Onstar Service and XM Radio
 

I had some spare time today so I figured I gather some information about these services and their cost. I know Onstar comes with one free year and XM 3 months, but this is about their regular rates/offers.

Onstar has the safe and sound plan 19$ and the directions and connections 29$. Safe and Sound includes the vehicle locator/recovery and stolen vehicle slowdown feature. The directions and connections plan has the turn by turn Nav.

Anyhow I contacted my insurance provider (allstate) and asked about any discount for having Onstar and its vehicle recovery/locator/slowdown they stated 15% discount on the premium for my area. Now of course I asked if it was off their total premium and they said yes, assuming that's right and there are no surprises later when I submit my policy.

This means depending on the area of the country and the person, a policy for 100 dollars a month would be 85 instead.

Now if you have 2 vehicles on your onstar account you get 50% off your second vehicle so your rate is roughly 20$ for the first and 10$ for the second for a total of 30$. As per Onstar customer service. That said if your premium was 200 for 2 vehicles X 15% that would be 30$ off essentially paying for itself.

As far as the Navigation plan that would mean 10$ for 1 vehicle and 15$ for 2 total cost. Not bad at all for what you get.

As far as XM goes its 13 for 1 account and the second is 9 dollars more.

If you add these services and include insurance discounts like in my case that's 23 dollars for 1 vehicle and 37 for 2 not bad price to have all you bells and whistle gizmo's working on your vehicle.

Also these prices are pre tax if any.

Now please I encourage you do what I did and learn how it would work with your insurance and please post you experience and responses. I'm not saying this is what is going to be your case but I like to know what most people out there would be paying. Also it would verify the information I gathered from Onstar XM and my insurance. Good luck :popcorn:.

PS those prices are also whithout any prepayment discount so technically it can be much cheaper.

Good idea I never thought of that.

As for the XM, if you call customer service, you can sometimes haggle on the price. I've got a plan for each of my two vehicles, plus 1 for the house and I was able to get them all for almost 50% off when I paid for a whole year.

I'll need to look into it more. My wifes Cadillac has both the OnStar and XM Radio activated, maybe I can get a good deal on both and get a discount on the insurance ;) Thanks for the heads up.

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That's what I'm trying to show that the cost may be reasonable for what you get with all the discounts. Especially the insurance ones.

Never considered seeking an insurance discount. I just bought the wife a 2009 SRX (Certified Pre-Owned) and it came with 3 months of free OnStar (30 phone minutes). Since we have two BlackBerry Storms w/Verizon I was hoping to be able to "share" one of them with the car. Turns out that's not how that works, I'd need to get the OnStar car phone number and add a THIRD line to my Verizon account. So my monthly charge would be $9.95 per month plus the $18.95 per month for the OnStar Safe and Sound Plan. My total monthly cost would be $28.90.

Let's say I were to get a 15% discount off the SRX monthly insurance permimum of $90 per month, that would save me about $14 per month. So my net per month would cost me about $15 per month to add the third Verison phone line and On Star subscription.

I'll call my insurance agent on Monday and report back any discount I get.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, I and many other's most likely would not have thought of this approach.

I would tell you don't do the phone line and use your blue-tooth connection on your storm to turn the cars audio system into your hands free dialing devise that's what it is for. You can save the money or upgrade to the navigation package for the same price. Or get the XM service. Anyhow now that the thread got moved not too many people will see it. I remember there was a discount for Lo-jack so that's why I figured I'd ask about Onstar. Also remember your likely to get a bigger discount in the areas that have higher thefts

xm is very generious to give you free stuff... like if you want to cut your service they will give you 3 months EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU DO IT... so cut it every 4 months and they give 3 months free complementary... atleast they do for my mount...

I'm not sure I understand your point. The 2009 Cadillac SRX does not have Bluetooth else I would be using that.

This is typical GM, the 09 CTS get's BT and my son's 05 STS has BT but not the SRX.

Sorry I meant when you get the camaro, but 10 dollars for another line isn't bad either.

Just like cell phone companies I guess thats good to know.

I worked for one of the big name insurance companies for Many years and I can tell you this information they gave you is false. The 15% discount is off of your Comprehensive coverage only, not your whole policy.

If you look at your current policy look for the line that says "Comprehensive" and that will be what you get the 15% discount on. Comprehensive is only your coverage for fire/theft/vandalism/etc.

Comprehensive coverage is not usually an expensive portion of the policy so this discount usually equates to only $10-$15 or so per policy period at the most. Hardly worth the $19 a month charge.

What I used to say to people about the discount is (and getting things like lojack) is its not worth it for the discount, but if you really love your particular car and you want to make sure you have it forever, those products and services are worth it.

I just checked my policy; I pay $41 every SIX months for COMPREHENSIVE coverage, so if I get say 15% off of that I could save a whopping $6.16 off my semi-annual premium or a $1.03 every month.

While it won't cost me a cent to call and I'll take every dime I can get from them, I was hoping to soften the financial burden of GM not including Bluetooth on a brand new 2009 Cadillac. Come on GM wake up, just because tax payers are going to bail you out you need products and content folks want. Enough with the shortcuts.

"Anyhow I contacted my insurance provider (allstate) and asked about any discount for having Onstar and its vehicle recovery/locator/slowdown they stated 15% discount on the premium for my area. Now of course I asked if it was off their total premium and they said yes, assuming that's right and there are no surprises later when I submit my policy."

That's why I said the above, maybe you missed it. I would not think it's the whole policy but that's what I was told. If it's the comprehensive yes it would be a small amount like 2 dollars a month depending your insurance instead of 15. I don't like spending my day calling back companies to verify what the last guy I talked to said. So I decided to put it out along with the other information and see what people come out with. Especially given that all areas of the country have different rates and all people as well. That's only part of my post not the whole thing.