The Attorney General of New York Wins a Case Concerning Illegal Cancellation Practices
(WNY News Now)NEW YORKS In response to a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the court has ordered SiriusXM, a well-known audio entertainment provider, to restructure its subscriber cancelation procedure. According to the court’s decision, SiriusXM violated the Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (ROSCA) by making it difficult for customers to cancel their subscriptions.
NEW YORK Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, said yesterday that SiriusXM Radio, Inc. (SiriusXM) was found to have broken the law by requiring customers to go through a drawn-out and onerous procedure in order to terminate their subscriptions. In 2023, Attorney General James filed a lawsuit against SiriusXM after the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) conducted an investigation that found the corporation instructs its agents to not take no for an answer and compels consumers to cancel their subscriptions by calling or chatting online with an agent. The unlawful procedure used by SiriusXM purposefully prolongs chats with consumers in an effort to keep them from terminating their subscriptions.
Attorney General James stated that any business that requires consumers to go through needless steps in order to terminate their subscriptions is violating the law and that no one should have to go through a drawn-out and annoying process to do so. According to this ruling, SiriusXM unlawfully made the canceling process difficult for its New York consumers, requiring them to spend a lot of time chatting with agents who wouldn’t accept no. In order to protect customers, my office filed a lawsuit against SiriusXM. As a result, they will need to streamline their cancellation procedure in order to cease exploiting New Yorkers.
With its headquarters located in New York City, SiriusXM is an audio entertainment firm with almost 35 million customers, including almost 2 million New Yorkers. After hundreds of customers complained to the OAG and other agencies that they were unable to terminate their subscriptions, the OAG launched an investigation into the business. The corporation instructs its agents to keep clients on the phone or in the chat for a long six-part conversation, which includes asking a series of questions and then pitching the subscriber up to five retention offers, all in an effort to delay cancellation, according to the OAG’s inquiry. Agents are taught to keep asking consumers questions and making offers until they either give in or get irritated instead of accepting no when they decline the offers.
Customers expressed in affidavits filed with OAG how difficult and annoying it was to terminate subscriptions they no longer wanted to pay for or used. According to a chat log, a SiriusXM representative once held a member in a conversation for forty minutes in spite of the user’s persistent and explicit pleas to end the conversation. The business then proceeded to bill the client in any case. An additional complaint, made by a customer on behalf of her 92-year-old mother, detailed a frustrating, nearly 40-minute phone conversation with a SiriusXM representative.
Justice Lyle Frank of the New York Supreme Court in New York County ruled that SiriusXM had violated the federal Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (ROSCA) by establishing an onerous cancellation process that was much more involved than the one customers use to sign up for SiriusXM. This procedure requires subscribers to listen to repeated retention offers before canceling. Due to the ruling, SiriusXM will need to modify its cancellation policies in New York to give its users an easy way to terminate their subscriptions and eliminate the need to talk or chat with a live person.
Under the direction of Deputy Bureau Chief Laura J. Levine and Bureau Chief Jane M. Azia, Assistant Attorneys General Adam J. Riff and Christian Reigstad of the Consumer Frauds & Protection Bureau are handling this case. First Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Levy is in charge of the Division of Economic Justice, which includes the Consumer Frauds & Protection Bureau. Chief Deputy Attorney General Chris D. Angelo leads the division.