I purchased my Clubman on Memorial Day, and ordered the XM compatible Sirius radio. Before buying, I verified with XM that I could transfer my XM lifetime subscription to the new car. It took several months for this new radio to become available. When it was installed, I tried to get XM going, and learned that Sirius and XM are still different, using different transmissions. I could add "The Best of XM" at additional cost to my Sirius radio, but there was no way to use my fully paid for vanilla XM on my newly installed very pricey factory Sirius. I had purchased a lifetime subscription to a service I could no longer use.

I was unhappy. Which was a shame, because otherwise I have loved the car and the dealership. I mailed (not e-mailed) the following letter to the sales manager at Baron BMW in Merriam, Kansas, and so far, eleven days after he should have received it, have had no response. Not getting happier.

So, I post this to let others know about the shaft I got. Let others know something I sure wish I had known. Yes, I have one year of paid-for Sirius. Yes, maybe someday my Sirius may get XM, or something.... Yes, I probably had something to do with the misunderstanding. But I am not a dope. I, and my wife, certainly thought we verified that the XM we had could used be on the radio that was not yet available.

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I recently had a long and disturbing conversation with XM customer service, where I learned that I cannot transfer my lifetime subscription to the Sirius radio I purchased from you. We waited three months for this radio to arrive, the new, XM compatible, model. Nope, XM and Sirius, while one company, have two separate transmission systems, and though their mail always says XM/Sirius, my fancy $800 Mini approved and installed radio will not be of any long-term use to me.

While at this point it is difficult to establish who said what, who implied what, and how I may have misinterpreted what was said while closing the car sale, one fact is absolutely clear. I would not have purchased this radio from Mini if I had known I could not use it to receive the XM radio transmissions I have paid for.

I know the job of the car salesman and his support staff is to extract as much of my money as possible. Every item sold is more profit for the dealership, and commission for the guys on the floor, extra checkmarks on sales charts, and much praised numbers in spreadsheets. But to say I am disappointed would be an understatement. I paid $800 for a radio that I thought I would be able to use for the life of the car. I can, of course, if I shell out who knows how much more for a Sirius subscription. But it does not work with the product I had already purchased (and, I am certain, explained in detail to Samer.) I thought I had verified and resolved this beforehand. I called XM to establish that I could transfer my lifetime subscription. I was told the radio I was buying was XM compatible. But all those thoughts are, at this point irrelevant. I paid far above market prices for a specific product, and it does not do what I had expected or, I am pretty darn sure, asked about. While it may indeed be my error, I believe the error was encouraged by the XM-ability of the incoming radio. It did not exist yet, it would have XM reception, whatever. And, for what it is worth, my wife was utterly stunned when I told her the new satellite radio could not get XM.

I was helpfully told by your staff that Mini has always been Sirius only, and I could buy an inexpensive aftermarket XM radio. Well, if I had wanted to do that, and save multiple hundreds of dollars in the process, I would have done so way back in May. No, a one piece unit that worked with my paid for XM on it is what I asked about, wanted, hoped for, and expected. But it is not what I received.

I have spent $1300 on nothing. Well, one year of Sirius radio...at a hundred bucks a month. That is a lot of money to me.

 

I feel your pain. The obvious take-home message is that buying 'lifetime' anything, particularly in the fickle ever-changing electronics industry, is frequently money not well spent.

 

Paragraph two of your letter says that you have no idea who said what. Without being able to put names to the statements I doubt your dealer will do anything. For all they know, and you know, you or your wife may have said that it will be compatible, and there is where you heard it from.

 

I know who i was talking to, and I know that he said the radio was XM compatible. My beef is what that means. XM compatible means it works with XM. If you bought a product that said it was BLANK compatible, I think you would assume that it would work with ALL of BLANK, without limitations or extra expense. At least we did. And though I cannot prove it, I cannot believe we did not say, "We have purchased a lifetime XM subscription and want it to work with this radio." Without a transcript though...

And I cannot believe the dealer did not even reply. I'd be happy to have them take it out and give me my money back.

 

Just because something is compatible, doesn't mean that everything within that spectrum compatible. A perfect example is the Playstation 3. While some PS3s offer backwards compatibility to PS2 and PS games, not all games are supported.

 

As I said on the other forum ...

If I were you I would be at the dealership asking for my $800 back or make them pay for a lifetime subscription to Sirius for you. One way or another I would be in someones face. and getting some type of satisfaction. If need be go beyond the Sales Manager to the Store Manager or beyond.

 

Just my opinion but from reading what I have read I have to say your beef should be with SiriusXM and not with BMW/Mini. There is no way your going to get money back for the radio so I would keep pressuring SiriusXM to give you a package or lifetime service or at least several years of service on your new radio. I would call and get a supervisor and get names of their superiors and move up the chain. I'd be supprised if they didn't react.

 

+1

Buyer Beware seems apt here, or actually Buyer Be Aware. With all the resources available, a little extra homework on the $800 device and Sirius/XM service contracts would have been prudent.

 

Yeah...buyer be aware. However, the radio was not available when I bought it. It was coming. Hard to research a product that did not exist.

Easy to say after the fact, but I bought an XM compatible radio that wasn't compatible. You buy a PS3 because it is backward compatible with your library of games, then bring it home and they say, OK, sure, it is compatible, just as soon as you buy another piece. How hard would it be for the dealer to just take it back?

 

Doesn't the purchase of the radio at least come with a one year subscription? No consolation I'm sure, but that at least gets your foot in the door with them.

As much as I too love my MINIs, none of the dealerships I've dealt with have been very efficient in responding to customer service requests. E-mail ignored, letters never responded to and phone messages never returned. I would have thought that a German owned company would be the model of efficiency and service.

I'm with BMW13. Not that I don't think that your dealership misled you, but the radio company is where you should concentrate your efforts. They have what you want and your dealership doesn't seem to care enough to even listen. I would let the latter know that in the future you will be taking your business elsewhere.

 

I don't think the problem can be fixed, at least on the Sirius XM front. They transmit differently, you'd need a device that can read both, or they'd have to duplicate their broadcasts on each format - and I don't think they have enough channels to do that. Bottom line, if XM goes away they lose all those customers who only have XM capable radios, and they don't want to lose that customer base. I don't see a happy solution here other than to take your free years subscription and enjoy it, and when it's about done make a decision about buying a lifetime subscription from Sirius.

We have Sirius radios in several of our cars and frankly I'm pretty underwhelmed. You lose the signal when you drive under a bridge or sometimes even heavily tree lined streets and really, out of the 150 or so channels, there are only about 15 I'd even listen to. So unless you're a Howard stern fan, I don't think you're missing much. And even if you are..................well, same thing IMHO.

They also tend to repeat their broadcasts, so if there's a channel you listen to regularly, pretty soon you're well into recognizable repeats.....

I think there's enough grey area in the responsibility between you and the dealer that you really can't complain here. I know it's $800, but come on, the car was close to $30K or more, do you really have a ***** here?

It would be nice if in life the only thing we had to complain about is the radio..........turn it off and listen to the exhaust instead?

 

XM has a package where you get all their channels and the Best of Sirius, I would assume Sirius does the same thing. In addition they now share some channels such as sixties on 6 (showing my age). If i were you I'd push to get the Sirius with best of XM and live with it. I don't listen to regular radio I only listen to XM so I feel your pain.

 

It's drag, and I bet the OP isn't the only one that's bummed about this. I have never used either Sirius or XM except in a rental car, but I keep up with this stuff and even I knew that a Sirius radio wouldn't be able to get all of XM, only "the best of XM" mix of channels. I think that if what was important to you was your Mini's radio being able to receive your lifetime XM subscription I would have nailed the sales dude down and in writing before I paid my $800 up front. Just my .02. Personally I think that the future of both companies is bleak. They will go under financially because they borrowed a ton of money at high rates to get started and because their revenues aren't that good they can't refinance anymore. Their only hope is to fire sell the whole deal, restructure, and lower prices . I wouldn't give a cent for their stock and wouldn't dream of any lifetime subscription if it cost a lot.

 

I have had XM for 5 years.....and found it well worth the 10 bucks a month or so I paid. I listened to a lot of baseball games, and enjoyed their collection of comedy and news. The lifetime thing was a risk I recognized (I bought a lifetime plan at a gym too....) but it was only a little more costly than the 3 year renewal. I too think their business model is dicey, and Pandora on iPhone accomplishes a similar thing for my son, but on long drives, we have really enjoyed it.

The radio was nearly twice the cost of the plan though. So that's the prime source of my irritation....

Oh, indeed I wish i had gotten it in writing....

 

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