Originally Posted by jackal

Thrifty does not pay for satellite radio.

On some vehicles Thrifty sources, the satellite radio may come with a few months or a year of free service, but then it deactivates, and since Thrifty does not pay for it, the satellite radio stops working.

When you have a car with working satellite radio, that means you have a fairly new car on which the subscription has not yet expired.

When you have a deactivated radio, that simply means the car you have is older than whatever demo period the radio came with.

Since it's an unadvertised, free perk, the best way to look at it is to simply consider yourself lucky when you get it.