SiriusXM Will Make It Easier to Cancel Subscriptions in N.Y. After Judge Rules Company’s Practices Violated Federal Law

SiriusXM will revise the process of canceling subscriptions in New York to make it faster and easier, after a judge found it broke the law by failing to provide “simple mechanisms” for quitting.

New York state Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank ruled that SiriusXM violated the federal Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act of 2010 because the company’s cancellation procedures forces subscribers to listen to repeated retention offers before canceling. New York Attorney General Letitia James in December sued SiriusXM, accusing it of “trapping consumers” in subscriptions and “maintaining deliberately long and burdensome cancellation processes.”

However, the judge rejected James’ claim in the lawsuit that alleged SiriusXM had engaged in fraud and deception by misleading subscribers seeking to cancel their accounts.

In a statement, SiriusXM said, “New York started this case last year by alleging that ‘SiriusXM has continued to engage in repeated and persistent fraud and illegality.’ Today, we know, and the State of New York knows, that is not true. Yesterday, the Court dismissed almost all of the charges against SiriusXM, and found that SiriusXM’s policies were neither misleading nor deceptive. Most importantly, the Court ruled that SiriusXM had shown through ‘a plethora of material… that they have taken repeated steps to avoid creating such an atmosphere’ of fraud or deceit.”

The company’s statement continued, “While the Court found some technical violations of a Federal statute, it did not find that SiriusXM ever deceived anyone or committed any fraud. SiriusXM intends to appeal the Court’s ruling as to those technical violations.”

SiriusXM said it also would abide by the FTC’s recently adopted “click-to-cancel” rule, which requires services “to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up.” (The FTC rule is being challenged in court by cable industry trade group NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, the Electronic Security Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.)

James, in a statement shared Friday on X, said, “A court found that @SIRIUSXM illegally forced people to go through a long and burdensome process to simply cancel their subscriptions. We sued SiriusXM to protect people’s wallets, and now, SiriusXM must simplify its cancellation process and stop taking advantage of New Yorkers.”

When it filed the lawsuit last year, the New York AG’s office said it had opened an investigation into SiriusXM after “hundreds” of consumer lodged complaints that they could not cancel their subscriptions. Per SiriusXM data cited in the lawsuit, it took subscribers an average of 11.5 minutes to cancel by phone and 30 minutes to cancel online. According to SiriusXM, many of the statistics cited in the attorney general’s lawsuit were exaggerated and, based on the 2020 time period that the state investigated, aggravated by the effects of the COVID pandemic. In 2021, on average, SiriusXM online chat agents responded to consumer messages within 36 seconds to 2.4 minutes, the company said.