terrestrial repeater out -- Customer Support will not believe me

[johnbom]

I live in Columbia, SC where the repeater goes down more than it is up. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but pretty close.

When I call to complain -- and I call all the time -- to see if someone can do something about it, the customer support analyst wants to talk about my radio setup.

I know my radio works. I have 2 soloists that are fully functional otherwise (7 miles apart), and a car mount that works fine except for when I am in the shadow of a skyscraper or a canopy of trees.

Why don't they believe me? I am not sure. One of them once told me they wait for a certain number of people to complain before doing anything about it.

Today I actually got a case number from an extraordinarily helpful analyst. She told me that they get bulletins when repeaters are down. Hence the hesitancy for anyone to believe me -- there are no bulletins for Columbia, SC.

I'm not the most technologically advanced person, but I can read the page on my SP4 that has SAT and TER.

I haven't seen a TER bar in a week. SAT comes and goes depending on the setup and the antenna coverage.

Who can I call that might believe me?

 

[geosync]

I believe you, but I can't really help. I switched over to XM in the office and car, still have Sirius at home, and their repeaters go down for a couple weeks at a time. Right now a couple serving the downtown area where I live are dead as doornails. I e-mail customer service, and call the technical staff to alert them. I can barely get any XM signal in my car around town right now.

 

[dhartsoc]

I sympathize... doubt there is anything you can do that will make a difference. Several months ago I went through a similar event. All anyone wanted to do was trouble shoot my radio. And I had already done that, as well as the antenna a dock.

They never admitted there was a repeater problem. A couple weeks later it was working again.

Dana

 

[geosync]

I received an e-mail back from XM about repeater outages. They claimed I wasn't in one of the 'affected areas.' HAHA sure. An article on one of the local news channels' websites showed up today, with loads of people in my city complaining about loss of reception in their cars. XM said a tech would be dispatched. Just went out in the car, things seem to be better now.

 

[Mopar86]

Good to see things were resolved geosync

 

[Sinners Delight]

My Sirius boombox has been out since Sunday. Customer service just wants to ''troubleshoot'' mine too. It must be a mantra to them. I finally broke out my old regular radio and have been listening to FM for the last few days. It's just as bad as I remember.

 

[Mopar86]

My Sirius boombox has been out since Sunday. Customer service just wants to ''troubleshoot'' mine too. It must be a mantra to them. I finally broke out my old regular radio and have been listening to FM for the last few days. It's just as bad as I remember.

Do you get any SAT signal at all?

 

[Kryptonite]

I think it works like this:

Has anyone ever used Bugzilla? Or anything that involves testing beta software?

If something doesn't work for you, then you report it as a bug. However, is it just you? Or is it widespread? Other people need to confirm the same problem exists on their systems before it has been confirmed as a bug. Or else, it will probably go down as a problem on your end.

Sirius is probably doing the same thing. They don't know how you have things installed. For all they know, it could be a problem with your wiring, or it could be on their end.

 

[Sinners Delight]

Onlything I've gotten since Sunday is ''Acquiring Signal''

 

[Mopar86]

Onlything I've gotten since Sunday is ''Acquiring Signal''

If you go into your "Signal Indicator" or "Antenna Aiming" on the Sirius Menu, how many bars of SAT and TER do you get?

 

[geosync]

Yeah thanks, we've been having some issues with XM repeaters here for a few weeks now. I'm not entirely sure it's even their repeaters, so much as other interference from another source. They seemingly corrected it last weekend, but now I lose signal on the bus with my Inno, when normally it comes in like FM would. Sirius has been great for me at home, antenna is outside on the ground. Sinners delight, I would recommend getting that antenna out of doors and on a flat plane.

 

[Sinners Delight]

Only thing I get is an ''X'' where the signal bars are supposed to be.

 

[geosync]

Do you have a car kit or home kit to test your antenna connection? It's possible your antenna connection is not completely seated while in your boombox.

 

[Sinners Delight]

I've taken it off and put the antenna on possibly 6 times this week. I don't have a kit.

 

[geosync]

It sounds like your antenna is just dead. What kind of boombox did you have? I had mine split in two by a weedwacker, and good luck finding a replacement if it's unique to the boombox. Typically you can get away with a standard home kit antenna with a boombox, so I would try to get a replacement home antenna and try that.