Canadian XM auto sub - US sub possible?

[jcol]

I have two XM Canada subs. Primary sub is an old MyFi portable and the other is a car sub. Last September I purchased a 2011 GMC Terrian and along with the 3 month free XM trial I called in and transferred the remainder of the sub that I had with the previous GM car that I traded in. This sub on the Terrian is coming up for renewal on March 20'th. Back in November XM Canada suddenly dropped the US traffic and Weather channels. Since I travel in the US with my car I found these channels useful. When they were removed for no reason I complained to XM Canada and stated that if they were not reinstated when my car sub came up I would cancel. Well they have not returned (no surprise) so I phoned up last week and cancelled my car sub. I was sent on to a retension person who asked why I was cancelling. When I told her why she said that the US traffic and weather were removed to make room for new channels. I asked her where the new channels were and there was a long silence before she suggested they were coming soon. Either way I cancelled. I hope to be able to get a US account going as I do have a US address and it seems that for the most part it is not a problem execpt for a few posts that indicate that a GM vechiles radio ID is forever registered to XM Canada and cannot be subbed to the US service. I plan to let my sub lapse for a few days and then try to sub online. I will post my results. If anyone has gone through the same scenario and been successful or not I would appreciate a post. If it is truly locked to the cars point of sale what happens when people really do move to the US and take their car with them? I'm sure at some point XM US will take their money. thanks.

[jcol]

Well my sub expired on March 19'th which was actually a day early. I waited till yesterday the 21'st and entered my radios ESN into the US Sirrus/XM radio refresh link. It came back as an unreconized ESN. I then did the same thing on the Canadian site and the ESN came back with the make, model and year of my GM vechile. I then sent SirrusXM US an email stating that I would be spending 6 months of the year in the US (which I am) and that I have a US address and Credit card. I told them I wanted to sub to the US service in order to get the US traffic and weather channels (which I do) and asked that they add my radios ESN to their system. I suggested that ability to subscribe to the service should be based on location not on point of purchase. I got a fairly quick but I think automated response stating that since the vechile was purchased in Canada I could not sub to the US service. I plan to give it a couple of more days to see if my ESN disappears from the Canadian XM database (which I doubt it will do) and call US SirrusXM and plead my case with a person. I also think I will contact GM and see what their thoughts are about this. It's not much of a selling point if a Canadian vechile is forever tied to the Canadian XM service.

[VE3YYZ]

I wonder what would happen if you were in the US and you had to replace the radio under a warranty repair??

[jcol]

Just got my car radio subbed to SirrusXM US service. As I reported in my earlier post I let my Canadian sub expire. I then went to the US site and entered my radio's ESN # in the Refresh radio field. This came back with a message stating that my ESN was not reconized by the US system. At this point I thought I was done as I was under the impression that the ESN # had to be reconized by the US system before you could sub. This is not correct. While on the US SirrusXM site I went to live chat. I asked the person if I could sub a radio from a Canadian built vechile. He said not while it was subbed to the Canadian service. I told him I was not subbed to the Canadian service and he then suggested I simply try subbing online. He didn't say whether it would work or not. He provided the link to the online activation. He also said that it would be normal for my radio to return the not reconized message while using the refresh command since the radio was not a current sub and it is the act of entering the radios ESN # at the time of subbing that puts it into their system. Well I created the online account using my US address, registered the radios ESN # and selected the basic programing package and paid with my credit card. I thought if it was going to fail it would have when I submitted my ESN # but it took it without a problem. After I completed the payment I went to the refresh radio screen and put in my ESN # and it came back saying that a refresh would be sent out within 15 minutes. My wife happened to be driving the car so I phoned her and while we were talking the radio came on. I also had her check to see if the US traffic and weather channels were back and they are. I did not have a promo code so I paid full price but now that I know it's working I will work on getting a better price next time but for now I'm happy to have got it working. Hope this helps someone else with a GMC vechile with a built in radio.