Thread: Monday's update for SIRIUS (Mazda owners)

Originally Posted by charper1

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...

Someone always has an inside source? LOL

I was told by someone in Sirius Corporate that there would 1st be a temporary fix as in a new signal sent out sometime next week(hopefully Monday am) and then the units would have to be replaced. Supposedly, we will receive something in the mail from Mazda explaining this. You can find the Sirius Corporate Tel # by a simple Google search. Most of the CSR's in Texas,Carribean,NY and Nova Scotia are uninformed. If you call the Sirius help line you should ask to speak to a supervisor. At least they are a little more informed.
I also contacted the Mazda hdqts. in CA and found someone who was very helpful and informed.
Everyone should at least get 1 free month if not something else for the inconvenience.

I have to say that the lack of communication was the most frustrating part of this. Had someone at Sirius been able to tell me from the get-go that there was a problem instead of having me go through countless resending of the signals and sitting waiting in my car for 30 minutes at a time not to mention taking the car back to the dealer then I would have been more patient.

Listening to am-fm radio in the car once you've been exposed to Satellite is torturous. I missed out on 2 weeks of football Sundays, have fallen behind on Howard Stern, and have been forced to break out the ipod and cd's.

Hopefully this problem will be fixed by next week.

Originally Posted by limmylo

I was told by someone in Sirius Corporate that there would 1st be a temporary fix as in a new signal sent out sometime next week(hopefully Monday am) and then the units would have to be replaced.

.

Just wondering? Did you read the whole thread from the beginning?
Everybody here has different opinions on what's going to happen.

I've said since my 1st post that this is a software issue.
And I still stand by that.
Sometime this week (but not on Monday), we will get new software, in an update, that is going to solve this whole problem.
There will be no swapping out radios.

There won't be a temporary fix. They are going to fix it correctly the first time.
That's what's taking so long.

Most of us have not been speaking to the regular CSRs.
We've been calling Tech Support directly.
And we've now received 2 emails from Sirius.

It's almost over...

I read every post on this thread...Not only did I speak to about 40 CSR's and about 10 Supervisors but I was in direct contact with at least 3 people in the Corporate office in NYC. I received both emails from Michael Moore et al.
Obviously there will be different opinions regarding software-hardware and I appreciate your optimistic attitude but unfortunately it looks as if the radios might have to be replaced eventually by Mazda. I too am hoping that it's just a software issue and that a simple resend of the signal will be enough but I am just relaying what I was told.
We will soon see.........

Originally Posted by charper1

Someone always has an inside source? LOL

Uh yes. I spoke with Jim Meyer who is the President of Sales and some other things. I emailed him directly and received a phone call from him and I have exchanged emails with him. So, I'd consider him in the know wouldn't you?

Anyway, we're now 2 full weeks without service. I really wish they'd get this worked out. Although I'm a huge Sirius fan (the programming anyway), I'm getting closer to canceling all 3 of my subs and just dealing with my iPod. It's totally unacceptable for them to have taken this long to fix this problem.

I agree, it's taken far too long to get this resolved. I get the feeling they have the fix, but are stuck on who will eventually pay for it. Unfortunately we the subscribers ( I have 2 subs) are the ones caught in the middle.

I received an email from Sirius this morning apologizing for the problem and saying I could call customer service to get a new update that would fix the problem. I did this, and the rep was completely clueless. He sent the activation message several times, and nada. He suggested I cut the power to the tuner by removing the fuse; this was something I had suggested to them 10 days ago, and they said it would void the warranty. Anybody had a similar experience? Where do we stgand now?

I was told to bring my car in to the dealer and have the Sirius radio reset, then call Sirius and have them send a signal to my car. Anyone else try this??
thanks