Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends
I have a sexual love - hate relationship withSiriusXM . I love that it exists at all — and that it exists outside the prudish shackles of terrestrial radio . I hump the breadth and scope of the content , from music to news to weather to comedy to be sports . I loathe the audio quality that comes with beaming sound from a satellite to a move fomite . I love that it ’s moderately affordable . I fuck that SiriusXM gives you the option tostream in a peregrine app , and I loathe that the app itself is n’t as quick and easy to use as exhort a push button on the radio in my car . But I love that it ’s transitioning intoa fresh era of satellite / internet hybrid connectivity .
But I ’m also someone who has canceled a SiriusXM subscription in the past . And so when news dropped that the State of New Yorkhas file suit against SiriusXMfor “ implementing a lengthy and taxing survival competition that Sirius create and implement as a strategy for retain as many consumers from cancel as potential , ” I entirely understood . I ’ve been there . It ’s not that it was impossible to cancel . It ’s not even that at the time I had to endure the comparatively light annoyance that was talking to a client service agent , who then did everything in their might to keep me as a customer .
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends
It ’s that I had to do it at all .
It should be as easy to cancel an online subscription as it is to sign up in the first place .
SiriusXM break the unwritten constabulary of the net . And that law is this : It should be as leisurely to scrub something online as it was to sign up for it online in the first spot .
The New York suit alleges a number of things that boil down to this : “ Sirius ’ scheme for frustrating cancellation includes forcing most reader to interact with a lively client service agentive role , even though Sirius has the power to process cancellations without the involvement of live federal agent . ” That ’s simply not the style things should work with digital services in former 2023 , never bear in mind the yr leading up to the lawsuit .
The lawsuit also alleges that SiriusXM basically waste customers ’ time in hopes that they wo n’t cancel . look at the chase , as cite from the cause :
Customer churn is a real fear for companies . And you ca n’t fault them for birth retention strategy , by which they endeavor to stave off cancellations by offering something in return . A lower price . Some other sweetening . But making it hard to cancel should n’t be part of that strategy .
SiriusXM is just the first company to make it hard to invalidate , but its customers merit better .
This is n’t unique to SiriusXM . Newspapers have been spoiled at this , too . I can remember judge to offset a subscription to the SundayNew York Times(I subsist in Florida ) because it simply was n’t being delivered . I never got the newspaper . Yet the agent on the sound ( who I absolutely recall as being helpful and understanding ) still had to read from his script , and I was then offered free bonus weeks of the same newspaper that I was canceling because they could n’t in reality see to it thatit’d ever be deliver in the first place .
I can remember sitting in the Delta Sky Club at Tampa International Airport , attempting to cancel the on-line subscription to the very same newspaper whose newsroom I worked in for a decade . I ’d stood in its subscriptions section . I met my married woman there . And I sat on hold for a half - minute , wait for someone — anyone — in whatever state the call center was now in , all these years after I ’d left , to pick up .
To this day , those experience have leave me gun - diffident . If I ca n’t cancel a subscription the same manner I start out it in the first place , I do n’t desire it . But do things the correct way ? You ’ll be more likely to keep me around longer . Or get me to amount back
