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 Review by Belinrahs 
UPDATED: 101 days ago
member for 2.1 years, 148 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Nashville,Barry,MI
 Contract price not specified.
 "It's internet access"
 "Horrible tech support, Mail, DNS, speed, latency....it's a problem"
 "There's lots of possibilities. If you're considering Hughes, also consider dial-up. Hughes should consider dial-up a COMPETITOR."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
HughesNet (when I got it, it was called Direcway), was the worst investment and waste of money we made in anything. The easiest way for me to explain this to you is to go by category.
Pre Sales information: 2. They both advertised _and_ told me over the phone that this was unlimited service. I learned the truth...the hard way. I called Hughes about 2 months ago, when I was complaining about how my speed had literally come to a halt. This lady, clearly a bit full of her self, tells me I'm "fapped". I was quite confused... "fapped"? What did that mean? I'm soon told that I may only download 500 megabytes, according to my plan, a day. I argued with her that I was told upon order time that this service was unlimited, and she was quite confident that they would never say such a thing. She clearly thought I was lying. It got to the point that she thought I was some mindless retard... she was combating my responses to what she had to say, in a combative and "you're such an idiot" attitude. I finally asked for the manager, and she automatically says, in a nice voice, "OK sir, thank you for calling HughesNet. I'll transfer you. Have a great day!" I wait for another 30 minutes, and I get absolutely nowhere. Still listening to this same, may I say, HORRIBLE guitar riff! I finally hung up, and called it a day.
Install Co-ordination: 4. This was pretty good. I was impressed. This guy knew what he was doing...he put it right up there, and made quite a few adjustments, obviously dodging the trees. The only thing is that he had to call some phone number because the self-commisioning wasn't working correctly..but it was promptly sorted out.
Connection reliability: 2. It goes out on sunny days, with the clearest of skies! Tech support is no help.
Tech Support: 1! They can't fix the simplest of problems! They are obviously reading off this script written by a 2-years-old boy..just pitiful.
Mail,DNS,News: 1. The mail service is ugly, and I've had multiple problems with it. DNS is painfully slow, but thanks to the hughes forums, I'm using opendns now... And I don't use the news, but it's provided by myway.com.
Value for money: 2. 1000 dollar equipment, and 100 dollars a month for this junk. Can I switch back to dialup, boss?
Q/A:
- What other options did you consider for broadband: There isn't any other broadband available out here in the "boonies". UPDATE: There is now EVDO Rev. A through Sprint; that's what I'm now using.
-What SPEED/package did you order at what monthly price: 1000 dollar equipment, 100 dollars a month. Advertised speed is 1.0mbits down, 100kbits up, "Small Office" plan.
-How was the order and install process: Read "Install Co-ordination"
-What brand/model was the supplied equipment: DW6000, with 1 meter dish.
-What good or bad experiences most struck you? Read a bit above folks...
-Beli
Followup comments:  dt1401
join:2007-10-07
| I agree 100% What I say about HughesNET, pull a Nancy Regan and Just Say NO!!!
Worse thing I ever done and most expensive. I have only had this system since April which I don't like but have been living with. I called in on 9-28-2007 because I wanted to pay off the equipment financing. I took a forever for the agent to understand what I wanted to do. The agent was like you have to take care of the balance due first. Well heck I had just paid it a couple weeks ago and next payment was not due till 10-18-2007. So I just paid it the $106.00 which is my normal bill with there $5 paper statement fee. Then she was like ok you owe $400.00 on your system. I was like ok that's fine. She took my $400.00 payment. Two-three days later I get a bill for $800.00. I with two $400.00 equipment payment line items. So I go online and look and see, shows my credit card payment posted and a remainder balance of $400.00. So I didn't thank much of it and emailed billing@HugesNet.com and requested someone e-mail me back with a resolution. Only reply I got was the auto-generated one. After a week I went back to my account online. same deal. So I decided to call. The young philipino was like no sir those charges are valid. We don't reverse valid charges. Could not make her understand what i was saying. Last time I checked there was only wane pimp size dish on my house. She is like no sir you have two systems. I just hung up and thought I would tried it again the next day. Lord same deal, it would be nice if they would stop reading scripts and listen. After the "No Sir I can't help you" I asked for a manager. Well got a manager and all of a sudden the system went down for maintenance. I explained the entire thing to her and she was like sir I cant help you. Then I asked is the scheduled maintenance you have an estimated time frame it will be done. No sir we don't know. So I just hung up went online I could look at my account, not sure why she couldn't. So I tried another e-mail. I am being to wonder if I am ever going to get this fixed. I get a letter that DSL is going to be in my area soon from AT&T. You better bet I'll be paying that $300.00 early contract fee. Same speed not bandwidth limit and $19.95 no contract. I am going to post this on as many boards as I can find, and I hope I hit my bandwidth limit. My tech support experience has just been long and drawn out. One tech told me to unplug my modem for 10 days. I just don't call anymore. I hate it when you hit the wrong button or 0 there IVR says EXCUSE ME?. Now that's rude. | |
| 
TBizone
@tmodns.net
| Are You Guys Telling Me To Cancel My Install Tomorrow? Sure sounds like it. I need High-Speed for online gaming, specifically, Halo 3. Anyway, Earthlink has offered me $20/month service with an 18-month contract. They're giving me the hardware. The service is through HughesNet. I was all set and excited, but I called the rep to make sure I could play XBOX and she said her system wouldn't support it. I asked for clarification and she had her tech/install guy call me. He says that because of the altitude of the satellite, there will be some lag-time. I was chatting with the earthlink people and they say that's not the case. I can get DSL form the local cable company but that's at three times the price. Can anyone shed some light? I also forgot to consider the Foreign Tech Support and the weather problems. Not to mention the fact that I'll now be dealing with two non-related companies, instead of one local company. Thanks for your input. | |
| |
currentfool
@direcpc.com | Re: Are You Guys Telling Me To Cancel My Install Tomorrow? do NOT go with any satalite service if you want to play real time games. do NOT got with Hughes no matter what | |
| rural girl
join:2009-07-30
Snohomish, WA
| Try Wireless before getting satellite internet As of yesterday I am out of my contract with Hughes Net and I couldn't be more thrilled. We moved from a large city to a rural area, and were disappointed to find out that we couldn't get DSL.
After being disappointed with the speeds we upgraded to a higher plan. Right after that nothing changed. I spent hours on the phone with tech support. Finally, they sent out a technician. He adjusted our dish to communicate with a different satellite that had less people on it. This actually got us very close to the speeds that were promised.
But, for us, the killer with satellite is the latency. I needed to be able to work from home, and when I was using the server there was always a typing delay. Plus, my husband couldn't do any work from home.
After lots of research I am happy to say that we are now happy with our wireless internet from cyberonic. The plan we are using is with Sprint, but there are no limits. They gave us a modem with the Sprint card so all of our computers have internet access at the same time. They advertise speeds up to 1.5. My average speed over 5 days (with 80 entries) was 741 down and 350 up. Yes, I was getting similar speeds with Hughes, but the HUGE difference is the latency. With Hughes the latency was about 1000 ms, and with cyberonic I'm averaging about 300 ms. With much less lag time we are able to do so much more. We've heard that we may be able to get closer to the 1.5 consistently with an amplifier, but, for now, this works for us. When Sprint updates all their towers to 4G we should get even faster speeds.
It isn't cheap though. We are paying $69 a month for the first 6 months, then $89 for the other 6 months. But I was paying $69 for the higher Hughes Net plan and I was very unhappy. We had also looked at the wireless plan from millenicom ($59 a month, no long term contract), but decided to go with cyberonic. (When I read some millenicom reviews some people suspected that millenicom is actually monitoring bandwidth, even though they say they aren't.)
So, for all the people who live in rural areas or can't get dsl or cable, I just wanted to give my impression about Hughes Net "high speed internet." Although it is faster than dial up, the latency prevents a lot of operations or makes them very very slow. Also, forget about using this in a snowstorm, heavy winds, etc. I would recommend wireless over Hughes any day. (Clearwire is cheaper than cyberonic, but they have TERRIBLE reviews, so we didn't even consider them.) Good luck in your quest for high speed internet! | |
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