There’s nothing better to pass the time on a road trip than to listen to a political debate. I won’t go into the details of the debate or my reaction to it. That is something best left for a face-to-face conversation. I will say that it seemed to take an act of God to get our XM service reinstated.
When we bought the car, it came with a free 3 month trial for XM Radio. I had no idea how reliant we’d become on the radio, or how much I looked forward to having it until it was gone. The day we were supposed to leave, he tells me, yeah, too bad we can’t listen to the debate tonight. I told him, what? I’m certain they’ll have it on POTUS 08. He said, yeah, they probably will, but we only have XM preview, I think out service ran out. Well, since I took the car that morning, I checked it out. Wouldn’t you know it, but it certainly had run out. Man oh man! So, I logged into XM with our radio number and the site couldn’t find us. Well, duh! I hadn’t created an online account. So, I go through the necessary steps, entering the information, finally, I’m let beyond the initial site. I browse through the different choices they offer and I can’t select to add service. It keeps telling me that I have to call the number. I look on the bright side, thinking, hmmm…perhaps the customer service rep (CSR) can help get me a better deal. Quite often when I have to call in and actually talk with a CSR, they can save up to 20%! Well, the first time I called, after being in the queue for 7 minutes, the girl answered, giggled hysterically and then hung up on me. GREAT! I call back immediately, bypassing all the computertized voice prompts and this time I’m in the queue for 23 minutes!! Wow, I was really not happy. The guy I got mumbled and talked so fast that I couldn’t understand him. When I asked him to speak a little slower, he didn’t. He just kept going on and on, trying to upsell me on another offer. He was like, with your 3 month commitment, you’d be saving a substantial amount of money. He was quite enthusiastic about it too, but I simply refused to spend a huge chunk of money on something that they MIGHT change their programs in 6 months. I adamantly refused the offer and told him exactly what I wanted. The third time I told him, I must’ve conveyed the right amount of frustration because he deflated and complied. Seriously, it was long and frustrating. My call log read 47 minutes. I couldn’t believe I’d been on the line for that long. What a waste!
Later on that afternoon, when I got in my car, I eagerly turned on the radio. Unfortunately, I still didn’t have it. Bleh…Oh well, by the time I got back into my car after my hair appointment, it was up and I had access to the plethora of channels, including a few new ones as a result of the XM/Sirius merger. Woohoo!!
Fast forward several hours later, and we were listening to the debate. Afterwards, we had access to the many news stations filled with overzealous talking heads, most of whom we didn’t want to listen to. Instead, we turned off the sound and had our own post-debate commentary. An hour after that, we flipped it onto the 90s on 9 station and rocked out all the way to our destination.
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