[glasspilot]

I have now owned my '17 Volt for just over 6 months now (time flies!). I did not renew any of the OnStar or SiriusXM. So right on sched Onstar is down to "basic" but Sirius continues to work. Anybody know more about this?

 

[TSquare]

I have now owned my '17 Volt for just over 6 months now (time flies!). I did not renew any of the OnStar or SiriusXM. So right on sched Onstar is down to "basic" but Sirius continues to work. Anybody know more about this?

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. The dealer probably hasn't yet told Sirius that the car was sold and you are still on the dealer's trial account.

 

[glasspilot]

Thanks Tsquare! Interesting idea. I'll keep listening as long as it works! I love the comedy channels!

 

[telveer]

Just make sure SiriusXM is not automatically charging you. When it comes to billing, SiriusXM is as shady as they can get.

 

[Tomt]

The Sirrus in my Leaf worked in trial mode for the entire 5 years that I had it. This was true for a number of 2011 owners so it must have been a glitch at Nissan... Since I have Pandora and Spotify on Android Auto, along with vastly superior navigation, I didn't bother renewing XM on my Volt.

 

[Kvanhutton]

I cancelled a SiriusXM contract on my older car....it took a couple of months for them to actually shut off the signal, but they did stop billing immediately.

 

[glasspilot]

As the OP I thought I'd say Sirius/XM finally quit a couple weeks ago. Just short of a year of use. I did like the comedy channels but I'm too cheap to pay! I do listen to old fashioned radio and also podcasts that I load to my phone.

 

[PrivatePilot]

As long as you never input credit card details anywhere with SiriusXM, let it ride.

When it does finally get turned off look online for promo codes and such - "6 month specials" and such for the $30 range are commonplace so long as you setup preauthorized payments - they hope you just continue on a regular subscription afterwards. If you call back and pretend to cancel at the end of that 6 months they'll offer you all sorts of discounts to stay. Either that, or cancel, and signup again using another promo code and a different email address - their systems don't seem to check ESN's or anything against old accounts.

I've haven't paid full price for Sirius for many, many years, and I have 4 subscriptions - one for each Volt, one for a portable radio that goes back and forth between the house and the pool deck depending on season, and one on my motorcycle.

 

[JRRF]

I've haven't paid full price for Sirius for many, many years, and I have 4 subscriptions - one for each Volt, one for a portable radio that goes back and forth between the house and the pool deck depending on season, and one on my motorcycle.

Me neither. Even if you let it just expire you will immediately get offers in the mail for less than half the price. I'm not a big XM fan because the quality of the audio signal is horrible. And the incremental cost to them of your radio picking up the signal is exactly zero. So you should pay as little as you possibly can.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Meh, they have overhead and costs (after all, running a bunch of satellites and constantly beaming content to them, paying talent, etc isn't free) but at the same time I'm not going to not take them up on discounts and such if they're out there.

The audio quality isn't a huge deal to me, I just can't handle terrestrial radio anymore, that's the biggie - 2 good songs, 5 commercials, 1 good song, 3 commercials...etc etc.

That, and when travelling I hate having to constantly look for new radio stations.

 

[JRRF]

Meh, they have overhead and costs (after all, running a bunch of satellites and constantly beaming content to them, paying talent, etc isn't free)

Those are fixed costs, not incremental costs. They have to pay for all of that if they have 1 subscriber, or 100 million subscribers.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Those are fixed costs, not incremental costs. They have to pay for all of that if they have 1 subscriber, or 100 million subscribers.

Talent is incremental, as is the cost of maintaining and actually operating all the technology that goes into making satellite radio work every hour of every day. They also have to pay royalties for all that content they play based on subscriber numbers.

I think you're oversimplifying things.

Like any business, they need to remain financially viable. If nobody paid anything of their subscriber numbers were halved all of a sudden we'd all be listening to dead air on our radios in short order.

 

[JRRF]

Talent is incremental, as is the cost of maintaining and actually operating all the technology that goes into making satellite radio work every hour of every day. They also have to pay royalties for all that content they play based on subscriber numbers.

I think you're oversimplifying things.

Like any business, they need to remain financially viable. If nobody paid anything of their subscriber numbers were halved all of a sudden we'd all be listening to dead air on our radios in short order.

No argument that they have to pay for enough of this stuff to get sufficient subscribers, and that it takes a lot to provide the content and systems for all these subscribers. But the incremental cost for each subscriber is still zero. When you join they don't have to add talent, content, satellites, or anything else. They don't even supply you with a receiver. The reason they are willing to heavily discount their fees is that even if you paid them a dollar/month, that's better than not having you. That's the definition of a zero incremental cost. None of their infrastructure costs abate in any way if you decide not to subscribe. Compare that to the power company. They pay for every kw they deliver to your Volt, and sell it to you at a profit. If you stop buying power from them, they still have to maintain their power plants, but their costs go down immediately. They have an incremental cost of providing you with each kw.