Sirius Lifetimers Beware

Agree 100%.

When I made an early bet on "Sirius Everything" to infuse Mel's company with cash to go out and make his plays in the marketplace with a stronger hand, I was told I would get Sirius "everything", including whatever channels were added down the road. And, oh, the future for more and better channels was painted by Mel and his marketing staff.

Then, mysteriously, the merger that was going to add those XM channels to the big winners over at Sirius became...two separate companies. Sirius and something called "SiriusXM". Then, guess what, my lifetime subscription to Sirius Everything no longer applied to this new, not merged, company known as "SiriusXM".

I am already pissed that my lifetime subscription to "Sirius Everything" no longer includes iPhone/iPod and other mobile listening device connection to the service without my PAYING another $2.99 per month. I was told I would never have to make another monthly payment again if I purchased "Sirius Everything" when Mel needed my lifetime subscription money reallllll bad back at the beginning.

I remember when Howard Stern was so upset that his fine employer's precious Sirius and XM merger process was taking so long because some government participants were doing what they could to make sure consumers wouldn't get ripped off by Mel in this deal. Well, Howard is singing a different tune now that he has learned that Mel's clever "merger-two separate companies" shell game switcheroo has lifted 100s of million$ from his expected pay.

Well, Mel did a number on all of us lifetimer subscribers, too. And, unfortunately, there is nothing in Mel's past behavior that suggests he will do the right thing by us in the future.

Yea, Howie's no dummie.. He knew what was going on when the merger was delayed and not a once spoke a peep about customers such as "lifers" getting screwed in the process.. Only problem was, he didnt think outside the box and realize he was gonna get the shaft as well!! lol..
On the bright side, if he does end up winning his litigation against SiriusXM, it might just pave the way for a class action suit with lifetime subscribers who got screwed? Not sure what the fine print said when they signed up, but ya never know.. Can hope anyway!!

I will be on board for any class action lawsuit too. I have had a lifetime one for more than 4 and half years. If I find out in 3 years or so, there are not enough new car models with inbuilt Sirius options, I will be pissed. The CS rep told me that they would not move Sirius LIfetimers to XM and will just give us some cheap portable radio to transfer to.

I have a lifetime on a OEM car radio, which I understood at the time couldn't be transferred. So I guess I'm not really in the same boat as the rest of you, since I'm stuck with the radio I've got. I don't really have a leg to stand on.

However, I'd be really pissed if suddenly they stopped sending content to my radio.

The terrible thing is that since they've already got our money, we're not really threatening to them. What are we going to do if they don't transfer us? Refuse to buy subscriptions on their new service? They weren't going to get more money out of us anyway.

Yeah, but we could mess it up with our friends in terms of potential new customers for them. Is it worth it for them? A good portion of us will be gunshy to commit to any satellite radio again with new money regardless. So they might as well keep us happy giving them good PR

I don't know, I must be lucky.
I got a lifetime subscription back in 2003 on an Audiovox SIR1.
I will not work in a vehicle anymore because the display goes blank when it gets cold.
It has been hooked to my home stereo for over three years and still works fine.
I know other people who's SIR1s have been bricked and no longer work.
I must be living right or something...

If the radio is broken, you should be able to transfer a lifetime sub even if it's a car sub if you call and tell them that it's broken

It's hit or miss. The terms and conditions clearly state that you cannot transfer OEM lifetime subscriptions, but if you complain loudly enough to the right rep, they may be able to transfer it for you.

Hmmm...I'm curious where this plays out. I signed up for the Sirius Lifetime sub when I got my Sportster 5 for Christmas about 4 years ago. At the time, went with Sirius over XM due to NFL Football.

I added the "XM" lifretime package so I could listen to NHL Hockey and some of the other XM only channels.

Still have internet access which my wife uses more than me.

Happy with the service, listen everyday, can't complain right now, but when the time comes for a "new" SiriusXM radio, I hope that I am not left out in the cold.

R.

I know my lifetime sub said I can transfer it to different Sirius receivers 3 times for a 70$ fee per transfer. I did this once when I switched cars already (and at that time I added the best of XM lifetime as well to my current lifetime).
-Evangelo2

How a company that operates like this year after year and stays in business is beyond me.

I just got off the phone with Sirius to transfer my lifetime Subscription to my new car. I got my car in 2010 factory installed. When I called them the first time, they told me that it was not transferable and the Internet Radio was included. Then I called them a few weeks later and they offered me up to 3 transfers. When I called them today, they told me first it would be $75 transfer fee, THEN, they told me that I can't transfer to a OEM radio. WHY WOULD I BUY A LIFETIME SUSCRIPTION FOR MY CAR WHEN I CAN"T TRANSFER IT TO ANOTHER CAR? I got scammed, so I told them to retrieve all the recordings because I know they never disclosed that. I am so pissed right now that these pieces of **** can get away with it. They have 10 days and I know they're not going to honor it, I just have a feeling. I'm not letting this go!

I'm confused. When you called them the first time, they clearly told you that OEM radios are non-transferrable. So you called them again, got incorrect information, and decided to then purchase the lifetime? What are they "getting away with"?

Lifetime is clearly non-transferable for OEM radios. You may be able to get them to do it for you if you beg, but getting pissed off isn't the solution.

I thought that they stopped selling Lifetime Subscriptions at the end of 2011.

I chatted with an Sirius XM representative and she told me: no more lifetimes.

Correct, with the new price change as of Jan 1 2012, there are not more Lifetime plans. only monthly, quarterly, yearly, 2 year and 3 year.

OEM Radio Lifetime plans were disclosed they can not transfer Lifetime plans, Aftermarket radios can have 3 transfers per radio , $ 75 a Transfer

People think lots of things change after a merger, but really nothing has changed, for the 1st year after a merger, you are still calling the same callcenters who handled your account the 5 years or more before, then after 1 year the callcenters finally have the ability to look at both bills / accounts at the same time, meaning a Sirius rep could not look at xm bills and vise versa, so finally they are both visible to universal agents now and can work on both a sirius radio or a xm radio, that does not mean, they are on the same billing/technical platform and can be combines. Even now years after the merger, the only thing change is that they are financially 1 company on paper. The prices are the same for either xm select, or sirius select, or premier plan, or Internet radio.

Old Lifetime subscribers still have the ability to listen online for free but if they want the service also on their smartphones, androids, blackberry or iphone, ipad, ipod they have to pay the $ 3.50 a months or $ 38.50 a year plus fees.

Tell that to my ears.

Except that those of us who made the lifetime subscription bet and ponied up the money advance in order to FUND that merger in the first place were told we were buying "Sirius Everything" for life, including all the new acquired channels, any new channels added later, and the ability to listen to "everything" on whatever device we damn well want to listen to it on.

Clearly, when none of the above is included in the "Sirius Everything" bet we made in good faith, the result is something very, very different from what we were told we were buying.

If Sirius had gone belly up two weeks after we ponied up the upfront Lifetime Subscription money, would they have pro-rated what we paid as though we'd been paying monthly and refunded the difference on the grounds that they didn't need our money for a merger that didn't happen after all? Of course not. Yet that would actually have been more in keeping with the spirit of an early "Sirius Everything" pre-merger purchase than what they did to us instead. What they did to us instead is an even more preposterous scam.

This was pitched as a merger but after they used our lifetime subscription money to effect the merger it was re-cast as "two separate companies" for no other reason but to screw lifetime subscribers out of their "Sirius Everything" purchase and deny Howard Stern a couple of hundred million bucks in bonuses.

The merger is a joke. They are separate companies.

It's still a joke, if I can't hear XM channels that are advertised on my Sirius channels on my Sirius Lifetime subscription. There is no merger, just one big company that owns two little companies.

I'm now wondering if it was the contract with the talent that kept this all separate.

For example: Let's say Oprah got paid from the lifetime subscription for XM and Stern was paid for the lifetime subscription from Sirius so you run into issues like:

Oprah never agreed to be on Sirius (it's her content and would want more money for having a wider audience).

Stern never agreed to be on XM (same reason).

A lifetimer who paid for Sirius has their money allocated for the Sirius talent and if they were to swap over then in the example above, Stern would be being paid for theoretcially someone listening to Oprah so Oprah feels cheated.

Now, where the talent lies isn't the issue (I know Stern is on Sirius - Not sure about Oprah and didn't want to bother to sort it out).

I just wonder if that is why they push back on lifetime accounts swapping over or on someone having to have two accounts if one car is on Sirius and the other is on XM. Maybe they're waiting for the talent contracts to come to an end in order to sort out the rest.

I hate the way they set it up when they merged. They took the easy way out.

Face it guys we are screwed.

It is obvious that Sirius XM has no desire to put Sirius OEM Radio into new cars to avoid transfer of life time subscribers. I'm buying a new car with XM and called and got the same BS I got 2 years ago when my wife got a new car with XM and they told me they were working on merging the "lifetime" accounts so they could be transferred to XM receiver.

So it is obvious it is never going to happen. I mean if they can't merge accounts in 2 years the merger of the companies would have take 2 millennia.

So we are screwed and are reduced to being pissed off for buying something that we new in our hearts was too good to be true.

We all know that the subscription is really about content not receivers. The receiver issue may matter on a platform type level since I understand that Sirius and XM when separate companies used different technologies which required incompatible receivers. But since the merger it is just used to deny our right to lifetime content.

The content is the same on Sirius and XM, why would it not be, so really the hardware it irrelevant to the merged company.

So this is really just a bad faith effort to liquidate the lifetime subscriptions now that the monopoly is complete. This is the point of mergers anyway. They are never to benefit the consumer only to improve profits, not reduce prices, or increase benefits to consumers.

The only thing we can do is bitch, bitch, bitch to the FCC, FTC, and your Congressman and Senator. Unless someone out there is a lifetime subscriber and a lawyer and wants to go class action. If so I'm in.

Peace.

@ DLPnut, from your original thread starter:
"I have news for you Mel. I am a member of SiriusXM and have been since you merged the company. Treat me right and allow the people who laid out their hard earned cash to move to the new radio platform."

I dont' see where you are teaching him a lesson here. The rest of your post seems logical and makes sense, but the last thing you should have done was go ahead and buy into SiriusXM, even after already being a lifer in the old game. Seems like you played right into his hand. If anything, we should avoid the new game like the plague.

@ Oscar 54 ditto on your statement
"The only thing we can do is bitch, bitch, bitch to the FCC, FTC, and your Congressman and Senator. Unless someone out there is a lifetime subscriber and a lawyer and wants to go class action. If so I'm in."

less time online on this chat, and more time filling in the FCC, so dig up those old "contracts" known as "service agreements" and lay it out for them. honestly, it would be fine with me if we had to choose one or the other, as long as it were truly 2 seperate companies, as competition benefits the consumer. The problem is now we all have to help Sirius pay for their over zealous and blunderous mistake of promising the universe to Sterns, who I wouldn't listen to anyway - the hippocrit. Since I dont have two services to compare them, I dont know if the XM lineup is getting slimmer all the time, and how many channels are available on both. It seems they could offer the majority of them on both platforms. I would also never buy a car with either one preinstalled, its the old Microsoft trick, but worse. The company probably underwrites provisioning those recievers because they know most people wont drive around with neat new equipment they can't use. Viola!!! more new customers! Viola!!! more repeat customers! And how did they define the term "Lifetime" in the contract? Users lifetime? Lifetime of Satelite content provider? Sounds like somewhere along the line they decided it should be "lifetime of the reciever". What a crock, let them go to hell with Howard.

Whoa, dial back on the propaganda.

There is nothing requiring you to sign up for/use equipment in your new car just because it was installed. My car came with a six CD changer, which I have never used in the three years I've been driving it. I'm not buying into the RIAA and their brand of consumer-hate by purchasing compact disks from them! The villains!!! And yes, the company probably does underwrite the receivers, because they WANT people to sign up. Nothing villainous or illegal about doing that... it's called a loss-leader, and its the same thing lots of companies do. Ever bought one of those Gillete Mach 3 or Shick Quattro razors? They give you the razor and force you to buy the blades. Same deal. Except... no one's holding the razor up to your throat and forcing you to shave.

I have been a Sirius customer years before the merger. I signed up for a lifetime membership a few months after my initial purchase. I use the service in my home that is located in the hills that totally block any useable signals from LA and even the few local channels that are in town have so much multipath distortion as to make them unusable. I made my purchase thinking I was going to get CD quality but found out that is far from that. It is true there is no static or multipath but the low bit rate/compression prevents me from listening to it as entertainment as my collection of multichannel CD, SACD and Audio DVDs. I only use a few of the stations for background music when I read or relax in my home theater. I suspect at some point SiriusXM might consider shutting down the Sirius satellites. If that happened I might have a legitimate complaint. For now I use it less than an hour a week if that but I am glad to have something to listen to. I don't even get AM radio except for KFI (clear channel high power station) and then it fades in and out at night. Internet radio is something I might look into. It wasn't that common years ago when I puchased my Sirius tuner.

WOW! I read most of your stories and I have to say WOW! Many years ago when this technology became mainstream I almost...almost jumped on the bandwagon and signed up. Then one day I heard about the merger and I backed down. I knew from past history of mergers from other tech companies and such, most companies go under in a few years. Then, I found internet radio and all was good in the kingdom. I am sorry for all you for the money you spent only to get scammed. I did have an excellent experience with Sirius when I rented a car and drove to the Grand Canyon. We drove all over Arizona and never lost signal. We had a good time.

Hello all,

I'm a longtime Sirius Sub, and just wanted to share some info with you guys having issues with lifetimed aftermarket radios.
SXM has actually cooperated and allowed a transfer of Sirius Lifetimed radios to the new SXM platform, on both the Lynx and Edge radios. You may need to follow a different chain of people to call to get this, but it is absolutely possible. The only downside is they axe your free 32k interenet stream, but they have also offered discounts and free 6 months of internet premium to lifetimers transferring over. This is not the best solution for those promised to always have a free stream, but considering that its better than nothing, and the fact that SiriusXMs online service is much better now (ondemand and downloads) it is good they offer this free or discounted for older subs.