Great Customer Service or Another Sign of the Times?

To much chagrin, I made the decision to call Sirius Satellite Radio to cancel my service today. The reason is that I received a great new radio to replace my factory one for Christmas. The new Kenwood radio is satellite radio ready; however, I would not be able to use my Jeep's factory Sirius antenna with it to pick up the signal, and would have to purchase a new Sirius antenna. (This took much research to confirm... tried my damnedest to get the factory antenna to work!) After all these years of Sirius and XM radio being around, I would have figured they would have made it easier to exchange radio units!

Don't get me wrong; I own stock in Sirius, love the service, and enjoy listening to Howard Stern. Even with those feelings, I still wanted to cancel the service due to having to purchase a new antenna for a service I'm already paying $20 a month for.

I figured that Sirius would somehow try to keep my business, but I didn't expect that they could change my mind. After speaking to an initial representative, I was transferred to a 'cancellation specialist' of sorts. I explained my situation with the new radio, and without pause she said, "what if we sent you a new antenna?" I quickly asked what the charge would be, and she responded "None, we'll provide the new antenna with no charge for the hardware or shipping. Please accept this with our apologies for the inconvenience." I was blown away and stated that I would keep my service if they sent a new antenna.

That was either great customer service, or just another sign of the hard economic times. I think its a lot of both. I have been a customer of Sirius for over 3 years, and it would have been a shame for them to lose me over a $50 antenna. Kudos to Sirius for making the smart business decision! Sirius Satellite Radio, if this antenna works as planned, then you will have a customer for a long time to come.

Winner of 95.5 WBRU's Weekly SOUND OFF

So my article below about protesting ALL Laundry Detergent apparently won the WBRU Weekly Sound Off! That's pretty darn exciting! Makes me sound so damn cynical though...

Funny thing is, which I honestly didn't even realize, I have actually been using ALL's Small & Mighty detergent. Hey, I had a coupon! Guess I can't be that mad at them. Still think the ALL executives were d-bags on the Celebrity Apprentice...

On another note, it looks as though one of my pictures from Flickr will be included in a Rhode Island travel guide on Destination360. I am in no way a professional photographer, hell... I'd have a hard time even calling myself an amateur, but it's pretty cool that one of my pics from Misquamicut Beach in Westerly may be up on a professional site of sorts!

That's all for now.
-Caz

Protest ALL Laundry Detergent!

95.5 WBRU's current Sound Off is asking their friends on the internet to post something they would like to protest and why... You will find my submission below:

I'm protesting ALL Laundry Detergent and want you to join me!! For those that saw this Sunday's, 4/5/09, Celebrity Apprentice: ALL Laundry Detergent decided to utilize their time on the show to have the two teams create a 'viral' video about their ALL Small & Mighty product. Seemed like a fun enough idea, which may serve the purpose of entertaining and creating positive exposure for ALL's product(even though you can't purposely create a 'viral' video, but thats a protest for another day). The two executives that ALL chose to represent them were complete 'tools' - not my word, a description from a fellow twitter user. It was a male and female who basically said they wanted a 'viral' video that 25 y/o+ women with kids might pass on to other women with kids (their apparent target market). First of all, I'm not sure how many 25+ women with children have the time to pass on viral ALL Small & Mighty videos, but I digress. It basically came down that one of the teams shot a video with Jesse James (West Coast Choppers, TV Personality) being scrubbed down by 'Small & Mighty' midgets... get it?? The video was actually really funny, in large part to Jesse James hilarious acting and the little people playing the part perfectly... they even had the midgets flipping out and cursing about why they were dressed up as little ALL laundry detergents in the end of movie bloopers, of sorts. (did I forget to mention the costume?? Brilliant...) Donald Trump had Perez Hilton (Celebrity Gossiper/Rumor Guru) view the video and he thought it was hilarious. The video was then played for both teams involved in the contest and both teams found it hilarious, the Donald even admitted that it was funny! HOWEVER, the ALL executives deemed the video offensive and that it went way too far in regards to Small & Mighty. They claimed that this was not a 'viral' video and would not be passed on. They decided to reject both team's videos submitted in the competition, and instead have Joan and Melissa River create some type of cutsy cleaning fairy video?!?!? So, as stated, I would love to hold a protest against ALL Laundry Detergent, due to the company being so out of touch with their customer's, as well as being clueless about viral marketing. I can't imagine how much money they spent to have their product featured on the Celebrity Apprentice and how much money they will lose due to completely mishandling what should have been a fantastic opportunity to market their product!

Anybody have a good anti-ALL chant???