We began our subscription with XM Radio in March when we purchased a new car that was equipped for the service. Then in December I decided to get my husband an XM radio as a gift for Christmas, and ordered the base model and 3 months of service. He was happy to receive but decided to upgrade it to a fancier model. XM had already charged us for the basic model and first 3 months of service and said they would refund when they received the radio. Since I returned the radio by Fed Ex, I have tracking proof that the radio was received by XM in Fremont, CA. They were very quick to charge us for the new upgraded radio and 3 months of service, but still no refund on the returned one...
Three months went by and we get charged for the next quarter's service in March on our credit card, and in addition, a suspicious $399.99 charge by XM. I called to question, and the first customer service rep was difficult to understand and argumentative, and they said that my husband had called in and ordered lifetime service for our 3rd radio. I told her that this was not possible, that we don't have a 3rd radio, that it had been returned and neither one of us even knew about a lifetime service and can't even find this service offered on their website. The service rep was very rude and said they had a recording that my husband called it in and I asked them to let me hear the recording which they said they would not be able to provide.
The call was escalated to 2 more reps at XM, and after much discussion and frustration, it was finally discovered that the $399.99 charge was associated with the returned radio's ID number, one that we no longer owned, and the one they insisted we still owned. Their tune changed a little but they never agreed to remove the $399 charge from our credit card. We were told that if we cancelled the lifetime service that we would be charged a cancellation fee of $100, and we told them we would not agree to this charge because we DID NOT add the service!
Finally, I was told that someone would call back from a different department which they did but left XM's toll free number instead of a direct dial number on my voice mail, and when I called back, I had to go through the entire story again with yet another customer service rep, and they acted as if they had none of the previous conversations documented on our account that it took me 1 1/2 hours to go through the night before with the 3 other reps from XM.
Again, they insisted they could not remove the $399.99 from our bill but could transfer the service to one of our existing radios! I replied that I don't want the service, never ordered it, didn't know anything about it and couldn't even find this service on their website and to remove immediately. They continued to argue that because of the "terms and conditions", they could not refund the charge.By the way, we never received a contract with terms and conditions! There has never been anything in writing other than a welcome packet and a channel guide. The transactions were all on the phone!
I feel that XM is trying to manipulate and even trick us into keeping a service that we NEVER added, and then if we insist on removing this charge, they are saying we have to pay a cancellation fee on top of that! I am very disappointed by the tactics of the customer service reps and even the supervisors that we talked to at XM. We finally had to dispute the fraudulent charge with our credit card company who told us that this is not an uncommon complaint with XM. We were only able to get our refund thanks to American Express, not because of any direct attempts we made as XM customers.
Our saga continues with XM, because we have still not received the refund for the radio and service we returned in Dec after several more calls we have made in April and May. Each time they act like they don't know what we are talking about and then finally agree after much time on the phone holding, say they will do it and no credit shows up on our card. Now they are saying they will mail a refund check since our credit card is no longer attached to our XM account (thankfully), but we have yet to receive the refund.
All we want is to be able to enjoy the 2 radios we have without a hassle, to be charged ONLY for what we have purchased and to be able to call customer service if there is a problem without being exasperated each time. We would prefer not to do business with a company that is not honest, places fraudulent charges on credit cards that their customers have entrusted them with, and even trains their customer service representatives to exasperate their customers so they'll give up trying to get their money back.
After reading all the other complaints on this website and others on the internet about XM, we are too weary to even try to cancel our service, because we know it is going to be difficult based on others' stories experiencing unauthorized auto-renewals and calls and letters from collection agencies.
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