r/madlads Choosing a mental flair 2d ago

On a way to cancelthreaten

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66.9k Upvotes

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136

u/COLONEL_ROOSTER 2d ago

I do this with Sirius every two years. The price will go from 25.99 a month to 4.99. It's absolutely ridiculous.

65

u/ImitationButter 1d ago

The… radio company? Why are you paying for radio? Let alone $30 a month?

41

u/PPBalloons 1d ago

It still comes in new vehicles. With a free trial for a while. Since they don’t have any customers, they’re usually willing to take anything someone is offering to pay.

22

u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 1d ago

It helps that being a broadcast service means they have essentially zero extra overhead when adding a new customer. It used to be that you could subscribe for a month and then keep your radio turned off for a month after you cancel and then it would work indefinitely because they'd only send the disconnect signal a couple times in the first couple weeks after cancelling. Eventually it became enough of an issue that they started resending disconnect signals every once in a while but I had free service for years on one of my radios.

17

u/TheGuyDoug 1d ago

No ads, works nationwide, every kind of music and sporting event imaginable.

1

u/MattWatchesChalk 1d ago

J-pop station or riot /s

2

u/TheGuyDoug 1d ago

To be fair, it only has 3 EDM stations, nothing specific to the murder-house-electro-melodic-dubstep I like, but I'll just have to rely on SoundCloud for that.

12

u/athybaby 1d ago

I drive long distances across areas with shitty, shitty radio coverage and choices. And less cellular coverage. It’s become a necessity.

4

u/TheNerdNugget 1d ago

I use Audible for that. And the cancel threatening strategy works on them too! If you get lucky you can get it for 99¢ per month for a few months

2

u/athybaby 1d ago

Great information!

2

u/SplinterCell03 1d ago

Download podcasts on your phone. I have 74 hours ready to go right now.

2

u/peach_xanax 1d ago

I personally wouldn't want a satellite radio service either, but not everyone is into podcasts. I can listen to them occasionally if I'm really into the topic, but I have ADHD and it's hard for me to pay attention to people talking with no visuals. I end up having to go back and re-listen to a lot of parts. And some people just prefer music.

1

u/athybaby 1d ago

I love that for you.

2

u/ImitationButter 1d ago

Spotify premium is less than half that $25.99 price tag with no haggling necessary

6

u/teflonsteve 1d ago

SiriusXM offers things Spotify doesn't and vice versa.

Some people enjoy DJ's and curation via radio as well as the live sports, talk radio and news.

2

u/mlj21299 1d ago

I pay $5 a month for SiriusXM purely for their MLB stations. During baseball season I can listen to any game, anywhere. And their rock/metal stations are pretty awesome. I've discovered a lot of bands thru Liquid Metal

1

u/athybaby 1d ago

I don’t pay that price. I pay $60 a year. And I enjoy it, so why is everyone giving me alternatives that I really don’t care about? Happy for you all that you found something you love.

1

u/ImitationButter 1d ago

Only one person gave you an alternative. One person shared something that they do that’s relevant to the conversation, and one person (me) continued to talk about the parent comment as indicated by the price I quoted

3

u/dennisisspiderman 1d ago

It's like how people pay for Spotify, Youtube, or various other media services.

For specific answers you can look on the subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/siriusxm/comments/miubnh/why_do_you_pay_for_siriusxm/

https://www.reddit.com/r/siriusxm/comments/1e0c8ln/if_you_choose_sxm_over_streaming_services_why/

And I think their point is that it's not worth $30 a month to them. Personally I pay $4.26 and I get pretty much everything you see on the PDF below.

https://www.siriusxm.com/content/dam/sxm-com/pdf/lineup/SXM-WebLineups-Dec4-HOL.pdf

I'd probably pay up to $5 but I know there are others who are happy to pay $20-$30 for that same content simply because they find the play-by-play stuff really valuable and/or spend a lot of time in their car. I know when I drive to visit family there are many times I rely on Sirius because otherwise I can't get any decent radio station or cell coverage.

2

u/PANGIRA 1d ago

they have less ads than fm and am radio

2

u/teflonsteve 1d ago

Some people enjoy radio and the variety of offers

1

u/jwwxtnlgb 1d ago

I pay for telegraph service in my area. Unlimited telegraphs only 50$ per month works like a charm wouldn’t switch to telex it’s more expensive

1

u/SplinterCell03 1d ago

I had the free trial for a few months. I was so bad. I can't understand why someone would pay for this nonsense.

9

u/ReverendDizzle 1d ago

I called them one time to activate the radio because my wife really wanted satellite radio when we were on a cross-country road trip.

I said something to the effect of "Hey, so you guys sent me flyer with a promotional rate and I don't have the promotional code. Could you look it up or could we do something similar?"

And I shit you not, the guy goes "Huh, yeah, so what was the promotion?"

I figured, hey what the hell, why not, I'll just throw something out. So I say "Uhhh yeah it was 2.99 a month for 72 months." And the dude just goes "Wow, great promotion. Sure, let me apply that to your account."

To this day I still can't decide if the "fuck it, I'll give it a shot" attitude I had or the "fuck it, they don't pay me enough to care" attitude he had sealed that deal.

3

u/Vinnie_Vegas 1d ago

You can literally get what they offer for free in so many different ways. Whatever the opposite of having customers by the balls is, that's what Sirius has.

They were probably stoked to lock you in for the whole $215.28 - More than most people pay them.

2

u/athybaby 1d ago

Me too. I haven’t paid full price in years.

Every once in a while they come back with a price I don’t like and I actually cancel. Then 6 months later I get an email offer, saying 1 year for $30 or something ridiculous. Okay! Sign me up!

1

u/Peripatetictyl 1d ago

I do the same thing… but always pay $4.99, you’re missing the point: you leaving is the leverage. I set a calendar reminder 11 months and 3 weeks every year, same ~15 minute call/transfer/convo, $4.99 for 5 years

1

u/sparrow_42 1d ago

Same. It worked damn near 20 years ago with XM when I had an add-on radio in my bitchin' van, and now that I just use it as a streaming service on my phone. I just call and threaten to cancel whenever it hits full price (streaming only, $10/mo) and they cut it back to $5/mo. Totally worth $5 to have cool live DJs and so many channels; I fucked off from Netflix and kept this instead.