Oh, on the subject of Sirius -- bad! bad! bad Sirius!

As you can probably find from earlier article (just posted moments ago), I recently "went back to" Sirius for my Sat-Rad (satellite radio) listening needs.

I had an account with them before, closed it at the end of the football season in 2005/early in 2006, and went with XM full time over the last year.  I still had a Sirius receiver (in dash unit in my older vehicle) until approximately May of last year when I traded away the Ford Explorer in favor of the Pontiac Vibe.  After that, with no Sirius radio in hand, I was stuck with XM until I purchased a new Sirius radio.

There's some other issues I could write about, and might again soon, on the Sirius radios.  Primarily on problems FCC related.  Again, topic for another time.

The issue here now is one of apparently broken/undelivered promises made by Sirius.  Not enough to make me want to drop them (at least not currently), but enough to be frustrated with them.

You see, when I dropped Sirius, I talked to a nice customer service person that promised me at the time that if I came back later they'd waive the activation costs so I could start back up at virtually any time.  They understood I was leaving as the NFL season was over, and I was also subbed to XM and didn't need both providers at the same time.  Not wanting to lose me completely as a customer they closed the account but put notes in their files saying they'd waive the activation costs if I called back in and wanted to restart service with them.

Well, at times I have a memory like a steel trap.  Just before Christmas time I saw the Sirius radios on sale, with features that I felt I'd be happy with, and I jumped on the offer.  After rebate the radio I wanted would be just under $40.  Cheap enough for my tastes.  So, I picked up the radio, set it aside to get ready to install at the next new billing cycle for XM (figuring to cancel them at that point in time, saving money).

As that date approached, I worked on installing the radio, had issues (again, will mention those in another article later) with the FM transmitter in the receiver and had to swap out the radio for a new one.  Thanks to Radio Shack for fairly simple return/exchange policies, that was done, and I finally got a unit that worked reasonably well.  Called up to activate the unit and provided old account number information and asked to have them check the notes there so they'd do as promised and waive the activation fees.

Customer service person says something to the effect of "no problem," promises to make notes in the account on what she did, and then proceeds to charge me the proper fee for 3 months of service, plus activation, less the credit that would wipe out the activation charges.

Lo and behold, I check the online bank statement and see that I've been charged the original fee, which means apparently there was a screw up in the handling of the credit/waiving of the activation charge.

I'll probably wind up ignoring the problem, but it's frustrating.  Why ignore it?  Because I'm hopeful that I'll get the rebate that I might otherwise not be permitted to get (assuming that they restrict the rebates to new customers only, but then again,  I don't think they have such restrictions in place...)  Also because I just don't want to go through the hassles of sitting on hold for the better part of an hour to argue over a fairly small charge.

I do however wish that companies that make promises like this would actually honor the promises they make.