Tag sirius price increases

Homey sent me some info today on one of my most disliked companies, Sirius/XM.  Evidently they announced a few months back that they plan to raise their monthly subscription rates an additional $2 starting in January 2012.

Of course the idea of paying more for a service that gives me less and less of what I want (Stern content) is not going to go over well. But what really sets my blood boiling is this quote from CEO Mel Karmazin. “Sirius has never increased its base price of $12.95 since its service launched about a decade ago”.  That is pure unadulterated BULLSHIT.

To me, the “rate” is what gets deducted from my credit card each month and that amount has gone up over 50 fcking percent since I signed on with these assholes.  Mel conveniently omits the “music royalty surcharge” that was added a couple years ago along with charging subscribers another fee to listen online, something that used to be included with the $12.95 subscription.

I HATE Sirius.  This has all but cemented the fact that when my annual subscription on my one remaining radio expires I am done with these idiots.

Sirius has been pissing me off lately.  Anyone that follows their stock knows that they are financially in the toilet.  To help address their problems they merged with XM.  In order for the merger to be approved Sirius had to agree to not raise prices.  Well they are now doing shady shit to get around that technicality. 

Instead of raising prices on their basic package that has been in place for years they instead are stripping out things that used to be included in the subscription, like the ability to listen on the web and then selling them back to you at extra cost.  They are raising prices, it’s just semantics.  They also are raising the price for secondary subscriptions more than 25%.  It’s bullshit plain and simple.

I think these moves may backfire on them.  I’m sure many people are just like me, annoyed that Sirius would try to squeeze more money out of loyal customers that have supported them for the past 3 or 4 years.  I already pay more than 20 a month between my two radios.  I am at the edge of what I am willing to pay for the service.  If Howard packs it in at the end of his contract in two years I would have a very hard time justifying the expense. 

It’s a sleazy move.

When we were watching the Super Bowl I remember Ali and I commenting that there weren’t very many good commercials.  However if I think about it, there were actually quite a few I thought were funny.  Maybe just because they are so many commercials during the Super Bowl the good ones get drowned out.

I liked the Dorito spots quite a bit, especially the crystal ball one.  The CASH4GOLD commercial with Ed McMahon and MC Hammer was hilarious.  Good for them for being able to poke fun at themselves.   I also liked the Conan O’Brien commercial, it made me laugh pretty hard. Some of the Bridgestone commercials were funny like the Potato head couple although I have no idea how it related to tires.

GoDaddy tried the same formula as last year, directing people to their website for what was surely a misleading and disappointing conclusion to the scenes shown on tv. Get a new idea.

  The commercials that required 3D glasses were generally stupid, especially the Sobe commercial with the football players dancing around, it made zero sense.