charper1 said:
You pay for THEIR subscription services YES, but hardware is the company selling it and / or the manufacturing name on it; be it Mazda, XACT, JVC, or whomever. If they have faulty gear or faulty chips in the gear, its THEIR problem really, not the subscription service's. People ultimately place it there because that's where they send monthly money /provides the content. BUT you paid a hefty marked up price for the factory radio that happens to have Sirius in it (with the price of the car) so thats where the most blame should be. I know its frustrating to not have your radio, but you got to really look at the details of who is really providing what, and Sirius is providing content to the radio, not the chips in the hardware.
If your TV (the box not the content) goes out do you call ABC, CBS or FOX to complain? No, you call the place you bought it or maybe the maker, like Phillips or RCA, etc.
If you home develops a leak do you call the bank or mortgage company to complain? No, you call the warranty or insurance who in turn gets to the builders.
If your PC or laptop crashes do you call to complain to your ISP? No, you once again call who sold it or built it.
One has to understand where the problem really lies, not just always complaining to the place where the subscription money is because its not always to right place. The fact that their typical CSRs do not know how to resolve your factory radio problem is NO SURPRISE, and they do all they can do, which is credit your service until MAZDA replaces your faulty radio.
Being as I've been dealing with this in other forums and have spoken with people in the Sirius upper management I feel I can chime in.
First of all, this IS a Sirius issue. Is it happening with only our receivers? At this point yes. However, the receivers worked fine until SIRIUS pushed an improperly tested (admitted by Sirius upper management, btw) update. How on earth that's Mazda's or Sanyo's or Clarion's (yes, Clarion made some Mazda units and are experiencing trouble as well from what I've read) fault is beyond me. Did they make the receivers to spec? I've got to guess so or Sirius wouldn't (or shouldn't) have let them sell them. Sirius didn't test the update properly before pushing it anymore than they properly tested the, "update," with their online player, which, btw, is STILL causing many problems for many people.
You ask if my tv went out would I contact ABC/CBS/NBC/etc and blame them. I would if they sent something to my tv to make it stop working. Sirius did that to my receiver (and many others). From what I understand (again, from inside people) Mazda wasn't the only one they had problems with, we are (unfortunately) the only ones they haven't been able to fix yet. So, again, the update wasn't properly tested before pushing it out to us.
With that said, the Sirius cust service isn't so much the problem. It's been the lack of communication which has shown the lack of care by Sirius to get this problem fixed. It was brought up elsewhere that, if Sportsters were having this problem I'll bet the problem would have been fixed sooner. I tend to agree with that. Because it is a small percentage of overall Sirius subs being affected, we are not a priority. Is that the right business decision? I have no idea. But what I do know is it's pissed off a LOT of subs out there. I have 2 other subs. Honestly, if XM didn't suck so badly (my opninion) I'd have canceled days ago. I know of many who have canceled/will not sub once their free time is up. At a time when Sirius has such momentum, it hasn't been handled well at all.
I'm gonna guess if you call cust service right now they'll tell you everything from:
-Your receiver needs to be reset (impossible with this receiver).
-I've never heard about this problem before, you're the first caller with this problem.
-It's Mazda's fault.
-You need to go to the dealer for this problem (see the first response).
-And many other things.
The problem isn't the people answering the phone, the higher-ups are NOT getting the information out to them and the general public. This is bad customer support...PERIOD.
Again, this is Sirius' fault, they pushed the update, they caused my receiver to go dead. Taking two weeks to fix it has been unacceptable...
