Are you a Sirius or XM customer? Hate the changes to the line up? Complain. Loudly. Frequently.
Sirius bought XM a while back. The FCC just approved the merger (some XM folks believe it was a full blown takeover. I am inclined to agree). So, Sirius and XM announced “hey for a few bucks more, you can get the Best Of <other provider> added to your account!” If you had XM, you could get NFL and Howard. If you were on Sirius you could get…Oprah. Great! The first step in merging programming, right? Wrong. On 11/12/08, the pushed out a new channel lineup. Oh dear god. Channels up and disappeared overnight, some stations kept their names but changed content, some channels changed names but kept content, it was madness. Here’s the Sirius line up and here’s the XM view of it. I link both because it looks like XM people got fucked.
1) There is no longer an old school hip hop channel. At all. Their recommendation? A shitty ass top 40 like station that has a ONE HOUR hip hop show. How do you go from 24/7 of your favorite genre to ONE HOUR of sub par bullshit?
2) A lot of dance/trance/electronica stuff got merged. And not for the better. Did you like Fred, Lucy, and Ethel? Bye Bye. Hope you like Lithium and Alt Nation!
3) CENSORED TRACKS AND DJs! That was the WHOLE POINT of getting satellite radio for some people. You don’t have to suffer through retarded ass radio edits of songs, DJs can let fly if they feel like it. This is WRONG. We’re paying and we want it uncut.
4) Radio Disney. Gone. Many unhappy kids. Many unhappy parents.
5) “Shallower” cuts. XM folks got the joy of not hearing the few tracks over and over. DJs played tracks deeper into albums instead of the top 40 shit. That’s gone, too.
Think this is a pile of utter bullshit? COMPLAIN. If you are a Sirius subscriber, don’t call. Email is waaay more effective. Here’s some people’s experience with customer service:
“Calling them will only make you more angry. They have the worst “support” ever and half the calls they say “let me put you on hold” and then hang up. Someone told me this is because they are afraid you will cancel and that hurts their metrics.”
“Goddamn Sirius has the worst customer service I have ever talked to. I forgot how bad it was. The first guy I spoke to was some Indian who didn’t even know what I meant by the word “censored” and the I asked the second lady her name after she kept insisting Hip Hop Nation was uncensored even though I told her I was listening to The Next Episode and even rewinded it to confirm it was censored. She goes “my name is Shirley F…uhhh I mean Shirley L” and I was like “you don’t even know your name, what is your full name?” and she said “can’t tell ya!” and hung up”
“Got through, lady said a lot of people are calling and complaining, and the only way is to e-mail them. So keep it up. I’m not paying for this shit to continue.”
“Don’t wait, send the message right now and cancel. If none of your favorite stations got taken away, still cancel on the simple principle that this merger caused them to become the very garbage they swore they were better than.”
This is SHIT! Let them know that the merger has fucked EVERYONE. Their stock is sitting at 26 cents. If they want it to go up, they need to not piss off the subscribers.
http://www.sirius.com/customercare
Mailing Address (because that’s just how some people roll)
SIRIUS Satellite Radio
1221 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Or if you really want to have that pissed off phone experience:
1-888-539-SIRIUS (7474)