Sirius stole $164 from me and refuses to give it back.

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KillrBuckeye

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Aug 17, 2007
91
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Suburban Detroit
I'm hoping someone here might be able to offer me some suggestions for getting back my money. Here is a brief description of the situation:

We had a 2-year lease on a vehicle from Nov 2006 through Nov 2008. We prepaid for 18 months of Sirius service on the vehicle (the first 6 months were free) through the dealership and were told that we were all set. We were never in direct communication with Sirius, so they didn't have a CC#, and we were never led to believe we were entered into a contract. When our lease term ended, we turned in the vehicle and took delivery of a new one. On the new vehicle, we signed up for service by directly contacting Sirius in April of 2009.

All seemed okay until recently some fraudulent activity on our credit card prompted us to scrutinize all charges from the past couple of years. It turns out that Sirius twice charged our credit card for service on the first vehicle (the one we turned back in to the dealership in November 2008)—once in April 2010 and again in April 2011. Sirius agreed to refund the charge from April 2011, but refuses to refund the charge from April 2010. Every customer service representative I speak with gives me a different reason. One person said Sirius could not issue refunds past 1 year, while another told us that it was our fault for not being familiar with the terms and conditions. Yet another representative told us that with prepaid accounts, no cancellation is necessary and agreed that we should get a refund! Bottom line is that we were charged for service on a vehicle we hadn't owned for over 18 months. Sirius automatically associated a credit card number we gave them for a new vehicle with the old account and started charging us.

I want to reiterate that we were never presented with terms and conditions for the prepaid account, never spoke with a Sirius representative, and never gave them a credit card number (for the prepaid account). Further, both the dealership and a Sirius customer service representative told us that no action was necessary on our part to cancel the prepaid account.
 
KillrBuckeye said:
I'm hoping someone here might be able to offer me some suggestions for getting back my money. Here is a brief description of the situation:

We had a 2-year lease on a vehicle from Nov 2006 through Nov 2008. We prepaid for 18 months of Sirius service on the vehicle (the first 6 months were free) through the dealership and were told that we were all set. We were never in direct communication with Sirius, so they didn't have a CC#, and we were never led to believe we were entered into a contract. When our lease term ended, we turned in the vehicle and took delivery of a new one. On the new vehicle, we signed up for service by directly contacting Sirius in April of 2009.

All seemed okay until recently some fraudulent activity on our credit card prompted us to scrutinize all charges from the past couple of years. It turns out that Sirius twice charged our credit card for service on the first vehicle (the one we turned back in to the dealership in November 2008)—once in April 2010 and again in April 2011. Sirius agreed to refund the charge from April 2011, but refuses to refund the charge from April 2010. Every customer service representative I speak with gives me a different reason. One person said Sirius could not issue refunds past 1 year, while another told us that it was our fault for not being familiar with the terms and conditions. Yet another representative told us that with prepaid accounts, no cancellation is necessary and agreed that we should get a refund! Bottom line is that we were charged for service on a vehicle we hadn't owned for over 18 months. Sirius automatically associated a credit card number we gave them for a new vehicle with the old account and started charging us.

I want to reiterate that we were never presented with terms and conditions for the prepaid account, never spoke with a Sirius representative, and never gave them a credit card number (for the prepaid account). Further, both the dealership and a Sirius customer service representative told us that no action was necessary on our part to cancel the prepaid account.
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Send an email to mkarmazin@siriusradio.com . They should be able to help. or you could also send a message to @SXM_Help on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/#!/SXM_Help
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
Contact your credit card comapny and dispute the charge.
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Pretty sure you legally only have 60 days from receiving the bill to dispute.

This is why you should check your statements every single month, it amazes me with as much CC fraud as happens that people don't do this.
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
Contact your credit card comapny and dispute the charge.
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That doesn't always work... in a dispute with one right now for a totally different matter, but I got a letter today saying the are denying my claim. Time to battle with them more. I thought credit cards were supposed to protect you. Damn you mastercard...

Time to find another card. Any ideas?
 
digiblur said:
That doesn't always work... in a dispute with one right now for a totally different matter, but I got a letter today saying the are denying my claim. Time to battle with them more. I thought credit cards were supposed to protect you. Damn you mastercard...

Time to find another card. Any ideas?
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Amex has always ruled in my favor in disputes.
 
Amex has always gotten my money back as well. They rock! They will immediately credit your account if you tell them that you already contacted the retailer/seller to try to resolve the issue and let you try to resolve the dispute with retailer/seller. They may need proof that you have returned the item to the retailer/seller though to prevent the charge from returning back to the card and may get information from them on their end to get the charges back on the card if they feel that the information is credible enough.
 
digiblur said:
That doesn't always work... in a dispute with one right now for a totally different matter, but I got a letter today saying the are denying my claim. Time to battle with them more. I thought credit cards were supposed to protect you. Damn you mastercard...

Time to find another card. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Yea, had the same issue with Chase. Had to drag their ass into court to get them to settle.

I did have the last laugh because I had a $50,000 credit line and stopped using the account for my business. I was charging roughly $60,000 in charges per month, and they where making a nice profit from all the transactions.

Now all my business is with American Express
 
KimmiKat said:
Reminds me of my battle with Paypal. They still owe me a big chunk.
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Paypal is the worst of them all. I purposely pay everything through them with my American Express, to screw them for the extra 2%, instead of using funds in my paypal account or doing a bank transfer.

Their buyer protection policy sucks. I have won many disputes with sellers, but if they seller doesn't have any money in their paypal account they will not re-imburse you. You literally need to pay for everything with a credit card, and then dispute it through your credit card company.

As a seller, you get screwed there also if a customer disputes a transaction

One of the reasons why I quit ebay and do a very limited number of transactions with paypal.
 
navychop said:
They certainly got your cc from somewhere.
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"When our lease term ended, we turned in the vehicle and took delivery of a new one. On the new vehicle, we signed up for service by directly contacting Sirius in April of 2009."........

I do agree that it seems a little late to dispute those charges though. Many years ago I fell victim to something similar with AOL, but mine was for only about 30 bucks. When we canceled with AOL Dialup we had some message reminder bull sh*t we signed up for through them for 5 bucks extra a month. After we canceled AOL we didn't catch that extra 5 dollar a month fee for 6 months. When we called them they stated that we should have called a second time to cancel that phone message crap. We only got credit for 3 months. Check your monthly statements closely.;)
 
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I hadn't disputed the charge with Mastercard because I read that it must be done within 180 days. I suppose it's worth a shot though.

I do realize most of this could have been avoided if we had looked at our credit card statements more closely. We usually do this, but we were in the middle of a move in April 2010 and had so many charges related to the new house (repairs, decoration, furniture, services, etc.) that it slipped through the cracks. Regardless, Sirius was unjustified in taking this money.

I will try the corporate email that isaac provided. If I can't get anywhere, I guess my only recourse is to file complaints with the state Attorney General and BBB.
 
I am happy to report that Sirius finally refunded my money. I sent an email to corporate and posted my story on the SiriusXM Facebook page, and within a couple of days someone from the customer complaint department called me. The Sirius rep once again denied my request for a refund, stating that I *must* have called in at some point to request service on the vehicle. I asked her why I would ask for service on a vehicle that I had turned in over a year ago, and she was stumped. She agreed to send my complaint to corporate, and would call me with an answer in a couple more days. Sure enough she called back and told me--much to her surprise--that corporate had reviewed the details of my situation and decided to authorize a refund. I'm very happy to have my money back, but I can't say I'm pleased with the customer service from Sirius or their billing system.
 
I had a problem with SiriusXM when I purchased a NEW vehicle. They charged me an ETF when I changed service from the old vehicle to the NEW vehicle.

Customer Service Executive Response Team corrected the issue almost immediately as soon as they glanced at my account.

SiriusXM also says they no longer have ETF's and in my case never should've been charged one.

So check your statements no matter who your with. When there's smoke, there's fire!

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
 
Uhhh they NEVER had an ETF because they NEVER made you sign a contract. The only 'penalty' fees they ever had was if you took one of their free radio promos and didn't keep service for at least 3 (maybe it was 6) months, they would bill you for the price of the radio. But as far as I know they don't even do those anymore since the merger.
 
Sirius and XM are very bad at automatically charging credit cards when a pre-paid subscription is over. A few years back I bought several radios and pre-paid a years subscription as christmass gifts.

Sure enough a year later, I had several charges on my credit card when the subscriptions came up for renewal.

The whole problem is that nobody gives a flying crap about satellite radio. When the subscription runs out, people simply switch back to listening their their local radio stations and will not bother to take the time to call in and renew their subscription. My XM subscription ran out right before Thanksgiving, I didn't bother to renew it till baseball season started, and the only reason why I renewed it is because XM shows the score in real time.
 
SiriusXM did have an ETF per their ERT Staff. It was short lived this year & was dropped. I also have the ETF in writing in form of a letter after purchasing my NEW Vehicle, even though I transferred my OLD subscription to the NEW Vehicle (including FREE Trial). I was charged the ETF, but it was credited back.

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
 
Post up this alleged letter. I've had XM since 2002 along with Sirius since 2008 on a factory Mazda radio, and there's never been a whiff of any ETF because there's NEVER been any contract lock in (save for the promos I mentioned before, and a vehicle-equipped radio does NOT count as a free or promo radio). You can't have an ETF if there's no contract. I'm calling BS.
 
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JerseyMatt said:
Post up this alleged letter. I've had XM since 2002 along with Sirius since 2008 on a factory Mazda radio, and there's never been a whiff of any ETF because there's NEVER been any contract lock in (save for the promos I mentioned before, and a vehicle-equipped radio does NOT count as a free or promo radio). You can't have an ETF if there's no contract. I'm calling BS.
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Not BS, then why did the ERT Staff notice the $75.00 ETF on my account?

The ETF was short lived and no longer is done.

I was with XM in 2001 and SiriusXM after the merger.

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
 

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