XM and the 396

"Jonathan Goodish" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jose wrote:
What if you're not near a phone when you discover that you need it and
it's not there? Or if "due to unusual call volume, there will be a
slight delay before our highly trained service representatives can get
to your call."?

Honestly, when is this ever going to be the case? The reasonable
assumption is that if you're going to go flying, you call and activate
it. If you know you aren't going to be flying for an extended period of
time (months), you deactivate it.

I believe that XM charges a $75 activation fee if you deactivate and
then re-activate, so you would have to determine your break-even point
based on the plan to which you subscribe.



The issue isn't that they are turning it off to save you money. Your system
gets an "Account Active" packet from time to time from the satelite. XM has
no way of knowing if you received the packet so they can't stop charging
you.

There is really no way to know when your packet is going to come down the
stream. You might turn it on for a few minutes on Sunday night and then go
to the airport Monday morning and it not be working.