A few months ago, XM switched to Siebel sales for all of their online account management stuff. All is well and good right? Of course not. XM has yet to fix the fact, or even acknowledge the fact, that it locked out all Macintosh platform users to their service. The online account management site claims you can use the following to get into their system:
Cookies are enabled
Microsoft Internet Explorer - Version 5.01 and higher
Netscape Navigator - Version 4.x and higher
AOL - Version 7 and higher
So that leaves us Mac users to use IE, right? Fire up IE (well, download it first since no one uses it anymore) and you’ll see that yet again on the next log in page, “Your browser is not supported” and a reference back to the main System Requirements page. Not to mention they don’t support Firefox, the second browser in percentage of market share. Wonderful.
Upon the initial launch of XM Radio Online, they realized they didn’t support Mac users at all. A month and a half later (or thereabouts), they decided to support the Mac platform. What’s even more disturbing is that they clearly used Safari in their advertisements to promote the launch of XM Radio Online, clearly proving that it was once working on a Mac (since using Photoshop or GIMP to create that image would be more work than it’s worth). Did XM even acknowledge the e-mail’s sent to them and complaints about not supporting the Mac platform. Nope. I have yet to receive a response, and this uncalled for and poor customer service.
XM teamed up with Napster. Great news right? Sure, if you’re using Windows and like Napster. Napster is possibly second in market share behind iTunes. iTunes supports Macintosh and Windows operating systems and dominants the market in online music sales, even beating out retail outlets. So logically, wouldn’t it make sense for XM to join up with iTunes (assuming deals worked out, etc). Personally, teaming with Napster was stupid in my eyes simply because their biggest marketing point is being able to have access to their entire library for a monthly fee (which is NOT what XM users want since they already pay a monthly fee for XM and already have access to a vast library of well over a couple million of songs). So why would XM users want to pay more?
XM teams up with AOL and AIM Triton. Good move, except the bit rate on their streams is significantly worse than the XM Radio Online stream. When comparing it to other AOL online stations, no one in the right mind would pay for XM’s horrible sound quality based on the AOL streams. Of course there’s no disclaimer saying that XM’s own streams on their site and via satellite are better quality. In addition, the people who use AIM are teens (mostly) and around the computer most of the day anyway, in addition to their low income. XM’s targeting the wrong people there because the amount of AIM/AOL members that are listening to XM via AOL aren’t able to afford equipment and monthly services, nor do they have a need for it since there are 20 or so popular streams via the computer (for FREE!).
XM’s customer support via e-mail for XM Radio Online (once launched to Mac users) and in general sucks. If you get a response, though rare, it will be a canned response. For example, e-mailing them about logging into my account through a Mac I get a response such as “You’ll need the following System Requirements” and then basically telling me everything I ALREADY KNOW because their webpage clearly states it. I understand the need to post this information, but you should go beyond just reading the webpage to me. I’m not an idiot and that goes for most users on the computer who have CLEARLY seen that message about Sys. Reqs. They might as well recommend going out and buying a Windows-based computer. That’d at least better than the canned, horrible responses you get now.
Customer service. Half of the time I have called, the CSR has no idea what I’m talking about – wonderful. Granted the other half of the time, I have been impressed by their support. It’s no wonder that Sirius won a customer service award. When calling Sirius, I’ve gotten through within 2 minutes (compared to XM’s 25 minute+ wait sometimes, which I can understand since the customer base, but hire more CSR’s if you’re that busy) and the CSR’s for Sirius were EXCEPTIONALLY pleasant and went out of their way to say “We appreciate you being a customer.” That’s truly exceptional and 100% deserves an award. Thank you, Sirius!
Sirius Satellite Radio
So onto why I’m liking Sirius more now, other than the above complaints about XM. Sirius has a cool little feature that they ‘announce’ what’s new music on their channels by appending “(New Music)” to the song title on the display. In speaking of display features, the “Decades” channels display the year the song was popular. This is neat being a music freak like myself. Super Shuffle displays the channel the song is typically heard on, which is a pro considering it’s a shuffle of Sirius’ library and it’s good to know where I can hear more of this type of music if I am interested.
There’s less cross-promotion of channels and virtually no “ads” claiming to visit their website for deals. XM plasters this over most of their channels and after a while, it gets annoying because you already know what’s going to be said. On the other hand, Sirius gets you while you’re on the phone and I certainly don’t mind that. They ask you if you know about Sirius Online, their specials, and promote certain events and I have no problem with promoting your service and features to me person to person and NOT interrupting my music on the channels.
Kudos to Sirius for knowing how to do things right and, in this sense, beating out XM to superb customer satisfaction and support as well as the added pluses of the features on their music channel displays. I’ll be signing up for a lifetime subscription to Sirius when I get the money.
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