getting sirius tags:  hardware

we bought our first new car in late 2006 — a 2007 model — and it came with a free year of sirius satellite radio.  turns out they actually have some stations that aren’t just the same boring music you get on every other radio station (particularly i like boombox, which they moved from 34 to 39 recently).

since i enjoyed the free year (and so did my wife), i decided to pay for it and to get sirius in my other car as well.  it happened to have a crappy factory cd player (it would skip if you drove over the slightest bump) that i wanted to replace anyway, so i got a sirius-ready kenwood deck.

for those who don’t know, sirius-ready means you can buy an in-dash sirius receiver and connect that to the kenwood deck.  actually now you have to buy a sirius receiver plus an adapter box which can connect the sirius reciever to your car deck, or you go to ebay and buy the old kind for cheaper (works just as well, but if you get a different brand of deck you’d need a new sirius unit instead of just a new adapter box).

when i first decided to put sirius in my other car, they were apparently between the old and new hardware, so best buy had nothing.  the guy in mobile audio told me that the gm sirius unit was universal and would also work with my kenwood deck, which i thought had to be wrong but the guy was very sure of himself.  i had the kenwood deck put in (i didn’t want to run the satellite antenna through my car myself), and sure enough a gm sirius unit doesn’t work with a kenwood receiver!

i knew what i needed so i went to ebay and got a pretty good deal on a used sir-ken1 unit.  it worked for a few months on the time remaining on the previous owner’s account, but then as i was driving home from work one day it started saying “acquiring signal” all the time and not making any noise.

that is NOT what it’s supposed to do even if its subscription has expired, but i didn’t know that at the time.  i called sirius tech support to try to find out what the problem was, and the service person didn’t know what acquiring signal meant (hint:  this is what you get when you drive through a tunnel or into your garage) but thought it might just need to be activated because the previous subscription had expired.

this was WRONG because if it always says acquiring signal, that means it can’t see the satellite.  this was my second mistake of trusting someone else, so i paid for a subscription for my sirius unit and then the sirius representative on the phone couldn’t get my sirius unit to work.  so now i’m paying for sirius but can’t use it other than to listen online.

next i called best buy because they had put in my sirius unit and run the antenna and everything, and they seem to know more about sirius than sirius.  the best buy mobile install guy (note this is vastly different from a mobile audio guy, as the install guys have to know what they’re talking about to some degree as they actually install the stuff, where the mobile audio guys just stand around selling huge speakers to dudes with pickup trucks) told me that sirius antennas frequently break right where the wire comes out of the antenna and that i probably needed to replace that.

that was actually a reasonable explanation, but the problem is nobody tested it first to make sure that was the problem.  so i had to sit and wait for an hour or so while best buy ran a new antenna through my car only to find it didn’t help any.  thankfully they don’t seem to charge for labor if they’re replacing something they put in that has broken, but still i could have gone home earlier.

at this point i know that my sirius unit is malfunctioning.  it actually says something different (“antenna error” or something like that) if you disconnect the antenna wire from it, so parts of it work, but not enough.  i took it apart to see if there were any broken solder joints or anything else obviously wrong with it.  there wasn’t, but i was interested to find that the sir-ken1 actually is two pieces that are screwed together, just like the new sold-separately pieces, except of course this is sold as one piece.

when i hooked it back up, it would alternate between acquiring signal and showing what station i had it tuned to (just the number), but as i couldn’t tune in the preview channel (184) i knew it was still broken.  so i went back to ebay and found an even better deal on another sir-ken1 that came with a kenwood ipod adapter.  i don’t care about the ipod adapter as i don’t have or want an ipod, but i could sell it easily enough.

turns out the seller of that auction had screwed up when listing the auction and said he had a quantity of 2 available.  according to him he thought he should put two because he had the sirius unit and the ipod adapter:  two things.

i’m still waiting to get my money back from that one, but i bought a refurbished sir-ken1 from someone else on ebay for closer to what i paid for the first one, and that just arrived today!  it’s in my car now, and is able to play channel 184 and tells me to call 1-888-539-sirius to activate.

so i’m almost there!  it has been a little over 2 months since i “activated” my busted sirius unit, so i’m going to try to get sirius to restart the year i payed for today once my new unit is activated.

please note that the above post is likely made up in its entirety.

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i had no problem activating my new sirius unit, except they charged me a $15 transfer fee.  the guy also didn’t wait for me to turn on my radio before he sent the activation signal the first time, then he sent it again and told me to call back if it didn’t work.  it did work, so i didn’t have to call back.

i had asked him to give me two months back too, but he didn’t seem to have done that.  i called again yesterday and explained that i thought sirius screwed up with activating my bad radio, and they refunded my transfer fee and gave me a credit for two months worth of service.

so the saga has come to an end — i’m where i should be, but i think i could have had a better time getting there.

please note that the above post is likely made up in its entirety.

pm www

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- - - "i had asked him to give me two months back too, but he didn’t seem to have done that.  i called again yesterday and explained that i thought sirius screwed up with activating my bad radio, and they refunded my transfer fee and gave me a credit for two months worth of service. "

HHMMMN.  Seems like the free enterprise system, in spite of all it's short comings, (and NO -I do NOT mean like the one handed typists from the ICQ traffic lanes j/k) -seems to have 'come through' for you in the end misterhaan, - Viv' L' Amerika.  (Nah, -but siriusly folks)
Democracy and free enterprise still appear                                            to be able to work together
They may each seperately and severally, neither be perfect but when anyone considers the alternatives, - _bbrrrr_  *shiver*

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