Here is an update on which Sirius offers I got as of mid-September.
- First I did let the 6-month period trial expire. The cutoff was exactly on time after 6 month for both radio and travel link.
- I did not receive any special mail offer other than the standard 1-year-with-3-free-months, without Travel Link of course...
- I waited for a week and called the two 800-/866- numbers. I refered to several offers mentioned in this and other Ford owners forums but did not get anything interesting. Anyway it looked like Travel link was never included in their packages. I just hung up saying I would wait for a more interesting deal. :box:
- I waited for another week and called again. Their 1st offer was even worse than before, asking for a 2 years subscription. Tried again to ask for the "forum offer" at about $100 for one year for radio AND travel link but nothing came out.
- After insisting a bit during that call, I finally got the $19.99 for 5 months radio deal, to which I added the one year (non-discounted) rate for traffic+travel link at $5.99 a month. So the final amount with tax was around a hundred bucks for that.
- Then I was asked to go to my vehicle and wait for the satellite signal activation. At the first trial only the travel link ESN was activated, so I had to call again and wait again for the radio ESN to be activated. In total more than an hour from the start of the call to everything all right :banana::banana:...
A few additional tricks:
- Based on what I did read in this and other forums, I asked to receive an invoice rather than giving my credit card info over the phone. This adds a minor $2 fee or so. I then went to the web site on the same day and paid with my card there and chose the "one time use only" option, so this should avoid auto renewal paiements in the future.
- Once logged in your account, you can apparently request signal activation from there (as your ESN are listed). Next time I will try this feature as it seems more convenient than waiting and requesting this by phone.
- For the activation to work, you have to tune channel 184. Even though a popup displays insistently that Sirius is deactivated, you can just dial in 1-8-4-enter and it will work.
- Before hanging up the phone, ask for your web account username and password, as after the renewal those were not the same as what I received in the initial paper mail.
Here it is now, happy to benefit from the traffic feature daily, and the weather and fuel price info when travelling ! :thumbsup: