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Comment by grasseh | Hacker News Reader

I know this is meant as a rhetoric, but it sounds like car sales. I bought a car last year. They sent my name and address to Sirius XM and now I'm getting spammed by marketing calls + marketing physical mail for Sirius XM when I don't need such service. I have a phone and all my music on it. It's already something that happens in the non-software world and it's definitely annoying there too!

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In the car of Sirius it's pretty amazing the lengths they'll go. They send out a Customer Agreement with a welcome packet when they activate a trial subscription for a particular unit (usually when you buy a car, new or used, but I've received it on my car that I bought 4 years previously). That agreement, it claims, has the power of contract, and will be binding on the customer as soon as the service is activated or the customer receives they're policy. Of particular offense to me, it subjects the customer to binding arbitration (for a trial subscription the customer never requested or affirmatively agreed to). They've literally gone to the Supreme Court (and lost) arguing that a trial user could not sue for their nuisance mail because of the arbitration clause. The agreement states that it remains in effect unless the customer cancels their (trial) subscription within 7 days of activation, and only by phone.

In my most recent case I received such a packet 6 days after the date they said they activated the service. I called the same day and told the agent I wanted to cancel my trial subscription, citing specifically that I did not want the service and refused the terms of the agreement. The retention script (which is the same no matter which agent you talk with) is, "well you can keep the trial going and it will just expire", and repeat it several times. You have to be persistent and use the language "cancel my subscription", or you will get nowhere.

If the trial contract isn't enforceable, why bother canceling?

I want them to stop sending me nuisance mail whether or not the contract is enforceable.

Did canceling stop it? They still have your contact information and they still know you have a satellite radio in your car.

I still received mail sent before I cancelled, I received a piece of mail acknowledging a cancellation and offering a new, discounted subscription. I believe I received at least one more piece of mail.

To be clear, I do not think any of my efforts will get my contact info out of their databases. Auto purchases are recorded publicly (at least in my state).

My comment above was about the extent to which Sirius, as a company, puts up hurdles to protect their nuisance practices, including shrouding them with legal claims that they will defend at the highest levels of jurisprudence. They lost their case in 2014 and updated the language in their agreement, presumably to address the weakness of their previous agreement, since it still claims to bind the customer without any action on their part.

In any case, I do not want to derail this thread any further.

That specific one really sucks. Every time I’ve bought a car that had a satellite radio I got spammed for like two years by Sirius XM. How are they still in business?

Sometimes it's just public records... I know someone fucked up if they use the wrong last name. Makes it easy to filter out spam.

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