Satellite Radio Company Accused Of Refusing To Cancel Service

KIRO 7 has learned that a large national company has caught the attention of the Washington State Attorney General for possible unfair and deceptive business practices.

Sirius/XM Satellite Radio recently revealed it has more than 20 million subscribers, but because of her months-long investigation, Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy is now wondering how many of those subscribers wanted to cancel their subscription and couldn’t?

In Washington state, more than 120 complaints have been filed against Sirius/XM with the state Attorney General’s office. And most of those complaints reveal the customer wanted to cancel his or her Sirius/XM subscription but was not allowed to.

Clancy spoke with consumers all over Western Washington.

Rich Medved says when he called the company, “I was put on hold for five, six, eight minutes. Nobody came back.”

Mike McCunn says he “spent eight minutes talking to them, trying to convince them. Then, you know, they put me on hold.”

Jennifer Ihlen claims she “tried to close this account since December, and they just keep debiting it out.”

According to Denise Green, when it comes to a Sirius/XM subscription “there’s no way, no way to get it canceled.”

All four say they tried to cancel their subscriptions by calling the phone number Sirius/XM advertises as its customer service department. All believe they were canceling in accordance with their contract's terms and conditions. And all say they were unsuccessful.

According to Medved of Lake Stevens, “any company that has even a smidgen of decency and honesty would have taken care of the issue.”

Medved says he subscribed to XM radio for years but wanted to cancel because his rates went up and he thought the commercials were increasing. So weeks before Medved's contract was to expire, he called customer service. He tells Clancy he was told, “’We can take care of whatever your needs are.’ ‘I want to cancel.’ ‘Well, OK, I’ll need to transfer you.’”

After being transferred he says from one customer service rep to another, during which the conversation continued like this; “’I can take care of whatever you need.’ ‘Good. I want to quit.’ ‘Don’t want to renew? Oh, sure, ok, can I transfer you.’”

Medved hung up then tried to cancel online and even received an email from XM Radio saying “we are sorry to hear that you would like to cancel your service.” Medved expressed his frustration to Clancy, wondering “what’s unclear about that statement? And that’s THEIR statement! That’s their email to me!” Medved was then directed by the email to call customer service, which is exactly what he'd tried before. Despite his multiple attempts to cancel, the bills just kept coming. Medved refused to pay them. “A week or two later I get a letter from a collection agency, and they’ve turned it over for collection. Now it’s $60 or $65.”

A similar thing happened to McCunn when he tried to cancel his subscription over the phone. He described his phone call with Sirius/XM Listener Care to Clancy from his Anacortes home: “They said, ‘Well, then I’m going to put you on hold.’” After also being transferred from rep to rep, he, too, hung up. But not before McCunn says he made it very clear he wanted his subscription to end. Still, McCunn was also sent to collections. He, too, refused to pay.

After McCunn filed a complaint with the Washington State Attorney General's office, Sirius/XM sent a letter to the AG that the company didn't know McCunn wanted to cancel. In that letter, obtained by KIRO 7 Consumer Investigators after a public records request, “XM Radio has no record of Mr. McCunn calling Listener Care to cancel his service.”

McCunn says that claim is ridiculous, because he still has a copy of his phone bill showing his eight minute phone call to the number XM Radio has printed on McCunn’s bill. “They’ve had to have a record of my calling,” McCunn told Clancy. “Just have had to.”

In addition to McCunn, both Medved and Denise Green of Winlock also filed complaints with the AG's office. Of the 121 AG complaints filed against the company within the past three years, 78 of them are for inability to cancel or similar complaints. Once the AG's office got involved, however, Sirius/XM dropped its attempts to collect in most cases.

“My guess is they’ve adopted the same kind of practice we’ve seen other companies adopt,” AG Rob McKenna told Clancy, “which is to reward the customer service representatives for ‘saves.’ A save is when someone calls to cancel, but then ends up not cancelling.”

McKenna says a company can "save" a customer by talking them into keeping the service, or endlessly transferring, putting a customer on hold, or disconnecting the call. McKenna also tells KIRO 7 Consumer Investigators, although he doesn't know if it's the case with Sirius/XM, many companies have financial incentives in place for customer service reps who "save" cancellations.

Clancy asked: “Is that legal?”

McKenna: “It’s not illegal to reward people based on saving accounts. No, that’s fine. What is illegal is being unfair and deceptive.” McKenna went on to say, “the larger question is whether or not this is a business practice to deliberately make it hard for people, to lead them down a lot of blind alleys. That is something that, if it’s a pattern, is really a problem.”

According to the consumers Clancy interviewed, and the ones who filed complaints with the AG’s office, that's exactly what XM/Sirius did to them.

Denise Green says, “it’s as if they are playing some sort of a sick game.”

Ihlen of Tacoma thinks “something needs to be done. It’s stealing. It’s wrong.”

AG McKenna agrees “it shouldn’t be that way. And as always, I can’t comment on whether there’s an existing investigation. But it wouldn’t be surprising if one appears.”

Clancy wanted to ask Sirius/XM Satellite Radio whether it rewards its customer service representatives for so-called “saves.” She also wanted to address the complaints filed with the Washington State Attorney General’s office. Clancy even offered to fly to New York City to record an on-camera interview for the company’s side of the story.

But Sirius/XM spokesman Patrick Reilly refused to comment, and told Clancy via email “no need to get on a plane.”

Another issue Clancy's investigation reveals; some of the consumers who filed complaints say, because they paid their bills electronically, Sirius/XM just continued to withdraw the money -- even after they tried to cancel. Which is why Attorney General McKenna tells KIRO 7 Consumer Investigators you should be careful about which companies you give access to your banking information.

“If they can withdraw from your account, then you’re right. They’re going to continue to automatically withdraw. Now, if you can show you’ve made a good faith effort to cancel, and you did everything right, and they kept taking the money out, we should be able to help you get that money back.”

McKenna encourages anyone having trouble with this issue to file a complaint with his office at http://www.atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint.aspx.

Clancy also learned that many of the most recent complaints filed with the state Attorney General's office are from new car owners who received free satellite radio service for a limited period when they purchased their vehicles. But when some of them also wanted to cancel, they too had difficulties. If you've had a similar problem with Sirius/XM, or any other company, we want to hear about it.