I was storing some AM and FM presets and accidentally scrolled to XM. I am not a subscriber., so I thought it odd that I got a station. Turns out is was a Preview channel so that made sense. But then I also got a second channel, a third sports channel and a fourth emergency 24/7 channel. I gather these are all preview channels and everyone gets them - correct?

TMG

 

I think everyone gets 3 month trial period if you get your car with XM.

Something I noticed too is I though I only had few stations under trial period since I didn't seem to be able to find more than about 15 channels, but I think I made a mistake using the seek buttons instead of turning the rightside ****, but they're all there (about 170 of them).

 

I'm still on my trial and I get probably around 200 usable channels.

 

170 !! . How did I miss the 166 others?? I was rushing off to work but still..oh well, thanks for the info..

 

Sound like your XM is not fully activated - it will show these 4 preview channels all the time.

When it is fully active, you'll get a lot more. I think if you get the following XM channels, then everything is fine: 7,47,175

 

Call the XM number:1-800-874-9844 and tell them you only get 4 channels. They will take down your name and number or ask you for your XM radio ID (it will display if you set XM Channel 0). They will then send a "refresh" signal to your radio and you must have the car parked, the radio on and in an unobstructed area (ie. not parked in garage). You should then start to get the channels after a few minutes, including NavTraffic if you have NAV. If it doesn't work, call them again and tell them to do it over (I had to call them twice for this reason).

Pretty sucky that it didn't come with all the channels from the get go. I pretty much wasted a month of trial because I didn't know if the 4 channels was all I get in the trial. It was only until I got a letter after 3 weeks from XM stating that there was a full complementary trial of 3 months.

 

I had the same impression too when I started my trial.

I called them and they said you can refresh it on the website.

http://www.xmradio.com/refresh/index.xmc

Here is the link I found again. The key to doing this though is

1. initiate the refresh at the site.
2. then make sure your car is out in an open area (with no large buildings) so it can synch with the satellites; take it for a drive to a some open area. You have a couple of hours? or the day for the refresh call to be active and for you to turn on your radio. I guess for good measure try not to mess with it after you start up the car and/radio when it's initializing.

Then check to see if you get all the stations.