Over the past weekend I picked up a Sirius Sportster Replay. Finally decided to jump on the satellite digital music bandwagon… not so much for on the road, since I have a five to ten minute commute to work, and not even so much for Stern’s show, since it’s not on the air yet. It’s mostly because I’m getting bored with the music I have at work – even 180 discs can get boring after a year – and they offer streaming music over the ‘net.
Sorta – and there in lies the Rant.
The first part is that of access. You see, I had to buy the hardware to get the online service. I would have loved to have just signed up for the $12.95/month service without having to get hardware… ah, well. I went looking at hardware and opted for the new TiVo-like Sportster b/c it seemed worth it. Took me a few days to get around to hooking it up: once I did I had to jump around the room a few times to get a signal, but once I got a signal it took just a couple of minute to activate the device.
Yesterday at work, I listened to Alt Nation/Channel 21 all day. Out of the 10 hour work day – yes, I know, LAME – I had maybe three songs that made me go “Ew”. The rest of the time it was good! Sure, the network hiccups were annoying… so much so that I might bring in the home kit, to see how that goes. I don’t think I’ll get any coverage in my office, but it might be worth a shot – I got some coverage at home, after all.
Last night I fired up the home kit again, to see if my Harmony remote (688) would recognize it. Yep, it did. Turned on the box, and my receiver, and boing! it worked. Sorta. After about two minutes of waiting for the thing to find a signal, I shut it down again. Ah well – I didn’t care b/c there was baseball on and XM Radio carries MLB exclusively… I’d rather listen to the radio broadcast than the mongrel bastards on ESPN for a Yankees game, but whatever.
Today at work I started poking around with the player. After a couple of network hiccups, I logged out and logged back in. Then I had to reboot. Then I closed the window. Then something else happened and IE crashed. Then I discovered I could directly bookmark Channel 21 so long as I logged in again. Close IE again, oops. I went to log in again and got this error message: “Sorry, you’ve logged in too many times today. Please try back tomorrow.”
Are you kidding me? There was a blurb under that about “if you think you got this message in error, please contact customer support”. So I sent them an email… they gotta be able to fix this immediately, right? I mean there’s no way that this makes sense. Rejecting erroneous password attempts? Sure. Preventing simultaneous logins online? Sure, because that protects the usage and theft. Warning against multiple logins in a 5 minute window or something to prevent DoS? Maybe… but preventing a paying customer from logging in with proper credentials more than a certain time each day? As in per 24 hours? When you don’t warn a customer about the limit anywhere on the player window? Unacceptable.
Of course, the automated response to the email only pours salt in the wound: We care about you and “we’ll be in touch in the next 24 hours, so in the meantime rest assured that you’ve done your part – now we’ll do ours. Remember to ask about great subscription plans that save you money: pay for 11 months and get one month free with our annual subscription; and save over $36 with our two-year subscription!”
Not only do I have a problem with the service I’m already paying for – in that I can’t even use the fuckin’ thing now – but you take this opportunity to shove an up-sale ad at me for more services? Great idea. I know, say something insulting about my mother too, while yer replying to my email.
Not. At all. Happy. I even want to kick the star eye’d dog now.
And the net effect of the episode is that I’m listening to the same music I have for over a year now – guess it’ll have to be good enough for today.