XM Rocks
Currently i'm in gadget overload - namely I have way more gadgety stuff than I can even use. XM Radio just made that a lot worse. Three years ago, i got my first XM Radio. Now, you pay $12.95 per month now for the service, for the first radio and $5.95 a month for additional radios. When I first got mine, I got ridiculed pretty bad b/c I was 'paying for radio'. But I got killer reception, I got to listen to Phil Hendrie (the best show on radio) , Monsters in the morning , the Wall Street Journal Report , Coast To Coast AM , Larry Elder , Laura Ingraham, a rap station that was all da way thug and a lot more. And that's just the tip of it. So here I was with one radio. My parents are 'thrifty' in a weird way. At first they never want to spend money on anything, then when they do, they go hog wild. So I bought Mom one for the house with a boombox. Two weeks later she 'needed' one for the car. Then my step-dad wanted one two. So that made 3 radios in the family. Kim decides about a year later that she wanted one so I get her a SkiFy2 and the boombox. She loved it and so did Sarah. Well, they often forgot to take it with them, and Sarah really like XM Kids and Disney so I bought another one. Then I got a new one for my newest car. So I exceeded my family plan but it's like crack in the addictive sense, although the nice thing about XM vs crack is that your teeth don't rot and you don't have to sell yourself downtown.
Anyway, I got a Roady2 sent to me as a rebate offer and it turned out to be defective. This presented a problem b/c i bought the AudioVox XPress my car, but I couldn't cancel my service for 3 months as part of the rebate contract. Basically though I just needed to switch it. Well, I had a little problem and wrote XM an email to them about it. The really funny part was in the email that was sent, they included a forwarded email from the marketing department which included the text “We really need to kiss this guys ass, throw in whatever you need to make him happy.” So they did. They are throwing in another Roady to replace the defective one, they are throwing in a TAO (XM meets the Walkman meets the TIVO) at a greatly reduced price just b/c I mentioned I was looking at getting one, and they are fixing all of the issues with billing.
I've done my share of bitching about companies here and there, but XM has just been a dream to deal with. i've had a glitch or two with billing, but every time something has come down, they've fixed it, and made it more than right. This is just one more example of how they fixed stuff. They actually did quite a bit more but I probably ought to keep the rest to myself b/c they do different things for different customers. Today though, it seems customer service is either excellent or terrible. There's rarely a middle ground in my experience. Well, I can't speak to Sirius - but as far as XM Goes, you couldn't ask for cooler , more friendly company to do business with.
Final shameless plug for somethign I dig - if you haven't heard of the The Phil Hendrie Show, then you really ought to check it out. He's got the shows on his site and you can podcast them. It's on XM 152 weekdays from 7:00 - 10:00 and it really is the most unique, and arguably the funniest show on radio. And NO one else does what Phil does. Tons of Howard Stern Wannabes, tons of Rush Limbaugh Wannabes, more than a few Al Franken wannabes out there, but only Phil can do his stuff and he's the best at what he does.