An Open Letter To Mel Karmazin, CEO of SIRIUS XM (Updated)

Mr. Karmazin,

You’re satellite radio operation, SIRIUS XM, is broken.

When the people you employ to work with and for the subscribers won’t actually work with and for the subscribers, you don’t have a chance of survival.

Bad business.

Tech Support at SIRIUS XM doesn’t actually support tech.

How do I know? I’ve tried to reach them and have them actually help me receive the channels I pay for…even though I don’t actually receive them.

And yes, even though I can’t listen to the channels I want, ala carte, I’m still being billed as if I were.

Bad business.

Your Tech Support people hide behind a vast cadre of people who answer the phone in varying dialects, the least of which is English, which the vast majority of your subscribers speak.

Bad business.

Don’t believe me? Click this link to read the previous, ongoing plea for tech support and then tell me if you really believe in what you’re doing.

I wonder if Liberty Media Corp., you remember, the nice people who gave you a $530 million dollar bailout recently, I wonder if they treat people like this at DirecTV?

I wonder if their board would keep you around if they actually knew what they bought into?

I wouldn’t.

If you can actually talk to someone in Tech Support, would you ask them to fix my problem?

I would…if I could talk to them.

Thanks.

EDIT 3/24/09 – After 2 days and four calls from a corporate type, I have a solution in the works.

I’m not completely happy, how could you be, if you’d been thru what I’ve been thru the last 2+ weeks.

I am heartened by the change in modus operendi.

The ‘solution’ will cost me about $72 extra dollars per year, so it’s more than livable, but the hassle and hour after hour of frustration on the phone was worth thousands of dollars if you’d paid me my going rate as a sales, customer service and marketing consultant.

Maybe SIRIUS will hire me to help them troubleshoot a few of their problems, which are many and massive, as far as customer service and websites go.

If you haven’t done so, please read the whole encounter by clicking the link. You’ll feel as bad for me as I do for them.

EDIT 3/25/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/26/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/27/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/28/09 – Still no radio

EDIT 3/29/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT – 3/30/09 – I called the nice young lady and asked why I still had no radio, no Tracking number and no phone call.

She said someone should have called and sent a Tracking number and apologized. The apologies are starting to grow old.

She gave me the Tracking info on my new MiRGE radio, which should arrive on 4/01/09.

That will be 8 days since they agreed to send one.

Personally, I’d have made damn sure it went out that day or the next and I’ve have sent it Next Day Air or Second Day Air at the very least.

I guess when you have ten’s of millions of subscribers, you take ‘em for granted.

EDIT – 3/31/09 – Still waiting. Should arrive tomorrow.

EDIT – 4/1/09 – New MiRGE radio arrived. I’ll try to get it installed and activated ASAP.

EDIT – 4/2/09 – Can get the SIRIUS channels. No XM channels as of yet.

EDIT 4/3/09 – No change. Can’t get anyone who speaks as much English as I do and they cannot get the XM chaanels to activate. I wish you could hear these fools and the sillyass things they have me try.

EDIT – 4/4/09 – No change.

EDIT – 4/5/09 – It’s Sunday, so I have the entire day to try and get someone who speaks good English and can get the XM channels to work.

I spoke with 5-7 people today. Not one was American or had a tremendous grasp of the English language.

They have zero technical skiils to boot.

Same thing each time. Turn off the radio, unplug all the wires plug it in and I’ll send the signal and it will work.

No, it doesn’t work.

I spent 2 1/2 hours sitting in my car and 7 1/2 hours total on the phone and/or waiting for the XM channels to activate.

I’m now 28 days into this nightmare.

I should take bets on when it will end…if it ever does.

Tomorrow I call Corporate again and see if the can find someone who can make it all go away.

EDIT 4/6/09 – The nice young lady in Customer care was advised of the complete and utter inability of the Customer Service reps to get my service activated properly.

She called me back with a gentleman from the IT Dept., I think. I know his name if you need it.

He suggested I send them the radio, let him activate it and he’d send it back.

Since that was less than the ideal advice, I suggested he activate a radio and send it to me and I’d send the one I have back in the same box.

Simple and much, much better.

I hope to get an email with a Tracking number sometime later today.

Until then I have no service, but I’d bet my subscription is ticking just as if I actually had what I was paying for.

I tried to get thru to Jim Meyer, VP of Operations, but he wasn’t taking calls…or not mine anyway.

How about you Mel? You available for a call. You guys have my number and you can reach me anytime from 8 am til 11 pm Central.

Call me. I’m 29 or so days into this precial brand of SIRIUS hell.

Ten’s of thousands of people are reading this post. Let’s talk about how bad you guys are.

EDIT 4/7/09 – Hi Mel. I know you’ve read the email I sent you.

But you haven’t called.

Why? Is it because you’re the CEO of a $2 billion a year company?

Don’t let that stop you, becuase your $2 billion company is losing money every month.

I’m part of the ownership group of a $100 million company that isn’t losing money every month.

I’m also a sales, marketing and customer service consultant that’s in demand every week.

Oh yeah, the replacement MiRGE radio you guys sent me today?

Well, Mel, it didn’t work. It had no XM service on it.

Even though your Engineering guy said he personally activated it before he put it in the UPS box.

Another sucky day in SIRIUSland, Mel.

Another bad day for your team.

Call me. I’ll help you help your team.

EDIT 4/8/09 – Another day down, Mel.

Day 31 I think.

Still no solution.

Another radio on the way.

Another day lost and more to come. Guaranteed.

Most ‘Reputation Management Consultants’ would tell you to call me or at least comment here, Mel.

It might make you guys look like you care.

Although, it’s been so bad for so long, you may not even be able to save your reputation.

I’ll link to an article/post that might be good for you to read:

http://www.flyteblog.com/flyte/2009/04/managing-your-online-reputation.html

EDIT 4/9/09 – Thankfully, Mel ol’ buddy, the ordeal may be over. I received a radio today that actually worked and had SIRIUS and XM programming on it.

It’s not a done deal, yet, because you guys still have to “merge” it with my account, but I’m betting you get thru that with flying colors…just like you did the other 30+ days of this mess.

It’s been nice using you guys to create the perfect case study in how to not protect your online reputation.

Thanks for being there for me Mel. It was nice to never hear from you or any other senior brass.

Good luck with that stock price thing.

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