[519] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Sirius XM Satellite Radio Quietly Slips Added
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Sun Sep 27 01:11:09 2009
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:49:01 -0700
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[ Abuses of merchant credit card systems fall into the privacy
category (and other categories too, naturally) as far as I'm
concerned. -- Lauren ]
Sirius XM Satellite Radio Quietly Slips Added Charges onto Credit Cards
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000618.html
Greetings. If you're a monthly subscriber to Sirius XM satellite
radio, have you been keeping a close watch on your credit card
statements lately? If not, go grab the last few months of statements
and compare the charges coming through for the service.
Due to their billing cycles, the charges for two months of Sirius XM
service may appear as line items on a single month's credit card
billings, but the fun part that you may not have noticed is that
monthly charges suddenly rose from $12.95 per month to $14.95, an
increase of around 15%.
What's that? You don't remember being notified that this change was
coming or that it had occurred?
You're not alone. According to Sirius XM representatives that I spoke
with today, the additional 15% charge is for music copyrights, and,
uh, the company apparently decided not to bother notifying most
customers in any way.
Were any customers notified at all? Yeah, apparently "invoiced"
customers, presumably business subscribers, were honored with the news
of this increase. But at least according to my conversations today
with the Sirius XM folks, nobody else was directly and individually
clued in.
Is it a valid excuse to claim that no notification was required, since
these were "pass-through" charges going to pay copyright royalties?
Ridiculous. Of course not!
The technical term I would typically apply to this behavior is
"crooked" -- nothing less. Were any laws actually broken by Sirius XM
based on their reported actions? I'll leave that for the lawyers in
the readership to decide.
In the meantime, I'm pretty disgusted with Sirius XM. I was concerned
that the XM/Sirius merger would lead to higher rates and lower
service, but I wasn't expecting "secret" credit card charge increases.
I can stream virtually unlimited Internet radio stations through my G1
phone, and relatively inexpensive stand-alone Internet radio appliances
are now widely available. Maybe it's finally time for a mass ditching
of Sirius XM and a sentimental wave goodbye at their satellites.
It's not so much the $2/month, or the differences between monthly and
annual payment plans. There's an important principle at work here.
Sirius XM has e-mail addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers
for the vast majority of their subscribers. Warning all subscribers
in advance that the charges were increasing would have been
technically very straightforward.
For some reason, at least from what I've been able to learn today,
Sirius XM chose not to act honorably in this matter. I'd be more than
happy to hear of extenuating circumstances or different spins on the
story, but for now, as far as I'm concerned, Sirius XM has completely
lost my trust.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
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