
|
| I bet that would get them off their asses.
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| Why does SiriusXM exist?
| mikestew wrote:
| For those times when you're driving in the middle of nowhere,
| and your '52 Studebaker can't pull in any AM radio stations.
| Otherwise, since the advent of smartphones, I have no idea how
| Sirius stays in business. Live sports, I guess.
|
| I've had satellite radio, and when I think of SiriusXm, at the
| front of my mind is what a pain in the ass it is to cancel. We
| bought a new car this year, and I didn't even activate the free
| trial because I didn't want the hassle of canceling later.
| Think about that: the UX is so bad, there are customers that
| won't even use it if you _give_ it to them.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| In a car, I find the radio to be far easier to use than
| fumbling around with my phone. I've never had SiriusXM so
| can't comment on that specifically, but I never use my phone
| for music in the car, I just turn on the radio.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| SiriusXM made the very grave mistake of starting their business
| before the invention of the iphone. This will be studied in MBA
| schools for decades.
| Demonsult wrote:
| Cancel by mail. Companies don't mess with letter writers. They
| know you have a paper trail if you need to dispute or sue.
|
| It often takes less time and way less mental energy than a phone
| call.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > It often takes less time and way less mental energy than a
| phone call.
|
| Really now? Preparing a physical package and dropping it off at
| a physical location to be picked up and delivered is faster and
| more efficient than speaking into a wireless device for a few
| minutes?
| akira2501 wrote:
| I just drop it off and other people do the delivery for me.
| So, in terms of my effort vs SiriusXM's reclamation
| department, yes, it is more efficient.
|
| Perhaps that's why they're being sued?
| LoganDark wrote:
| > I just drop it off and other people do the delivery for
| me.
|
| That's what I said. You have to create a physical letter
| and drop it off. Not everyone can just walk over to their
| mailbox and stick an outgoing letter in there for the
| delivery truck to pick up; I have the privilege, but it
| absolutely hasn't been common everywhere I've lived.
|
| You don't have to drop anything off in order to make a
| phone call, you don't even have to get up if you already
| have your phone.
| keenmaster wrote:
| This post reminded me to cancel before my signup offer expires,
| so I tried via a chat agent. They claimed that they were having
| technical issues and told me to contact Sirius customer service
| again in 2 hours. I said that the "technical issues" were a lie,
| and that they can cancel now. All of a sudden they were able to
| cancel for me without technical difficulty, but only after
| refusing one more promotion.
|
| It looks like they use sentiment analysis to assess whether they
| can use poor excuses to hassle you out of cancelling.
| grogenaut wrote:
| My spouse loves the Sirius junk mail. More paper to shred and
| feed to the vworms in our compost bin.
| zacwest wrote:
| I love SirusXM. They are a truly unique offer in the modern music
| landscape of algorithm-driven music listening experiences. The
| human curation of shows and stations is why I listen. That said,
| they have a lot of problems: I have to complain yearly to keep my
| $8/mo rate, and they seem to be slowly moving toward wanting more
| algorithmic content with their Pandora merger.
|
| I wish they'd focus more on growing their technology (e.g. a
| macOS app). They just did a big rewrite on all the platforms,
| seemingly toward this goal; I hope they keep going down that
| path.
|
| If the government forces them to adopt more modern subscription
| practices, I think _more_ people would use their platform, not
| less.
| tombert wrote:
| This is coming from a person who has a SiriusXM membership and
| who actually likes it, but is the human curation really _that_
| much better? I frequent SiriusXMU to listen to more obscure
| stuff, but I feel like I get pretty fairly comparable
| performance with YouTube Music 's "Start Radio" on an Imogen
| Heap or Secret Machines album or something.
| threeio wrote:
| Yah, the merger between Sirius and XM was a dramatic
| difference in programming content. XM had spent most of their
| time getting quality PM and on air talent, Sirius was
| basically a glorified Winamp playlist. As the channels
| merged, you found yourself going from a base of 5000 songs a
| channel to a few hundred. The folks who used to have XMPCR's
| (computer connected receivers) published a comparison of
| songs at one point but my google fu can't find it right now.
| zacwest wrote:
| I agree some of the stations are somewhat repetitive,
| especially those stuck intentionally in an older genre like
| Lithium or one of the decades channels. I think the mix tends
| to still be less than surface level in those. They also have
| DJ-hosted segments; I think Tom Morello has a lot more
| flexibility in what he's playing, for example. It's still
| their superpower compared to the algorithmic track
| selections.
| flatline wrote:
| I subscribed for a few years and would renew each year when they
| jacked the rates back up. Finally decided it just was not worth
| it and went through their arduous cancellation process. Got a
| call back the next day asking to sign me back up and I took the
| customer service rep to task saying he knew perfectly well I just
| canceled yesterday. He gave a sheepish laugh, did not argue the
| point, and they have never called me back.
| jf22 wrote:
| Good for you for taking a low-paid customer service employee to
| task for doing their job.
| flatline wrote:
| I wasn't exactly rude about it, but they were acting as a
| representative of the company - probably the only one I could
| ever actually talk to - so I didn't see any reason to sugar
| coat it either. I am often direct with sales people that I am
| not interested in their product, and I have been yelled at
| and harassed by them before. This is all late stage
| capitalism at its finest.
| dboreham wrote:
| Interestingly it's actually not that bad. You do have to call
| them but when I did so for several cars they didn't try to waste
| my time further. I may have had to answer "because that's what I
| want" to some question about reason for termination. Also I still
| had several more active vehicles so perhaps they felt less
| pressure to Shane don't go me.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Someone in South America had a subscription for a US company.
|
| The only way to cancel was to call a US 800 number. I don't even
| know if you can call 800 numbers from outside the USA.
| rowright8 wrote:
| If you read the disadvantages to SirusXM from one of their own
| group companies (Pandora Media owns Cloud Cover Music) they admit
| it's hard to cancel.
|
| https://cloudcovermusic.com/music-for-business/siriusxm-radi...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Sirius' cancel process is absolutely painful. People reading
| robotically from scripts that don't sound convincing even to
| them. "Did you know that we now have award winning X? Maybe you
| would like to listen to that on your [insert car here]".
|
| Just repeating "No, I just want to cancel" and nothing else
| doesn't help, either.
|
| On the flip side, they have offered me ridiculous deals. As of
| right now I have the Music Showcase subscription for 2 vehicles
| (meant to be $13.99/mo each) for "$7.99 for 6 months, for both
| vehicles" - as in $7.99 for the entire 6 months, not per month,
| and for both vehicles, not each.
| boh wrote:
| This comment thread has way too much privacy dot com spam.
| LoganDark wrote:
| To be fair, it is very useful and plenty of people swear by it,
| myself included. I wish my bank hadn't introduced new debit
| cards that "aren't supported" by Privacy (whatever that means,
| _it 's literally just a visa_), but whatever, I guess.
|
| None of the comments are sponsored or anything, but Privacy
| seriously is the hidden cheat code of using cards online, and
| the reason why you see so many mentions of it is because it
| prevents exactly these kinds of shady practices from working.
| pierat wrote:
| I had a private conversation about customer service, rudeness,
| and such.
|
| It's terrible that in order to do something as simple as "I want
| to cancel this service", you have to scream and make legal
| threats of retribution.
|
| These are policies put in by terrible and shit capitalists to
| "make friction" of people leaving. But that's not all it does...
| It also introduces tremendous emotional labor (the rank and file
| employees) being screamed at by soon-to-be-former customers.
| Customers know that screaming gets heard, and responded to. Being
| decent gets you abused. But doing this pushes a large toll on the
| non-policy-making employees, who are exposed to massive emotional
| and sometimes physical abuse.
|
| I do blame the companies in setting up policies that screaming at
| the bottom employees 'gets shit done'. It's a choice by the
| companies that force that issue. But screaming retains rights,
| like "cancellation", or "being made whole when a problem occurs".
| It's all top-driven bullshit that screwing the non-loud people
| makes more money.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Now if they'd only add a button to unsubscribe from their
| physical mail... I bought a used Prius this year and installed
| the Toyota app to see if it did anything for me. All it did was
| give SiriusXM my home address, so now I periodically get a plea
| from them to subscribe.
| diego_moita wrote:
| Wow! Thanks for posting that. I was actually contemplating the
| idea of subscribing them.
|
| I bought a new car with a 3 month trial period and it ended last
| week.
|
| You helped me to dodge a bullet.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Proud to be a New Yorker. Small stuff adds up to make life a lot
| nicer here.
| jrockway wrote:
| I kind of love these cancellation scripts. I recently cancelled
| my cable because I switched to Fios. The 15 minute script took me
| through:
|
| 1) "I can't believe you're paying that much. You should have
| called us sooner for a discount." (Blaming the victim? Classy.)
|
| 2) "According to our database, you can't get Fios at your
| address." "I have it. I'm using it right now." "That can't be
| correct, our database doesn't show it." (Is this the same
| database that can't tell me what the monthly taxes are going to
| be when I sign up? It might be time for a different database
| vendor.)
|
| 3) "You really don't want to switch to fiber. Cable has a higher
| signal strength because it's electrical instead of optical."
| (I... guess that's true. 0 coulombs of charge pass through the
| fiber optic cable each second, which is much lower than any other
| technology!)
|
| There was also something in there about how I don't really want
| symmetric Internet because asymmetric is better. That one I
| actually argued with; I have no argument for their database being
| out of date but them trusting it, or the signal strength thing...
| but uploading fast is actually important to me. I mentioned that
| I write software for a living and he didn't press me that much on
| it, which was nice.
|
| This article reminds me that I need to write to the FTC. This is
| all flat-out lying, which should be illegal. Obviously, you
| aren't going to scam someone that's worked at 2 fiber ISPs, but
| someone less technical probably believes their arguments.
|
| In the end, the 15 minute call was probably the most
| entertainment I've had in years. Very rarely do people
| confidently lie to my face, so it was a fun experience. However,
| if the FTC wants to put everyone in prison for this, I say that's
| a great idea.
| frankus wrote:
| There really ought to be a law against making cancellations any
| more involved than sign-ups (I understand California has
| something like this already), but failing that a public shit-list
| of companies that make it a hassle to cancel subscriptions would
| be a good stopgap.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I was a subscriber to my newspaper because I liked their paywall-
| light approach and was happy to support the free loaders.
|
| Then they made their paywall super hard and they make you call
| and cancel. I can still get around it anyway and I hate being
| logged in and tracked.
|
| The rep was pleasant but had trouble understanding why a paying
| user would cancel because of paywalls.
|
| They seemed to think I was in need of IT troubleshooting (but
| perhaps my brain is in need of it).
| stan_kirdey wrote:
| took one AG to try to cancel their subscription :D
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