Wednesday, January 26, 2011

My word is my bond, okay?

In an email earlier today, I told Sirius XM that I would never recommend them to anyone and would tell anyone who asked me that I had problems. You haven't asked, but I'm telling.

We bought a new car on September 16. It's a GM and it came with a free three-month trial of XM radio. The trial expired on December 16, and XM called our house daily with offers that got better and better, until on December 22, I agreed to a 5-month contract for $22.15. They took my credit card information, but I said I did not want to be auto-charged at the end of the 5-months. The gentleman said that they would send a bill, then, and not charge my card.

The bill came, I wrote a check (to be fair, Bucket wrote the check) and paid it. Then the credit card bill came and it was charged also. I called Sirius XM's customer care number and asked for the credit card charge to be reversed. They said it would take 7-10 days.

On the 11th day, I checked my credit card online and it had not been refunded. I called the number again, and the woman who I spoke with said that it would take another 7-10 days from that call. I asked her how my card was charged immediately but it would take this long to refund the money. She said, "That's how ev-er-y-thing works," in this sing-songy voice that I use to talk to Llama when she's being particularly toddler-ish and I'm frustrated.

I said, "That's fine, you can cancel my account altogether and refund me the balance of the contract." She put me on hold and came back and gave me a refund amount of $39.76, which would be processed by check in 3-4 weeks. The service was terminated within 5 minutes of my pulling the car out of the garage, so the kill signal was sent immediately.

I emailed Sirius XM using the link on the website to advise them that I was frustrated because they process the charges and the kill signals immediately, but refunds take so long. Also, I loved my satellite radio. Bucket has a receiver in his car that I got him when Howard Stern went to Sirius in 200... 5? Whenever. Long time ago. We've been customers for years. They offered me nothing, and continued to reiterate that the refund would take 3-4 weeks.

Bucket's contract is up in March, and guess what we aren't going to need anymore? Sirius XM radio. At this point, I would not even activate the free trial if we were to replace his car with a GM vehicle, that's how frustrated I am. You cannot tell me that it takes 3-4 weeks to process a refund when it took minutes for them to double bill me.

That is all. This is the most public forum I have, so there it is. Don't get Sirius XM unless you want to be double billed, treated like an idiot, and frustrated beyond belief.

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