kron0s

Anyone got a good deal on Sirius XM Radio for the Q5? Mine expired after the 3 month trial and I was wondering.. because they called me and offer me 29.95 for 6 months of service.

abacon09

I know from my previous Acura that you can get a sweet deal for a year if you hold out. $77 for the year. I know thats a little more expensive technically than your 6 months deal but good luck trying to get them to renew your 6 month plan. The guys on the Acurazine forum have this whole script written out about how to get xm/sirius for $77 a year, and many of them have done it for many years in a row. Just have to work the system. When you call them, the people are working off a computer screen that tells them what to say and do. If you follow the Acurazine script it checks the right boxes to get you to the end result. To Sirius they would rather have some income from you than none. If you interested you can browse through the Acura forum here. It has the instructions right at the top. http://tl.acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=767676

BeachRat

Sirius ended up sending me four different letters over the course of about 2 months. The first two were prior to the 3-month trial, and offered renewal at full price (around $149/year). A couple weeks after the trial expired, they sent a letter offering two months free on a renewal. Finally, after just over 1 month past expiration, they sent me a $77/ 1 year renewal letter.

I'd been holding out for it just to see if they would send me one, and was going to finally renew. I though about it for a while, and then came to the conclusion that it would just be easier for me to get the lifetime Sirius subscription for the car. It was $499 (up from the previous $399, and add $75 for music royalties), so a better deal than the full subscription, but not if you could get $77 / year, every year. I'd just decided that I didn't feel like haggling every year to get the $77 deal, and the lifetime then made sense. Mind you, the traffic program does not have a lifetime offer, so you need to renew annually, and at a separate cost ($3 / month, IIRC)

Good luck with whatever you do.

jbrandon

I have renewed twice at 4 months for $20. Just keep holding out and being reluctant to renew.

JFA in L.A.

I really wanted to like Sirius, but, sadly, I didn't. I found the audio quality and the programming really lacking. The Los Angeles broadcast stations (free) are miles ahead of anything Sirius is beaming down, and they don't disappear when driving under trees (seriously? who puts up with paying for that?).
What is really surprising, however, is how lame Sirius's retention marketing efforts are. They should go to school on DirecTV. There's a company that knows how to get and keep customers.
Sirius is just too expensive for the value it offers, IMO. I sure wouldn't buy a "lifetime subscription." I don't think they're a good long-term bet.

abacon09

I totally agree with you about the quality. When I had XM in my Acura, I liked it. Once I got the Q5 I immediately noticed the poor quality sound. I think the Acura had some filter/processor that enhanced the sound coming in from the satellite because the same channels in the Audi suck. Its Sirius's fault, not the Audi though. So I also decided not to continue my subscription. The funniest part of the whole thing was when I was talking with the Sirius people I told them why I was discontent with the radio...Poor bit quality sound, I could hear the compression. Then he was like, well I'm sorry sir but I have worked here for quite a while and you are the first person to complain about quality. All I could think off was BS! All you have to do is google sirius/xm quality and you will find many complaints. Not to downplay anyone's opinion if you do like the satellite radio, but I really appreciate high quality sound, and sirius/xm doesn't deliver. I'll stick with free fm radio, with better sound quality or just go with my Ipod which has the best sound quality out of the three. But if you want sirius for cheap, just hold it, cause it works. Ok, rant over. Thanks

irenesbob

Today I tried to get a decent price with a phone rep. The cheapest she would go was about $150 for a year. She got kind of surly when I said that I would not really be using it enough to justify the cost. I told her that where I live in the NYC area the Sirius signal keeps dropping everytime I pass a high building, overhead bridge, etc. She threatened that if I did not renew the Sirius signal would just stop when the trial was up and then where would I be. I told her I'd be reight where I am now: depending on the broadcast stations for continuous recpetion. I can't see paying $150 a year to have a favorite song chopped up maybe ten times in the course of the one song - it is torally unacceptable in my view. Gotta say once I get out of town on a highway it is much better, but I don't drive very far these days.

gronk

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-...ius&lastpage=1

Call the right number (one is for Sirius, other for XM), hit the appropriate keys for a cancelling customer as noted, talk to a representative, done in 10 minutes for the $77 + taxes.

Only issue is there isn't a deal for the real-time traffic, I think I had to pay $4 a month for it (almost half the cost of the Sirius package!).

uberwgn

I permit my trial subscription to lapse last week. Two days ago I got the $77/yr offering via email - - I was planning to stall a bit longer on the renewal process cuz I don't use the Sirius system very much, I experience a lot of drop outs.

One of their conditions is you have to allow them to put you on auto-renewal at the end of the twelve month cycle. I said 'no' and the agent agreed to put me on a paper bill which will be mailed to me. Radio has supposedly been re-activated during the phone call - - I haven't checked yet.

The agent did try to up-sell me on a bunch of stuff.







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Stillgoing

Just renewed the the traffic only yesterday for $44.95 for a year. I figured after spending $3k for the nav, it wasn't worth not having the integrated traffic. Although I'll miss the 50s station, there is always my iPod.

One thing I have noticed with the traffic though, is that when it gives you an alternate route on a side street due to heavy traffic on your route, it doesn't necessarily help because they don't have traffic information for the side streets. I guess I didn't realize that if it doesn't show green or red, it is because there isn't any traffic data, so don't fall for the alternate all the time.