Fewer choices, please, but more quality

     Satellite radio came with my car, or I probably wouldn't have it.
     My past experience with satellite radio is that it costs more than it's worth, and is more trouble than it is a convenience. In fact, the last two cars I owned, I allowed the subscriptions to run out. I had six-stack CD players and could get all the way to Myrtle Beach without hearing screaming divas, twanging, booming, or foul lyrics of any kind. Not even Barry Manilow, unless my wife is along.
     But I have learned that cancelling a service is not the end of the inconvenience: Once you have ever subscribed to anything, be it a magazine, model car collection, satellite radio or TV -- anything -- you will forever after be harried with cards, calls, e-mails and sometimes even unauthorized restarts that have to be killed all over again.
     These calls are never from sales persons. I have not had any calls from a sales person in years. Instead, I get "courtesy" calls from customer service representatives. I tell them if you really want to be courteous, take me off your call list.
     And let me say right here and now that I understand that some people have to make a living with telephone sales and service jobs, jammed into a cubicle alongside 400 other such workers, and life is hard for everyone.
     And I am all in favor of diversity, and appreciate any person who can speak in more than one language, but I have to wonder, Why is it that the more insistent I am that I do not want a product, or future calls, or I want better service, the person on the other end becomes increasing less conversant in English.
      So when the notice came that it was time to renew the subscription, it was with some trepidation that I gave them a call.
      But I really had no choice but to call. The invoice gave me few choices. I could give them a check for the full amount for a year in advance, or I could give them a credit card number for the same amount. In either case, the small print said by using either method, I was authorizing automatic renewal in a year, which means that 12 months from now, I would be getting a bill, probably including an increase in the rate, and notifying me that because of my previous agreement with them, they have already charged it to the credit card on file.
     I can get something like 500 stations on my car radio, but I had only two ways to make a payment, neither of which appeals to me. I would prefer to pay quarterly, or every six months, or at least a year in advance without committing myself to a lifetime of automatic price increases.
     When they say "customer service," they mean the customer gets serviced, and if you're a farmer, you know what I mean.
     It isn't just the radio company. My satellite TV provider keeps sending me surveys and sales pitches pushing more choices, as if only backward tribesmen in the jungles of some lost continent would not want to watch American Idol on their wristwatch, any time, anywhere, as often as there are stops at red lights.
     Anyway, I called and got someone named Geel. Geel apparently had trouble with my accent, because I could not make him understand that I wanted a less costly, and less automatically renewed, service. Besides, I explained, the one station I listen to most jolts me every so often with vocals by the likes of Engelbert Humberdinck, for which he expressed no sympathy. Maybe he never heard of Englebert, but then he's not alone.
     Geel finally got it when I said I wanted to cancel my subscription. In the end, I agreed to a year's subscription to a less costly package, with invoice billing instead of automatic renewal.
     I should be happy, but I know what's next. Emails, "courtesy calls" at suppertime, and junk mail telling me I am in danger of slipping off the edge of relevancy if I don't have more choices.
     In the past, I had those CDs as backup to FM radio, but one of my 1,200 available Internet websites had a story recently that CDs will be going the way of the eight-track, or the cassette, and if you don't have an MP 3 player, or something called an App on your phone, you'll be out of luck.
     My cell phone has no camera, no texting, no messaging. I can make calls with an up to date and conveniently oversized set of buttons, and take incoming calls if I feel like it. I doubt it has an app.
     But that's my choice.