In 2008 the only two satellite radio companies - Sirius and XM merged. Being two separate companies means they were competing against each other, the corporate way of keeping each other honest. But when you merge two companies together and they are the only ones who provide a certain service isn't that plainly a monopoly ie there is no alternative service that you can use? Well the FCC and Justice Department clearly didn't see it that way as they ruled in favour of the merger and up until a week ago I didn't really have a problem with it and then they took BBC Radio 1 off the air, with no warning, just a recording on C15 where it used saying that if you want music similar to that found on Radio 1 we offer the following stations.
That's when I found out how abominable Sirius XM's customer service is. We cancelled the house subscription and to keep us they offered us 2 then 6, then 12 months for free. The customer service rep was convinced that 'in time we'd grow to love the other stations and forget about Radio 1'. I don't want other station I want Radio 1. So we cancelled. But we found out that 21 million other listeners who only have Sirius/XM subscriptions in order to listen to Radio 1 (timeshifted so that the morning show is in the morning etc) are out there and they are ticked off. So I joined the FaceBook campaign and duly sent off my carefully composed e-mails of complaint to their director of programming and what I got back was a form letter, saying 'thankyou for your concerns, but we think you'll like these other stations much better than Radio 1. I sent back a reply saying that I had a subscription for one reason only R1 - a link to my home that I listen to for the DJ's the music, the whole package. I got the same form letter back, over and over.
So a week later we still don't have R1. The Facebook campaign has had some reaction. R1 is coming back but Internet only which means you can't listen to it in the car and for the pleasure of listening online you have to pay Sirius/XM $12 a month in addition to your subscription.
I would really like to thank Sirius, due to their arrogant attitude and appalling lack of customer care we investigated other solutions and found one that for a one-time payment (just less than the cost of a yearly subscription to S/XM) gives us a time-shifted service on any show we want to listen to and also steams Pandora and Radio 538. Bye, bye Sirius/XM - customer lost.
