I have a love-hate relationship withSiriusXM. I love that it exists at all — and that it exists outside the prudish shackles of terrestrial radio. I love the breadth and scope of the content, from music to news to weather to comedy to live sports. I loathe the audio quality that comes with beaming sound from a satellite to a moving vehicle. I love that it’s pretty affordable. I love that SiriusXM gives you the option tostream in a mobile app, and I loathe that the app itself isn’t as quick and easy to use as pressing a button on the radio in my car. But I love that it’s transitioning intoa new era of satellite/internet hybrid connectivity.
But I’m also someone who has canceled a SiriusXM subscription in the past. And so when news dropped that the State of New Yorkhas filed suit against SiriusXMfor “implementing a lengthy and burdensome endurance contest that Sirius created and implemented as a strategy for keeping as many consumers from canceling as possible,” I completely understood. I’ve been there. It’s not that it was impossible to cancel. It’s not even that at the time I had to endure the relatively light annoyance that was talking to a customer service agent, who then did everything in their power to keep me as a customer.
It’s that I had to do it at all.
The suit also alleges that SiriusXM basically wastes customers’ time in hopes that they won’t cancel. Consider the following, as quoted from the lawsuit:
Customer churn is a real concern for companies. And you may’t fault them for having retention strategies, by which they try to stave off cancellations by offering something in return. A lower price. Some other sweetener. But making it difficult to cancel shouldn’t be part of that strategy.
SiriusXM is hardly the first company to make it hard to cancel, but its customers deserve better.
This isn’t unique to SiriusXM. Newspapers have been bad at this, too. I can remember trying to cancel a subscription to the SundayNew York Times(I live in Florida) because it simply wasn’t being delivered. I never got the newspaper. Yet the agent on the phone (who I absolutely remember as being helpful and understanding) still had to read from his script, and I was then offered free bonus weeks of the same newspaper that I was canceling because they couldn’t actually ensure thatit’d ever be delivered in the first place.
I can remember sitting in the Delta Sky Club at Tampa International Airport, attempting to cancel the online subscription to the very same newspaper whose newsroom I worked in for a decade. I’d stood in its subscriptions department. I met my wife there. And I sat on hold for a half-hour, waiting for someone — anyone — in whatever state the call center was now in, all these years after I’d left, to pick up.
To this day, those experiences have left me gun-shy. If I can’t cancel a subscription the same way I got it in the first place, I don’t want it. But do things the right way? You’ll be more likely to keep me around longer. Or get me to come back
