Okay, so having purchased a Certified Used Honda I figured I could "weasel" myself a 3-month trial subscriuption from XM. The day I drove the vehicle off the lot I got like three XM stations - 000, 001 and whatever the Emergency one is.

When I called the XM Radio activation people they told me that my dealer had already activated the 3-month trial and volunteered to restart it (WHOA!) since I've not made use of it. They also told me that to activate the service I'd need to set the radio to channel 001 for 20 minutes and my service would activate.

I've done this three times now and I'm still only getting those same three stations (technically not true, I also get a "special" Presidential coverage one). When I set it to XM and turn the dial, it jumps from the 00 and 01s to something in the 100's with no (easily understood) way to get the in-between stations.

Am I being a TOTAL moron and changing that station incorrectly? Is my XM service even active (they claim it is)? Is this a radio defect?

As a total side note, I have a suspicion that the radio MIGHT be defective (or just crap) because when I put in MP3 CD's with long (but low bitrate) audio files it "skips" sometimes as much as 5 minutes at a time.

What would you guys (XM users, Honda employees, owners of working XM radios...) do about this?

Am I being a TOTAL moron and changing that station incorrectly? Is my XM service even active (they claim it is)? Is this a radio defect?

You're not doing anything wrong. Call 'em back - again. It shouldn't take 20 minutes either....

Make sure you've got the E out in the open, and not in the garage or what not.

You're not doing anything wrong. Call 'em back - again. It shouldn't take 20 minutes either....

Make sure you've got the E out in the open, and not in the garage or what not.

Thanks for the re-assurance.

The first three times I did it, I was certain I had a clear shot. Having felt stupid by this, I did some research and found that XM send signal to the receiver that authorized the receiver to play the ever-streaming signals. I also found that these signals are sent in three hour loops and it takes 15-45 minutes for your radio ID to be added to the loop. I missed my loop because I wasn't told "Do it now or wait 3 more hours". I went to their website, logged in and did "refresh radio" to re-add my ID to the loop. ANYWAY...

I did a mod that required me to put the E in "rest" mode so my XM is now active. Sweet.