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Said no such deal existed. No deal noted in the "notes" on my account.

I sold a car with an XM radio in it a few months ago. I had paid with a check for a three year contract, but knew I had a few months left on it so not worth the time I would spend on hold to see if I could get a $40 refund.

Big mistake.

I received a couple of invoices from XM and, of course, ignored them. I knew I hadn't given a credit card and hadn't signed an auto-renewing contract (or any contract, for that matter). Then a few days ago I received an invoice from XM "collections" saying I owed them ~$150 for a year subscription.

Huh?

So I picked up the phone and made the call. On my vacation, of course, since I have no time during their business hours to do such things.

Waited on hold for about 15 minutes for a rep. Once she came on, I explained I had sold the car, yada yada, and that I wanted them to stop sending me invoices. No problem, she was happy to cancel my account after trying to upsell me on some other products. So all I owed them was $16.39 and I would receive a bill for that balance. I explained that there was no balance, I had let my account run out and had not agreed to an auto-renewing plan. She explained that was true, which is why they sent out a (watch for it) "welcome letter" explaining how I would be charged automatically at the end of this contract.

At this point I am explaining to myself in an internal debate that the sixteen bucks is not worth the time it is going to take me to solve this, but unfortunately I never listen to myself.

20 minutes on hold later I am talking to a supervisor, who is explaining to me that yes, I never signed a contract but that they had sent me a letter after I had signed up explaining that unless I informed them that I did not agree to the terms of their non-signed contract within three months of receiving the letter, which would include me canceling the service (and ripping the radio out of the dash, I suppose) that the terms would stand.

It only took another 5 minutes of arguing to get her to cancel the charges and hopefully be done with it. We'll see. Grand total of about 50 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

The real crime is that troglodyte businesses like this can actually affect my credit rating and I can't do a damn thing about it without wasting more of my time than is worth what I am fighting over. Is this really where we have come to?

The horrid thing is the car I replaced my old one with also has an XM radio with a three year contract. I can cancel it and feel good about myself but much less good about the paperweight in my dash, or I can keep it and know that I am funding these criminal goons.

Is the only option venting a little, which I have never done here, or is there something illegal about what they are doing and anything I can do about it?