Say you’re a satellite radio company with a loyal, even evangelical customer—someone who listens daily, who keeps buying your products for the people around him, and who steadily expands his own collection of your hardware and subscriptions. Wouldn’t that be a great guy to screw over? Sirius seems to think so.

A loyal Howard Stern fan, Marc followed Stern to Sirius in January of 2006. He bought a $500 lifetime subscription—which, like Tivo’s old “lifetime” subscriptions, refers more to the lifespan of the devices than to your own. Still, Marc quickly grew to love what Sirius has to offer, and bought additional products, each with their own monthly subscriptions. He was and is, in short, the perfect customer. And then the credit card number they had on file expired, and Sirius canceled all of his accounts at the same time.

The nice Sirius customer service agent explains that my entire account has been closed. All four service plans. But, there is Good News, because she can turn my radios back on. When I get home, I find that none of the home radios are working. I also get an email confirming a $399 purchase of another lifetime subscription. And, I can not log into my account.

Four calls and several broken promises later, after being told that “it’s very complicated” and that they’d “kick it up to Corporate,” he still keeps getting the run-around from Sirius’ customer service reps—and he’s still on his second lifetime subscription, less than two years after joining.

What surprises us most about this is how little regard Sirius has for someone who’s clearly an ideal customer: loyal, an advocate of the product, does repeat business. Why ruin that? Shouldn’t their customer management software be flashing a big red alarm at Sirius HQ right about now?

Sirius’ corporate number is 212-584-5100, and their President of Sales & Operations is James E. Meyer. We suggest you “kick this up to Corporate” on your side and stop waiting for their day-to-day reps to deal with it. Also check out our “Be a Customer Service Ninja” post on how to seek executive-level assistance when customer service falls short.

Read this if you are thinking about buying a Sirius Lifetime Subscription [Sirius Canceled My Lifetime]

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