I’ve made no secret of my opinion of Atlanta radio; I rank it somewhere between famine and AIDS on the hierarchy of bad things in the world. That being said, considering how much time I spend in my car, commuting, or running errands since I live out in god’s country, I still like to have something to listen to. 99% of the time, that just so happens to be Sirius satellite radio. And then 80% of the time spent listening to Sirius is typically spent listening to the Howard Stern Show.
However, Sirius isn’t free, much to my chagrin. I had a six-month trial period after I got my car back in 2011, which is always brilliant in a market like Atlanta, because it allows people to listen to things that aren’t mainstream rap, mainstream country, University of Georgia football talk, or top-40s. And when the trial period runs out, they’ll want nothing more than to be able to have that kind of audio freedom, even if it means shelling out some money to do so. I fall into that category.
Anyway, when my trial period ended, Sirius took the initiative in making the choice for me; they sent me a promotional offer for another six months, at a highly discounted rate. At those kinds of numbers, it was a no-brainer, and I figured why not support the service that had liberated me from the audio cancer known as Atlanta radio? But I made sure to notate when a week prior to the service was to end, since they were going to start charging me full price automatically without notification when it did.
Five months and three weeks later, I got in touch with Sirius, and much to my horror, they had already charged me for a year, at a year’s standard rate. I like Sirius, but I’ll be honest, I listen to one channel primarily, and haven’t even scraped the surface of all the other possibilities. Service is spotty over Atlanta, especially downtown, where be it high-rise buildings, or signal density, signal dropping is way more frequent than when outside of it. Needless to say, I was not happy about them charging early, and thankfully it didn’t require much more than that much of a budding animosity for them to realize that there was an ember on the verge of igniting.
Doubled the terms for no additional cost – that was much more like it.
Two years later, I simply let the service expire; the card that had been charged had had its number stolen, and the card cancelled, so I simply neglected to update my service information, and eventually, the service just stopped. At this point, I figured why not see what it would be like without Sirius radio?
I lasted all of two weeks before I started driving in complete silence, as opposed to listening to Atlanta radio. I was ready to make my old iPod into a mainstay in the car at that point, just so I could listen to something at all.
But then the promotional rate came in the mail – Dear Danny, we want you back!
Dear Sirius, I miss you, and want you back too. Thank the fuck heavens.
Six more months, promotional rate, which brings us to a few days ago. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sorry, I like the service, but it’s not worth the money, you guys cut out too much over Atlanta. Promotional rate? That’s what I’m talking about. Sign me up. Please confirm when the promotional rate ends, and you’re going to charge me again? No, the sound of me typing isn’t jotting down in my Google calendar when that date is. Awesome, thanks.
Maybe it’s a little more effort than necessary for such a trite convenience. But really, the standard rates just aren’t worth it, and if they’re continually willing to give me better rates, why not take them?
