Tag siriusxm sucks

So I contacted Sirius yesterday regarding my 2nd bill in as many weeks.  I decided to try out the online chat version of their support.  I figured I could avoid the language/accent barrier that often occurs on SiriusXM customer service calls.  It didn’t take long until I was virtually greeted by “Cary”.

I gave her my account info and recapped the situation, explaining I just renewed two weeks ago but for some reason received another bill.  Before I started the chat session I had gone into my account online and compared the radio ID to the ID listed on this latest bill.  They were different ID’s which further reenforced the idea that they were charging me for a radio that was already cancelled.

So Cary asked me what the ID was on the radio I was using.  I told her it was the Xact PnP model, Sirius should already know what the ID is since I have had it in service for years.  Well this started a circle jerk of confusion.  To the rep it looked like the ID number on this second bill was indeed the correct ID for my Xact radio.

I wanted to make sure so I went out to my truck and retrieved the radio.  The ID number was indeed the same number that was on the second bill. So now I was more confused and annoyed.

So if this bill is for my current radio, what exactly did I pay to renew on February 3rd?

The rep said she looked at my account and said that my Xact radio did show it was renewed on 2/3/12 and that I can disregard the second bill.  Hah!  I have been told this several times over the years by Sirius when I received suspect bill notification and every single time when they tell me to ignore a bill I wind up being billed for it anyway and have to waste more time calling them back to correct it.

I looked again at my online account.  The main radio ID that is listed is something different than my Xact radio.  However when I looked at a detailed account summary I saw the transaction that supposedly renewed the Xact unit on 2/3.

I pointed out this discrepancy to the rep and asked for an explanation.  She had none forthcoming and instead again just assured me that I can disregard the bill that was in front of me.

I told “Cary” I was going to be extremely annoyed if I see that Sirius goes ahead and charges me a second time on the date listed on the new bill.  I asked for her full name and some sort of reference number I could refer to if this occurs, which I assured her was very probable.

“Cary” said I could keep a copy of the chat transcript as my record and was unable to provide me a reference number.  Well that sounded idiotic and I let her know as much.  She had no further answers for me and asked if there was anything else she could do for me.

I can almost assure you I will be billed again by Sirius, despite their assurances I will not.

Last night we had our monthly running club meeting.  It was pretty mild and short in comparison to some meetings we have had in the past year.  Typically I am one of the few board members that have regular action items to go over, most of them related to race logistics.

Last night I only had one item.  It had to do with the club starting a new retroactive policy of making what they pay Ali and I to time races, maintain the web site and all other organizational/IT functions we perform, as reported income.

I was a bit blindsided when I found out this was going to be the case for the prior tax year, which inadvertently meant that in 2011 we took more or less a 30% cut to do what we do for the club because of the tax burden.  I wasn’t real happy about that obviously, who would be?

So anyway my proposal was pretty simple, from here on out our fee goes up 30% to basically absorb the tax hit.  The board realized my point without issue although there was some discussion about how to best handle the tax burden reimbursement.

In the end the treasurer and I agreed just doing a flat 30% bump would keep things simple for all parties involved. I could have been more aggressive and pushed to get reimbursed for the tax hit I will be incurring for last year but I decided not to.

I’m glad there was no big fuss raised about the increase.  There are times when the hassle associated with my responsibilities to the club outweighs what I am reimbursed to do so.  The idea of getting a 30% cut to perform those duties would probably been enough to tip the scales the other way. I already have been dealing with coming up on a half decade of stagnant pay at my real job (actually a decrease in net pay this year), I am a bit sensitive in this area as a result.

I started watching the last of my second 4 episode AVI block of Breaking Bad last night.  I was annoyed to see that for some reason this last episode had the audio and video track badly misaligned.  The audio was lagging behind the video by a good 3 or 4 seconds.  Well I didn’t feel like waiting until I re-encoded the DVD to watch the episode so I just dealt with it.  To say it is mildly distracting would be an understatement.

I think this weekend I am going to suggest to Ali that she comes with me to the outlets, I am sure I will have to twist her arm to do so.  I need to get some pants that fit.  The majority of the khaki’s I wear for work are the same ones I wore when I was close to 200 pounds.  They literally look like sacks on me and require a belt to stay on my waist. Plus a bunch of them are just old and worn out, suffering from fraying at the cuff and some of the seams.