it's been 7 months and I still have free XM radio. Normal?

Is that for regular XM or the premiere plan? I called them recently and their deals weren't that great (no deal with the premier package).

 

Select is a good deal, but no Howard Stern or Oprah

 

Good thread! It's especially good to know what people actually pay when extending their XM radio subscription beyond the free 3 months.

I have a PiPA. During the first part of my free 3, I wasn't impressed with the radio choices at all. The quality was fine, and I never experienced blackouts. But pay for radio? My plan originally was to not extend. However, before the 3 free were up, two things changed my mind: 1) the frequent letters from XM significantly lowered the price as the deadline approached, and 2) I actually began to like half a dozen stations, commercial free.

In the end, I extended for a new, full year. My "bargain" price was half off, or $7.17/month, $86/year, with waived activation fee. I figured it was a good way to give it a chance to see if it was worth paying for later on. (By the way, I called and had XM send me a paper invoice that I paid with a personal check. Using this method I avoided auto-renewal on a credit card; I hate that sh*t, and it should be outlawed. But now I need to call XM anyway and "cancel" my subscription so that it doesn't auto-renew with paper invoice).

From this thread I see that XM can be further bargained with. Totmatcher got the honey-badgerlicious price of $34 a year! That sets the mark for my bargaining 11 months from now.

Side note: I also recently subscribed to Pandora One, hoping it'd be a cheaper alternative for commercial-free, good music. Problem is, I have an iPhone with a 200MB/month data plan. Pandora One on cellular in the car? Forget about it! Two songs a day, each day of the month alone would max out my data plan.

 

Yep if your going to use Heart or Pandora than get the iphone with the unlimited data plan from Sprint but keep in mind Sprint has almost no 4g network so that's why it's unlimited.

XM is the way to go.

The neat thing is getting your text messages read to you in the car.

I have 300 MB AT&T data pan on a 4S iPhone.

Waiting for the 5s which is rumored to be released this September. I'm eligible for the phone upgrade this month but waiting for the next phone 5S

 

the 34$ thing was the "standard" one without the data for traffic updates and stuff. My understanding is the 86$ (comes out to like 92$) a year is the best price for the package that includes traffic/data.

 

Better than what we had....3 days after we bought it no more trial!

 

With smart phones able to feed live trafic, and the ability to stream music thru your ride ... and couple that with XM sales peeps who are failing to budge on pricing, I don't know how they stay in business. Jeez, it's $5 /month for our 2phone T-Mobile account (per phone) to get unlimited bandwidth ... that you can use beyond your car. The XM business model doesn't pan out.
.

 

I also renewed my subscription for 6mo for $32 with XM. FWIW XM is still available for lifetime subscription. I had to ask since I did not see it promoted and the price is flexible like most of there plans. I was told ($300-$400) for life of the vehicle with a $75 transfer fee to another vehicle usable up to 3 times. You MUST get this in writing!! I've read too many people trying to transfer service to be told they are unable to do it.

I'm curious if anyone else knows or has had luck with getting lifetime for free? My father's Infiniti had a subscription that ended while he was abroad & the car sat for over 6 months. I bought it from him and he later asked me if the XM was working. I had never had XM or tried it prior. I turned it on and sure enough it was still on. He asked to let him know if it was still playing after a few days/weeks and indeed it was. He explained to me that he suspected that XM sent the "deactivate signal" while the car was off. The only thing we can not confirm is for how long XM sends out that signal after a subscription has ended.

When I went to sell the car I asked a local car audio shop to remove the SAT receiver only to be told it was integrated into the head unit. I miss having XM for free! I have asked my local shop if they can locate the SAT receiver on the PiP but they said they will have to do research since it is a newer vehicle. I can only hope it is not integrated into the head unit as well. Hope this was helpful.

 

I think the general thought is the lifetime is more costly if you only keep the car 4-5 years. and i have seen losts of questions about the transfering fees as you eluded to.

 

I'm going on 3 years + 2 mo free XM. No joke. Hope they never find me.

 

Shhhh....