I haven’t been listening to SiriusXM much of late – I mostly listened in the car or the gym if I was caught up on podcasts, and none of those conditions have applied for at least eleven weeks. This morning, I got a note that they’d be renewing my subscription automatically in ten days at full price (nearly $30/month), so I sprang into action.
My first step was to call them – naturally, they claimed “longer than usual wait times” but their automated system offered me a better deal than I’d even gotten from them when I’d negotiated in past years – $10/month for “All Access”. That was more than I wanted to pay, so I told the system “No”, and it instantly signed me up for the offer.
I then tried their chat and was immediately connected to an agent – a couple of minutes later, I was signed up for a year of their “Select” package for $5/month, which I was willing to pay (I hope to be back in the car and the gym sometime in the next 12 months!). I lose Howard Stern and some sports channels, but I never listened to any of those channels anyway.
JetBlue changed our flight from Boston to Richmond by seven hours, which made us eligible to get a refund instead of just a flight credit. I tried cancelling online, but the website only offered credit, so I had to call them. Fifty-five minutes later (fifty-two of which were spent listening to the hold music – to JetBlue’s credit, it was a decent set of songs), the reservation was cancelled and the money should be on my card in 7-10 business days.
And all of that helped me avoid obsessing about the news. For a little bit.
