Why I cancelled SiriusXM

Yesterday I finally cancelled SiriusXM.  For those unfamiliar, SiriusXM is a satellite radio service.  It has tons of really good commercial free music, talk radio, and sports.  The NFL, MLB and Howard Stern all call it home.  I love the content, but I’ve grown increasingly annoyed with the service.

You see, Sirius and XM used to be competitors.  I was an XM subscriber from the beginning, and the switched to Sirius when they got the NFL and Howard Stern.  So I’ve been subscribed to one or the other pretty much from their inception.

When the merger was proposed, there were a lot of people opposed to it.  I wasn’t, I thought it was a great idea.  It was supposed to keep both carriers in business, while lowering costs for consumers and providing a la carte content.  It was also supposed to combine the two so no matter if you bought a car with XM or Sirius, you could be assured that you would get the same service.

It was an uphill battle to get approval, but it went through.  I actually wrote my congressman in support of it, that’s how much I believed that the benefits would be a big deal.

Well, it’s been four years, and while they’ve JUST combined the Sirius and XM websites into one, the services are still separate with some separate content.  We have Sirius in our mini-van and XM in our Prius.  I still have to have separate logins to each.  One website, one billing address, two separate logins. This means that I don’t get the multi-radio discount either.

In addition, prices have not gone down, but rather have gone up.  I used to have access to more stations for the price, and in May they changed plans so I lost some stations that I had been listening to.  A la carte has NEVER materialized and quite frankly choices are now limited.  I also noticed that the streaming internet radio of SiriusXM is raising it’s price on Jan. 1st as well.

So now, in a time where I’m trying to save money by cutting out unnecessary expenses, I just don’t see this as a good deal.  To really get the plan I want, I now have to increase my spend.  It’s still a separate account because the vehicles I happened to buy didn’t have the same service.  I’ll miss the Jason Ellis show, and Faction, Octane, and the Morning Mashup. I’ve missed Howard Stern and the NFL for awhile now.

The tweet that you see above is from the Customer Support team from SiriusXM.  I know that they truly want to help, but I think the problems are too deep and ingrained now for them to make much of a dent.  And I think this doesn’t bode well for the company as a whole.  If I’m leaving, I’m positive others are as well.