Whatever You Do This Weekend, Don’t Pay Extra For Satellite Radio In A Rental Car (Because It’s FREE!)

by joeheg

When renting a car, Sharon and I always try to pick one that has SiriusXM Satellite Radio. We’re familiar with the channels and know which ones we like. There’s no need to find a new station when you drive outside of the range for the FM station it took 20 minutes to find. Sure, we have our discussions about what to listen to. Sharon’s more into On Broadway or 80’s on 8 while I’m more a fan of The Blend and The Highway. We’ve recently found a happy medium on trips by listening to Road Trip Radio. We manage to get along with the rule the one who’s driving gets to pick the radio station (Sharon’s usually sleeping when I’m driving so she doesn’t care what’s on the radio anyway.) (Note from Sharon: True story! LOLOL!)

One thing we won’t do is pay for SiriusXM in a rental car. Depending on the rental car company, it costs between $5.99 to $7.99 a day and that’s too much to pay when I’m doing everything I can to save on a car rental in the first place.

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While we’d never pay for SiriusXM in a rental car, many people are willing to pay for the convenience. Heads up that if you’re renting a car between now and June 8, 2021, and paying for SiriusXM, you’re wasting your money. Here’s why…

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Free Trial Offer

SiriusXM is offering free listening on inactive radios between now and June 8, 2021. As long as your car has a satellite receiver, you’ll be able to listen to SiriusXM stations. You cannot listen to every station, but here’s the page for the promotion which has a list of stations you’ll get with the preview.

This trial is even available in your own car. So listen for free for the next 10 days. We love the service and since I never pay full price to renew, we plan on keeping our subscriptions.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

4 comments

Pat May 25, 2019 - 8:02 pm

Thanks, now I can listen to Nicolle at 4pm.

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snowfilmer May 26, 2019 - 8:35 am

My biggest annoyance with using Sirius in rental cars is that they routinely block out Howard Stern. You have to be 25 years old to rent a car, and pay extra (usually) for Sirus. You’d think a paying adult could be responsible enough to decide if Howard is appropriate to listen to or not.

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Dan Romanoff October 16, 2019 - 8:31 pm

I have never paid for SIRIUSXM radio in my rental car…I just call up SIRIUS and tell them I am planning on buying a car and would like to have a free 3 months subscription and within 15 minutes, no credit card and I have a valid account and a rental car with SIRIUSXM for a week free of charge.

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Michael October 22, 2019 - 10:46 am

Free promotions don’t always apply to rental cars, depending on how they are set up with SiriusXM. The cars are often technically activated but disabled by SiriusXM until the rental car company tells them to turn it on. When this happens, free previews or ported subscriptions won’t. Even though they appear to be inactive, they are not. Fortunately I’ve been able to get it for a little less than your quoted above.

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