As you know, I recently havent had any intenret, But DialUp, and well i decided that Satelite was better than None for now, atleast untill i could afford better, or better, cheeper, was brought in my airea. So i called HughesNet Today, and had them Re Activate my account. It fineally comes on, I get Online, to find my Download and Upload speeds are as bad if not worse than DialUp.
After waiting 45 Minuets on hold to get a Support Rep, I get this Guy who is Breatheing in the phone, and you can hardly understand him, After i spent another 30 Minuets talking to him, He sends me to Level 2 Support, This guy Immidently Sends me to Level 4 Support, And when i get there, i am told that someone will call me back, Because i called after hours.
Starting to get Very frustrated with them, but thats not alll… Now i cant upload my videos to YouTube, And thats all i wanted the interent for in the first place……
7 Responses
I’ve been reading your blog for a few minutes and I just wanted to drop in and inform you of a few things.
Firstly, I’d like to start off by saying I too live out in the ‘boonies’ with no decent internet access other than sattelite or dial up. Given the choices, I decided to try sattelite. I went and called WildBlue who said they didn’t service my area.. (Sattelite is supposed to be everywhere..) So I called Hughesnet, who just so happened to service my area.
After reading through the FAQ and things about the FAP, I decided to go with Hughesnet. The first 30 days went fine, as usual with any 30-day backout period product. After the 30 days were up, I randomly got FAP’d, speeds got nerfed, and sometimes even when I wasn’t FAP’d, speeds were down to as little as 17KBPS. I have the ProPlus plan (90$/month!). You’d think at this price, you’d get higher bandwidth, better service, and less bullshit.
Customer support is horrible. I have no problem with other nationalities, but when they put them on as the main call answerer, this just annoys me. He walked me through a few things which had nothing to do with the task at hand (telling him my IP, pinging google, trying to browse msn and yahoo, speedtesting at their website, unplugging the modem for 30 seconds and plugging it back in..) Nothing worked. Surprisingly, during the FAP-free hours (3-6AM EST), the speeds rose to the normal, and after 6AM, they went back to 17KBps. Seriously. Called them back again, and the same european man answered again, and we went through the same process, which didn’t help anything.
At the moment, it’s still going really slow. This is totally unacceptable; Dial up at 5KBPS for $15.00 per month compared to their service at 17KBPS with random FAP’s even when I haven’t downloaded things, for 89.99$/month with a 200$ setup fee and a 2 year contract? Unbelievable!
Sadly, Even if you do sue, I doubt you’ll get any thing out of them – They protected their asses in their contract and ToS. Sorry for the long rant, but I had a lot bottled up. Anyone experiencing this should definately write up a complaint to the BBB if it continues and Hughesnet doesn’t do anything to remedy them. (What the hell is turning the ethernet cable around supposed to accomplish anyways?)
Thanks for your responce, Dont worry about the Longness of it, I was reading your story, and the Exact thing is happening to me, Back when the company was DirecWay it wasnt so bad, But no its terrorable, It seems like theres something we could do about this… If all the hughes subscribers got to gather on it… I too am on the Pro Plus plan, and am constantly FAP’d Maybe One day we can do something about it, I Hope…
Well, back again.
This time the speed didn’t rise during 3-6AM; It just stayed there. This time I’m thinking maybe the dish got unaligned or something, the wind here has been really crazy the last few days.
It has risen a little. I’m getting 38KBps now, but still, that’s crazy compared to the 150KBps advertised. Now, they told me they had thirteen sattelites. If the dish was unaligned, shouldn’t it just reconnect to the sattelite with better reception?
I’m starting to think that aliens do exist, and that they’re blowing up all of the sattelites in outerspace. 😉
Hmmm, Maybe its not just me… Im running 150KBPS now, And im supposed to have 1.5MBPS Connections. Maybe their system blew… Oh God i hope so… lol
And if the ailens are blowing up their satelites, then maybe theyll go out of business… lol
On another note, no the dish will not lock on a good one, You have to tell the modem to,In Internet Explorer go to 192.168.0.1 and click the first green bubble at the top and see what ur signal strenth is. As long as its 52 or above, then its not out of align.
Im still waiting on my call from Level 4 support…
I’ve had exactly the same experience that sajestanus has had. Their technical support tried the same thing each of the first three levels, each time trying to blame my wireless router. I would disconnect the router and connect directly to their modem and the speeds would be the same. Right now I’m getting 1/10th the download speed that I pay for. My VPN client does not work either. I swear that if I hear, “Download speeds are not guaranteed” one more time… If I have to do some work from home I have to drive to the parking lot of a local hotel and I “borrow” their WiFi so I can get some work done.
The also have a “Fair Access Policy” that they don’t advertise. It states that you can only download a certain amount before they cut your bandwidth. With the plan that I have purchased, my limit is 375 MB. If you exceed that in one 24 hour period, they cut your bandwidth down to 13-15 KBPS for the next 24 hours.
Hughesnet internet service is a huge rip-off. You pay a high price for service that you never get unless you do all of your surfing at 3 am.
I am going back to cable the minute that it becomes available.
Wow, i feel bad for you guys, if you get dial up and find a couple programs of the internet you can get dial up to be not as terrible as what it seems like your going thru, i loaded this page in about 12 seconds…
yea i had hughes net for uploading videos and gaming (im a huge gamer) and it worked fine in my free trial month. after that was up it slowed down worse than my old dial up i couldnt pley on xbox live or guild wars. i couldnt even load the most basic of web pages. so i called tech support and after like 4 hrs they finally told me “oh we have a fair access policy and your plan allows like 500 mb” for every 24 hrs i think it was. i live in a very rural area and i need the high speed for business too. i stopped gaming online and it still blows. they dont even tell you about fair access policy until you have passed your limit. hughes is a total rip off.