New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced that a court found SiriusXM Radio, Inc. (SiriusXM) violated the law by forcing customers to undergo a long and burdensome process to cancel their subscriptions. Attorney General James sued SiriusXM in 2023 after an investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) revealed that the company requires its subscribers to call or chat online with an agent to cancel a subscription, and trains its agents not to take “no” for an answer. SiriusXM’s illegal process deliberately draws out conversations with customers as part of a strategy to prevent them from canceling their subscriptions.
“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,” said Attorney General James. “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. My office sued SiriusXM to protect consumers, and as a result of our actions, they will have to simplify their cancellation process to stop taking advantage of New Yorkers.”
SiriusXM is an audio entertainment company headquartered in New York City and has approximately 35 million subscribers, of which nearly 2 million are New Yorkers. The OAG opened an investigation into the company after hundreds of consumers reported to OAG and other agencies that they could not cancel their subscription. The OAG’s investigation found that the company trains its agents to keep customers on the phone or in the chat for a lengthy six-part conversation that includes asking a series of questions and then pitching the subscriber as many as five retention offers, all to delay cancellation. When customers decline the offers, agents are trained not to take “no” for an answer and to keep bombarding customers with questions or offers until they either relent or become frustrated.
In affidavits submitted to OAG, consumers described how frustrating and difficult it was to cancel subscriptions they no longer used or wished to pay for. In one case, a SiriusXM agent kept a subscriber in a chat for 40 minutes, despite the subscriber’s clear and repeated requests to cancel, according to a log of the chat. And after that, the company continued to charge the customer anyway. Another complaint — handwritten by a consumer on behalf of her 92-year-old mother — described a maddening phone call with a SiriusXM agent that lasted nearly 40 minutes.
The court’s decision, issued by Justice Lyle Frank of the New York Supreme Court in New York County, found that SiriusXM violated the federal Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) when it created a burdensome cancellation procedure that was significantly more complicated than the process consumers use to sign up for SiriusXM, and that forces subscribers to listen to repeated retention offers before cancelling. As a result of the decision, SiriusXM will have to change its cancellation procedures in New York to ensure that its 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.
This matter is being handled by Assistant Attorneys General Adam J. Riff and Christian Reigstad of the Consumer Frauds & Protection Bureau, under the supervision of Bureau Chief Jane M. Azia and Deputy Bureau Chief Laura J. Levine. The Consumer Frauds & Protection Bureau is a part of the Division of Economic Justice, which is led by Chief Deputy Attorney General Chris D’Angelo and overseen by First Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Levy.