I first got Direct PC in June. It was more expensive than other survices but allowed internet without using a phone line. I bought my equip, ent which cost some $700. It never ran above 175K, but I was happy enough with it. Rhen about June Hughes bought Direct PC. After that, things went downhill fast.in October, I was unable to get my e-mails through Outlook Express. I had to go on line to get access to my e-mail. There were frequent down times of several hours without any service and that occurred a couple times every week.in November I started calling them and complaining. I would then say that I wanted to end my service with them. Unfortunately they must not have understood me and would pass me over to a technician telling me they were working on the problems and would soon be resolved. I repeated over and over that I wanted to terminate service without getting it across. Finally I contacted my Bank and told them to quit honoring the monthly payment to Hughes. They said because of the number years of paying I could not exclude them, but could terminate the debit card it was on. I did that. I called Hughes again and informed them I was terminating service and had cancelled the card they had been getting paid by. They pulled the plug on my service in less than 10 seconds. But, wait, that wasn't the end. Hughes filed a negative against my credit report for ending the service. It appears that they regarded subscription to their Internet service as a lifetime committment. Per contract, I was only obligated for 18 months and had long ago exceeded that. Not to mention, my contract was with the previous owners of Direct PC, not Hughes. I have heard other reports worse than mine. I received a negative credit report comment from Hughes. But I have heard of some people actually hit with collections and judgements and continued billing for months after ending service.
Good part is I got a new service, Clearwire. They're affilliated with Hughes competitors Dish-Net/Clearwire. I get a nice 1.5 Meg data flow, very strong signal with a nice little wireless modem that is less than 2X9X12 inches. Best yet it costs less than half the price and I got the first 3 months service free. Unlike Hughes I no longer have that big ugly dish. I have never had an outage and weather doesn't effect data at all.
You really don't want Hughes Internet unless you live somewhere like remote Alaskan Tundra and nothing else is available.
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