Inactive XM
 

For the second time, I picked up a car with an XM radio that wasn't active. It was unexpected, since it was only an Impala. I hit band one too many times and got the promo channel.

Is there an easy way to get XM activated? Wouldn't it be nice if you could call XM and get a 1 day or 5 day subscription?

They probably just get the 3 month trial with new cars and let it expire... It'd be smart of XM to do that, waive the activation fee and allow you to rent for 5 days for say 6.95. Or allow a roaming plan.

Just this evening, I picked up an Impala with functioning XM ^. This Impala has over 22,000 miles on it so I don't think I'm in the three month trial period. I have also rented Sonatas with functioning XM. Neither of these are "Premium" cars in the Avis fleet.

I don't know who pays for XM (or Sirius, as the Chrysler 300 I rented earlier this week had) in the Avis fleet. I thought it might be a promotional effort to expose more people to satellite radio. Maybe some of the Avis insiders can shed light on this.

Last week at a far-from-the-big-city location, Avis gave me a Suzuki Grand Vitara which had an XM antenna in the back and an XM button the radio that did nothing at all (it stayed on FM or AM). The car had about 3600 miles on it when I got it.

Of note, the AM radio also hardly worked, because of intense interference from something in the car. (A local station was only receivable for a couple miles from the transmitter, before being drowned in that interference.) Dunno if whatever was wiping out the AM reception was also related to the XM not working...

The car seemed very new, as not a single radio station was preset on FM or AM. (It also had a CD player, so I presume previous renters had mostly used to that or tuned one station and not set a preset.)