I originally had contact with this company when living in Wylie TX in 2003. I signed up for their system because it was the only "broadband" solution in my area. This was when the company was called "Direcway".
I paid for my dish, modems and installation (about $500) happily believing their claims of high speed internet service only to find that it was only a tad better than dial up. Upload speeds were always less than 20k and downloads never reached much more than 384k. Still, it was a little better than dial up so I stuck with it. When real broadband via Cable came to my area I immediately dropped this service. I cannot rightly remember but I believe I paid an "early termination fee" to drop their service. I eventually sold the equipment I bought for $75.
Fast forward to 2006. I moved to a remote location by the lake but lo and behold, no broadband available here. Because of perceived changes in the technology and promises of a much advanced system I signed up again with the new Direcway aka Hughesnet. Again another dish purchase was necessary. $581 later I had my "high speed internet". This High speed internet service provided me the "blazing fast speed" of 900k down and at most 22k up. I signed up for the "Professional Plan" with a static IP address and speeds "up to" 1.5 mbps download speeds and 256k upload speed.in all the myriad of testing I did on this connection I NEVER received this level of service.
I called numerous times to "tech" support. Some fool in India, reading from a script always answered the call and always told me that my speeds were "within the acceptable range". This was not acceptable to me. On one occasion I had a tech tell me that I had to put a proxy server on all my computers. The "proxy" was the local address of my hn7000 modem and yeah, it made the download speed a bit faster. But those of us that know about networks know that this was only because of a cached webpage and not a real measure of bandwidth. I finally gave up on trying to get what I was paying for and lived with it until I found a better solution.
I then called to cancel my service. I was told I would have to pay an early termination fee of $300. I refused to pay this fee and told the person to have a supervisor contact me about it. Nobody called so I called back a week later. My account was still active, no termination took place. I then told them to cancel my account again and spoke with a "supervisor" who told me they would be charging me $300. I told him I would refuse this charge and he laughed at me. I awoke this morning to a $280 charge to my debit card.
After speaking with many "supervisors" who just laughed at me and told me there was nobody else to speak with who would reverse this charge I dug out the agreement they sent me. It states "Termination: If you cancel service more than 30 days after activation and prior to the completion of the 15-month commitment, you will be charged a $300 Service Termination Fee and are not eligible to receive any refunds." Although you never sign an agreement it is implied that you accept this strong arm statement by accepting the service.
On the subject of speed: "Actual speeds vary based on the amount of traffic on the Internet, content on a particular Web site, or by the overall performance and configuration of your computer." and it goes on to state that you cannot use it for most functions that broadband users want a high speed connection for. "Stated speeds are not guaranteed. HughesNet is optimized for browsing and downloading files. HughesNet is not recommended for use with Virtual Private Networks (VPN), twitch or RPG online games, online trading, web hosting or heavy file uploads." NoVPN? No Gaming??? No file uploads? No online trading? Damn, what do you use it for?
So, anyone considering using Hughesnet or any other iteration of this company or it's services should "JUST SAY NO" and stick with your dial up.
I would love to see a class action suit brought against this company for failure to provide service that they advertise.
Robert
corsicana, Texas
U.S.A.
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