N.Y. court rules SiriusXM made it deliberately hard to cancel subscriptions

A court has found SiriusXM Radio, Inc. violated the law by forcing customers to undergo a long process to cancel their subscriptions, New York state Attorney General Letitia James announced Friday.

James sued the satellite radio and streaming service in December 2023 following an investigation into complaints from customers found that SiriusXM forced subscribers to wait in an automated system before often lengthy interactions with agents who were trained in ways to avoid accepting a request to cancel service. She cited affidavits in which customers complained of long waits in an automated system to chat with an agent, and that it took subscribers an average of 11.5 minutes to cancel by phone, and 30 minutes to cancel online, although for many subscribers it took far longer.

A ruling issued by New York state Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank in New York County found that SiriusXM violated the federal Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act of 2010, saying the burdensome cancellation procedure also forces subscribers to listen to repeated retention offers before canceling. The company will now have to change its cancellation procedures in New York so customers have a simple method to cancel subscriptions and are no longer required to speak or chat with a live agent in order to cancel.

“No one should have to endure a lengthy and frustrating process to cancel a subscription, and any company that forces customers to jump through unnecessary hoops to end their subscriptions is breaking the law,” James said in a statement. “This decision found SiriusXM illegally created a complicated cancellation process for its New York customers, forcing them to spend significant amounts of time speaking with agents who refused to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

According to the attorney general’s office, SiriusXM is headquartered in New York City and has approximately 35 million subscribers, of which nearly 2 million are New Yorkers.

SiriusXM, in a statement to Spectrum News 1, 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. 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.

Additionally, SiriusXM will abide by the recent FTC ruling when it goes into effect.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.