NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the filing of a lawsuit against satellite broadcaster and streamer SiriusXM, alleging that the company made it intentionally difficult to cancel subscriptions for the service.
According to the Attorney General’s office, an investigation found that SiriusXM requires subscribers to call or chat online with an agent to cancel active subscriptions and intentionally draws the process out in a bid to deter people leaving the platform.
The AG’s office also alleges that the company trains its agents to convince customers to retrain their service, creating a frustrating experience for consumers.
“Having to endure a lengthy and frustrating process to cancel a subscription is a stressful burden no one looks forward to, and when companies make it hard to cancel subscriptions, it’s illegal,” said Attorney General James. “Consumers should be able to cancel a subscription they no longer use or need without any issues, and companies have a legal duty to make their cancellation process easy. New Yorkers can trust that when companies like SiriusXM try to take advantage of them and violate the law, my office will step in to stop them.”
The AG’s office said that its investigation found that the company’s own data indicates that subscribers spend an average of 11.5 minutes to cancel by phone, and 30 minutes to cancel online, though in some instances, the process takes “much longer.”
In one case, a subscriber reported to the Attorney General’s office that they were kept in an online chat for 40 minutes, despite clear and repeated requests to cancel.
Through the lawsuit, Attorney General James seeks full restitution for all impacted subscribers, as well as compensation for the time that SiriusXM allegedly cost users during their efforts to cancel.
In a statement provided to CelebrityAccess, a rep for SiriusXM said: “It’s telling that the New York Attorney General issued a press release before providing SiriusXM with a copy of the complaint. 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.”
Additionally, the rep for SiriusXM noted that the company maintains an A rating from the Better Business Bureau. The rep also took issue with with some of the data cited by Attorney General James, claiming that it was mischaracterized and exaggerated.
According to the rep, the data was based on the company’s customer service from 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflected general distortions to the business imposed by the pandemic.
The rep also noted that SiriusXM offers a variety of options for customers to sign up for or cancel their SiriusXM subscription and streaming only customers can unsubscribe through the account management dashboard or via the app store.
