MANHATTAN (CN) — New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against SiriusXM on Wednesday, claiming the satellite radio giant traps customers in unwanted radio subscriptions and prevents them from canceling.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York Supreme Court stems from an investigation into SiriusXM found that the company unlawfully uses customer service agents to delay cancellation requests from consumers.
“Sirius sells subscriptions that are easy to purchase, and extremely difficult to cancel,” James claims in the suit. “Once enrolled, Sirius continues to charge consumers unless they undergo a lengthy and burdensome endurance contest that Sirius created and implemented as a strategy for keeping as many consumers from cancelling as possible.”
Part of that “burdensome” process is speaking to Sirius’ customer service representatives. James claims customers can enroll in the subscription easily online without having to talk to one.
In order to cancel however, customers must speak to an agent over the phone or via web chat and those agents are specifically instructed to “delay” the cancellation process for as long as possible, James says in the lawsuit.
“The company trains its agents to keep customers on the phone or in the chat for a lengthy six-part conversation that includes asking a series of questions and then pitching the subscriber as many as five retention offers, all to delay cancellation,” the AG’s office wrote in a press release announcing the suit.
Those conversations last an average of 11.5 minutes over the phone and 30 minutes online, according to the AG’s investigation. To make matters worse, James says the subscriptions aren’t always canceled, “even when consumers outlast Sirius and successfully complete the process.”
“Sirius instructs its agents not to take ‘no’ for an answer,” James says in the suit. “Instead, agents are instructed to ‘think of every “No” simply as a request for more information!’”
James said her office’s probe into Sirius was sparked after “hundreds of consumers reported to OAG and other agencies that they could not cancel their subscription.” She included some of those customer complaints in the lawsuit.
“SiriusXM makes it impossible to cancel service with them,” one customer said, according to the suit. “If you sign on to your account and select ‘cancel’, they make you call by phone or chat with an agent. So you wait 30-60 minutes before getting anyone. You should be able to cancel without this onerous extra step… Tonight I waited for an hour without getting support to cancel. Nobody has the time to waste on this.”
Along with the lawsuit, James filed more than a dozen examples of SiriusXM's training material as exhibits. One training document instructed company agents to take customers through a four-step process before canceling their service.
First, agents are instructed to try to convince the customer to stay on the plan at full price.
“Your goal should always be to keep our customers on a full price plan,” Sirius tells representatives in the instructions.
If that doesn’t work, agents are told to offer a downgraded package to the customer, then offer a discount on top of that. Then, and only then, are the sales reps instructed to cancel the customer’s plan.
“If you've gone through steps 1 - 3, made the corresponding offers and the customer still wants to cancel, you should honor that request and cancel their service,” the instructions say.
That’s hardly a “cost-effective, timely, and easy-to-use mechanism for cancellation” per state law, James claims.
But in a statement to Courthouse News, Sirius contends that the company has done nothing wrong and intends to “vigorously” fight these charges in court.
“It’s telling that the New York attorney general issued a press release before providing SiriusXM with a copy of the complaint,” a spokesperson for SiriusXM wrote. “Like a number of consumer businesses, we offer a variety of options for customers to sign up for or cancel their SiriusXM subscription and, upon receiving and reviewing the complaint, we intend to vigorously defend against these baseless allegations that grossly mischaracterize SiriusXM’s practices.”
The state's claims include fraud and four other actions related to deceptive business practices. The remedies sought include disgorgement and an order to “require SiriusXM to implement a simple and easy-to-use cancellation process,” alongside other fees and penalties.
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