This report is being made after receiving a bill from Hughes Net for cancellation of service. This bill is an unfair and unreasonable charge simply for my having to justifiably cancel after only two months. During those two months, I was provided inadequate, and in fact zero, service at times. The service provided to me was by no means in keeping with Hughes Net's advertisement. The following sums up my experience during the first two months:
-The first day, the installer arrived at my house and informed that he would need to install an outside dish for me to receive my Hughes Net signal for a charge of 235 dollars. I paid the bill and he installed the dish.
-After installation, he set up the equipment inside and we briefly, AND I DO MEAN BRIEFLY, went over the contract and the so called FAIR ACCESS' POLICY (which should more accurately be renamed the no access policy). Fair access is a deceptive term when a customer pays close to a hundred dollars a month and has limited use of internet service, and even ultimately gets blocked out altogether. That doesn't define fair.
-The first time I used it, I was locked out for 24 hours. I called technical support where I spent an extended period of time listening to a representative (in India no less) go over talking points repeatedly, all the while never understanding why it happened or how to avoid a recurrence, because there is obviously no cohesion between the corporation Hughes Net and the call center in a foreign country. The explanations and limited instructions were vague in general.
-A few days later, the equipment on the pole/dish failed. This led to another extended prolonged period on the phone attempting to figure out what was causing the interruption of service. I was told it would be five business days to get a repair which left me without a computer over the week end. Finally, the installer arrived during the middle of the next week. At this time, I subscribed to the next level of the service, the professional level, in an effort to maintain internet service and avoid the previous trouble. This was without success.
-A few more days later, I found myself locked out again. Dissatisfied and getting more and more irritated, I went back to the phone. After an even longer exasperated telephone conversation that took up most of my Friday evening, my service this time was reset, but only after much persistence on my part.
-About a week before I decided to terminate with Hughes Net, I was locked out of the internet a third time. Clearly, the inability to go online the third time was the last straw for me. It was at that point when I called to cancel service.
-By this time, I began to understand the nature of Hughes Net. I understood that I could not download common computer updates except after midnight (when I am asleep and not on the computer) and could not download movies, music, or anything that requires a decent amount of bandwidth.in my case, I was not downloading music or movies. When the FAP was supposedly violated, I was downloading the basic updates for my computer. That alone resulted in getting me locked out for twenty-four hours.
-This was my experience for the first and only two months of service with Hughes Net. It was at this time that I concluded first that Hughes Net's advertising was deceptive and even false, second that the service was totally inadequate when matched with the cost, and third that this new computer service account did not provide fifty times faster than dial up service and did not allow me to operate one computer let alone three (which is what it advertised). The whole deal and service was unacceptable. Being blocked from the internet for days when I pay 70 dollars a month is unacceptable.
-I have since disconnected service which I think is reasonable after a very poor performance and not in keeping with Hughes Net's part of a contract.
Bottom line:
DO NOT get HughesNet or you will be sorry. You cannot download simple updates for your computer (much less music or movies) without violating the stupid Fair Access Policy. You will pay upwards of a hundred dollars a month for slow service (during so-called "peak" hours which they say are 5:00 pm to midnight, it is barely faster than dial up). You are signing a contract for two years of poor customer service and poor internet service.
And if you do dare to try and call someone at Hughes, you will be transferred to a call center in India, where they really have no clue what is going on except to read from a list of basic troubleshooting issues. Even if you call billing or another department, they will not give you addresses or names to further your quest for answers and solutions. The corporate Hughes Net executives have no connection with its other departments, and those in the lower ranks are completely oblivious or willfully ignorant of how to truly solve problems.
Hughes Net = a HUGE THUMBS DOWN!
Don't be a sucker!
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