Just bought a Kenwood Ez700SR CD deck for my dodge durango.

Turns out, you cant use the CD player, the radio, the AUX inputs, ANYTHING until you activate a sirius subscription. From then, I guess you have to keep on paying for it to work.

Im so pissed i dont even know what to say. It seems downright illegal to me for something like that. There was no notice about this until I actually opened the box and saw the footnote in the instruction manual. Pretty unreal for a $400 cd player.

I bought online, so now im kinda stuck with it without restocking fees and loosing shipping both ways.

The only thing in ANY add or description for the player...
To me that can read either way. Since they put the notice in parenthesis, it looks like they are just talking about Sirius not working. But if you read the first line they make it look like the whole thing.


Anyways, any ideas on how to bypass it? Think Kenwood will have a bypass feature if I call them and bitch enough?

 

I don't think you'll be able to bypass it.
I think you have two choices;
1) Eat the return fees and get something different
2) Activate a Sirius account, and then cancel it. I'd bet the unit would still work, but hey... Maybe not.

Eitherway I think I'd call Kenwood and give them feedback about how "happy" you are with this unit.

Crutchfield warns about this issue.


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Sorry to hear about your assumption regarding the Sirius-ready receiver. Sirius and XM are definitely subscription services, as is cable TV. When you buy a new TV, it will be cable-ready, but you have to subscribe to cable. My advice is to subscribe to Sirius, it's not that much per month, and save the shipping and restocking fees. Might as well enjoy it now that you have the receiver.

 

Re-read my post. Im quite aware that you have to pay for Sirius in order to recieve it. However, if you dont subscribe to Sirius, NOTHING on the cd player/radio will work. So its basically a $400 clock unless you subscribe.

So in your cable TV analogy, I go out and buy a TV/DVD combo in one. I cant watch local stations, or use the DVD until i subscribe to cable. Crappy?

Wrote crutchfield, they said it will remain activated no matter what after initial activation.

As for just sucking it up and buying satelite, thats exactly what they want you to do. I never really liked much of Sirius' programming, and this has turned me off even more. Ill go buy an add on XM tuner before I ever use the Sirius. Plus the deck has HD radio capability with an add on tuner, I'll likely do that. Most of my fav stations are broadcasting in high def in cincinnati

 

Right you are. I misread your post, and don't blame you for being honked off. I would go ballistic under those circumstances. Sorry about my lame adivce . . . I will be trashing my Monsoon system one of these days, replacing it with an Alpine (probably) and some high-quality speakers. So I will keep your situation in mind when I pick out the receiver.

 

WOW, that is the first I heard of an entire HU not working. If you bought it off CRUTCHFIELD, I would bitch enough about being misled and swap it for something else that doesn't require the service to operate. I have a Kenwood surius ready and didn't have that issue.

Just looked it up, mine is only 'ready' where yours is a built-in tuner. I had to buy an actual tuner. It looks as though this is for intended sat use as most are only 'ready'

 

I didnt get it from crutchfield, however they confirmed that it after activated, even if Sirius is canceled, that the HU will operate even with power being cut etc. I guess it programs a prom chip or something in there.