We experienced slow download speeds, frequent disconnects from the direcway internet provider. It seemed to begin in March or April. We contacted the provider several times between March and May, so we finally we updated with the equipment in May that was sent to us in March.
After the upgrade in May, we continued to have problems on a daily basis.By June 4, I was fed up with the service. Upon contacting the provider, some online tests were run. At that time I learned that there was a "fair trade access" rule that had been applied. We had never notified of this new rule prior to this call.
I was informed that since I had upgraded, I was now tied into another contract and if I discontinued the service, we would be billed a $300 cancellation fee. I continued to argue that the service was not working properly, that I was never informed of the "fair trade access" prior to the upgrade. I threatened to contact my attorney, with no resolution.
I'm a busy professional who does not have the time to spend hours on the phone with this company trying to negociate for better service. We decided to "ride it out", but contact other providers until the service plan out which we were told was March. So, our plan was to call the company when our contract was near completion.
On January 30, anticipating that our service would be billed in March for the February service, we contacted Hughes.net to inform them that we wanted to disconnect our service as we now have another provider (our cell phone - blackberry tethers to access the internet). We haven't used this service since approximately August.
During our phone conversation on January 30, we were on the phone with this company for 54 minutes after being transferred to each level of supervisor without resolution of our problem. Both of us discussed the problems with the service and that we had waited to disconnect. The company offered a month's fee service and a tech to come to our house to fix the problem. We repeated said that it was too late, that we had already chosen another provider and that the satellite continous problems with "fair trade access", poor download speeds and disconnecting, we did not desire further service. We just wanted to cancel our service.
We were transferred several times and had asked to talk with the supervisor. I think that we talked to 3 different levels of supervisors. We threatened to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and contact our attorney. We repeatedly told them that we had been more than patient with this company, that we wanted to cancel the service and that we were not going to pay the $300 cancellation fee as we had already been paying for no service for several months.By this time, we were livid.
The last transfer had us wait on the phone for over 10 minutes. (By this time the call was at 54 minutes as noted on my cell phone). I hung up, called them back and went through the cancellation process again.
So, we have cancelled our service, but they insist that they will charge us a $300 cancellation fee. We told them that we won't be paying it and will let our attorney handle it. They said that they would send this to a collection agency. We said that's fine and we would let our attorney handle it. We are not paying it due to lack of service.
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