My course of action for resigning with Sirius

I personally doubt that you could successfully negotiate that kind of deal, but the only way to know for sure is to call and ask.

The only way I could know for sure what kind of deal you would get is if I myself called and asked, and then reported my results, but then that doesn't help you out much. You would still have to eventually call yourself.

When you find out, please come back and let us know what you were able to get.

We had Sirius for free bout 2 1/2 years ago when my wife got her new Lincoln. At the time I thought Sirius sounded pretty bad (about the same as XM), very compressed. I recently bought a new Infiniti, and it came with XM radio. XM still sounds pretty bad to me, but they offered me a really good price, and I figured what the heck. Last week, I got an email from Sirius, offering to reconnect my wife's radio for $20 for five months, and no connection fee. Once again I figured, what the heck, might as well for $4/mth. Once the radio was back on, I could not believe how awful it sounded. Sirius now sounds MUCH worse than XM. I'm guessing they've added even MORE channels to a system that was already way over taxed, causing them to have to compress the audio even more. Sirius even added insult to injury when they came up with mobile tv. I can't even imagine how much bandwidth that is taking away from the audio. My advice would be to either not subscribe to satellite radio at all, or opt for the lesser of the two evils (XM). Sirius isn't worth even $4/mth.

When I called to cancel the 5 month deal, they offered me an extra 2 months for free if I would stay on. The lady on the phone did not seem surprised at all to hear that the audio quality is terrible. I'm assuming they get that all the time.

I disagree. I think that it depends on what you plan on doing with your satellite radio subscription. It sounds like music is pretty important to you, so if you are not happy with the quality (which is better than anything I've ever heard on FM) then perhaps satellite is not for you.

I use my Sirius subscription primarily to listen to the entertainment channels and college/NFL games (all essentially talk-radio). I occasionally listen to some of the genre music channels, and have not had a problem with the quality. If I wanted better quality sounding music, I would plug in my iPod or put in a CD.

For what its worth, I drive an Audi with Bang & Olufsen symphony audio.

One better-sounding, similar-type replacement for Sirius/XM music would be Slacker.

And free, too, if you don't want the premium service (4 GB, G2 player can currently be gotten refurbished from their website for only $49.99).

Slacker is only an option if you want to listen to music and only listen to the music you have synced to it before leaving the house.

It is not an option if you live in the boonies or are traveling where there is not reliable cell service or wifi (much of California), or if you prefer to listen to live call-in radio shows or sports content. Satellite works everywhere your car can see the sky.

Otherwise, I'd just use Pandora on my cell phone if all I wanted was music and had access to reliable 3G internet everywhere.

Are you sure you're not confusing a dedicated, Slacker brand portable player like the G2 with a mobile communications device?

You don't need a continual wi-fi connection to use a Slacker portable player. You can just pre-load music from the website and play it back anywhere.

Yes, I am positive I'm not confusing it, and am familiar with the Slacker G2. In my previous post, I made it clear that that is not an option for me as I do not want to be tied down to pre-loaded music. If I am on a long drive and my tastes change, I will be unable to alter my music without resyncing to a different genre.

With Sirius, there are multiple genres of music on multiple channels in addition to the live call-in radio shows and live sports.

I guess I shouldn't have quoted you in my post, as it seemed to add to the confusion that my response was meant as a possible alternative for the other poster.

I thought you were originally responding to his post with suggestions for him, too - not taking it as if he was telling anyone else what they should or shouldn't do (even though it might've seemed that way on the surface. I got the impression he was looking more for an alternative for himself, because he has other posts around here asking about them - even one asking about HD radio in that forum, and I had just read some of them before reading his post in this thread, because most were also right here in this section and fresh).

You said, "it sounds like music is pretty important to you", and mentioned an iPod or CD's, and I was just adding to what I thought were suggestions for him. Sorry if you took it that I was "telling you what to do". I either should've made it clearer, or just answered him in one of those other threads he posted, so as to not get involved right in the middle of some other, ongoing discussion and avoid the confusion.

No worries, I didn't take it that way. I was only responding to you because it appeared as though you were responding to me. My mistake.

FWIW, Tunes4MyParty created his account yesterday, and made 4 posts, three of which bash Sirius/XM. I think the OP was simply searching for a way to get satellite radio as cheaply as possible.