Sirius XM Rate Increase For March 11th CONFIRMED
For those of you who may have heard the news about the “potential” Sirius XM rate increase this afternoon, I can unequivocally confirm that this is in fact true. Customer support representatives are now confirming to the general public that the rates will go into effect on March 11th and they are encouraging current subscribers to lock in at their current and soon to be grandfathered rates for 3 years, before it is too late.
As suspected there will be a $2 increase for additional subscriptions and a $2.99 fee for the online internet radio service. The silver lining in all of this is that all internet subscriptions will now feature the 128k “premium” feed.
Whether or not there will be more channel lineup changes or new content offerings surrounding this rate increase is yet to be seen as even the representatives who I spoke with personally were a little fuzzy on this information.
What is certain is that these new price increases could be just what the company needs to get them out of their looming debt issues. Whether it’s subscribers looking to spend more money to lock in at long term lower rates or new subscribers willing to pay the slightly higher fee, either way Sirius XM wins.
As far as the FCC and those pesky merger concessions go, I think it is safe to say with the Base, Best of, and A la Carte packages remaining unchanged, the legal hurdles have been cleared.
I’ve been stalling on this this yearly renewal offer becasue I WANTED TO READ THE REVIEWS ON WHAT OTHER SUBSCRIBERS THOUGHT. Much to my surprise almost every rebuttal on this yearly offer was negative. It seems long term customers are extremely dissapointed with the service, the supposedly great discounted renewal offer, and the loss of the internet capabilities. I started with Sirus XM Radio as a trail offer for 3 months when I purchased my truck 4 years ago. I liked the versatility of the many channels I could receive. Comedy, Odlies music, News in other states (regarding weather and traffic) and most recently Elvis. Sports and Howard Stern were not any of my select faves. I did enjoy the news radio during the Presidentail election with commentaries from announcers like Sean Hennaday, but once it was over, it got too repititious. Now it seems like Sirus has decided to step up their “fees” in order to cover their “fast track” losses or mistakes when they were a growing company of “choice” by most consumers. It seems they have overlooked the current economic situation we are in and do not seem to care that it will continue for the rest of this year as predicted. Plus, why do they think they need to secure their own financial future by asking us to subscribe for a whole year in order to save $3.00 on the quarterly bill we receive? Is it because they are planning to sell out to Echo Star in the very near future and once these so called saving subscriptions are transferred over to the possible “new owners”
we may be faced with more specialized service cuts and a another increase? This is a lot to think about, and it seems to look like a penalty for loyal long time customers like me.
I believe my choice to cancel my second subscription I have and even possibly my original subscription I started out with will help set the future course for a company that chooses to take away certain services when the whole economic structure of this country is faltering. Too bad they do not look at the fact that it’s the common working class people that are struggling to keep afloat are the very same ones that can make them or break them. Seems like they chose the latter. Well good luck to them as they fall down one by one like the rest of us have, and realize they will not be able to recoup their loss of a long time customer base, much less the loss of revenue they chose be so frivalous with as the economy was failing.
Correction in my former reply:
Saving $3.00 in a quaretly bill, should read: $3.00 per month= $9.00 per quaretly bill. And one more point: Why are we forced to choose a longer term plan? Couldn’t they just have asked us to rejoin at the same rate our plan is now with a continuation of being billed per quarter like always? Seems as though something is up their sleeve in the long run, and the magic act they are advertising is pure hocus-pocus. Now we see it, now we don’t!
The danger here (for Sirius) is that a large amount of their subscribers will view these actions as greed. Each subscriber has a different tolerance level when it comes to pricing and features which is why some are ok with this. In my opinion, they should not be able to modify this if you have prepaid the service. In my case, I pay an entire year upfront with the expectation that i will continue to receive what i was getting at the time of payment. The internet feed was never ‘free’; you could only get it if you were a subscriber in good standing. ‘Free’ (to me) means that anyone could get it without being a subscriber or paying for it. This is why charging me for it now and using “higher quality” as an excuse is wrong. If they do this, i will not review because who knows what’s next? This is why the FCC took so long to approve the merger and the reason they should step in and make them honest.
Well I have had enough. Crappy program line ups, rising costs i’m tired of it. I have kept my subscriptions because I could listen to them at work on the Internet. The radio in my car is great for the 10 min a day i’m driving, but now to pay this much each month for 10 min a day is not going to happen.
Either give us back the internet radio which was part of our subscription or allow me to have multiple radios, IE one in my car, one at home and one at work for one price, not three subscriptions.
It is somewhat foolish but understandable to “complain” about the price increase. How many years is one to expect the price to remain the same. From the get-go they never had to offer extra radios at pretty much 1/2 price (although a good selling point for families to get people “hooked”). There are many people piggy backing on the main subscription the save money and avoid the full Sub rate.
Unless you have severe financial problems, and/or really don’t fully enjoy sat radio, and/or barely use the extra units, you are not likely to cancel and Sirius is more the willing (needs to) take that chance.
Sat radio is here to stay for some time to come and may be the “only” way “radio” is received (in cars) for a few decades. I don’t believe WiFi is going to cut it and the infrastructure is way too spotty for a great time to come. As far as piggy backing on the cellular networks – forget it, you can barely have an uninterrupted call. I’m going to guessitmate a price of about $20 – $30 dollars way down the road for Sat radio. If anyone thinks I’m wrong take a look at an old Cable TV bill from about 12 years ago.
Have you canceled you Cable? If so, rip into me. If not, your arguments against what I’m saying are specious. Most of you belly ache-er’s are not going to cancel.
What sirius needs to do to control cost bleeding is to somehow get a second radio (per subscription) at a very low price that only works in the home. By only works in the house I mean home entertainment size equipment that will not fit in the car.
sirius should consider the following:
As more cars come equipped with built in units, sirius should develop a line of in-home ONLY units (entertainment system size units) or something of the sort and offer that unit as a second radio at a very low rate (say as low as the $3 subscript). this will help lock in those who don’t spend much time in the car and would otherwise not keep the service after the 3 free months were over. Most people at this point and into the distant future are not ready to internet to home entertainment system any type of steaming data. It’s just “too much work” (i.e., the forever blinking 12:00 on their old VCR’s).
I believe it’s a thin line that anyone pays for this service in the first place. The only reason why I would keep it is so I don’t have to change stations when I get out of range, but that’s a quick fix. This is not cable, most of us are not in our cars as much as we are at home; so this is an extreme far fetch to push the prices w/o at least two receivers included in the subscription.
When you have unemployment in this country at 10% (more realistically 18%) forced Health Care which no one wants and lack of increase in pay (if you even have a job), then how can XM/Sirius believe in this kind of an economy that they can raise rates by 25% in one year? HELLO, we are in a recession/depression. Wake up XM. I know I will not be renewing this upcoming year. Besides that, why should my increased rate be going to Sirus to help bail them out of a 500 million dollar deal they cut with that moron Howard Stern….