Hughesnet
Posted By: mtathome on 2006-08-14
In Reply to:
I did an archive of this, but did not get a really good answer to my question. I am considering satellite interneg, as that is the only high speed option where I live. I do not dial into a network, but download my dss files as e-mail attachments. I have Directv already and only lose service temporarily during heavy rain. If anyone is working with this already, how much faster than dial-up is it? I have an office where I have DSL 10 miles from here, but I would love to move everything totally from home.
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Hughesnet is NOT down but beware
their customer service STINKS big-time. But, hey, if you live in the wilds like I do, with no cable or DSL - what choice do you have? Never heard of Wildblue - it must be a small starter company.
Anyone in the NE having Hughesnet problems?
Our service has gotten slower and slower recently and a lttle over 2 weeks ago it got to the point where I could run DocQscribe, but beyond that no search pages would load and IM wouldn't work. I called customer service and a tech from India tried a bunch of things including resetting our modem and by the time he was done, we couldn't even connect. The modem is not in my office and I specifically asked him if I should check it and he said no.
I called again in 2 days and talked to advanced support and he tried some things and then started wanting me to disconnect cables, etc, so I told him my husband would call back because all that is in his office. He called the next day and no one could figure it out, so they wanted to send a dish tech out to check the dish.
He came and said the dish was fine and when he looked at the modem he said it had been decommisioned and he got online and got it restarted, which we could have done over the phone if we had known, and the techs on the phone should have known it. And now they wonder why we have a problem with paying 125 bucks for the guy to come here.
We have been on the phone for hours trying to settle this. Billing won't take it off the bill without "documentation from tech support" and tech support in one breath will say that it was a phone techs fault and in the next breath say that they can't document it.
The whole system should not have been touched in the first place because it is a problem with the satellite we are aimed at, not a problem with our dish or modem and evidently we could be aimed at a functioning satellite, but no one is offering us that option.
Sorry to vent, I really just wondered if anyone else in this area is having a problem. I am in upstate NY near the VT border.
I've had Hughesnet for over a year
First of all, it is expensive. $60 a month ($65 if want them to mail you a bill instead of having it taken directly from your checking account) You have to purchase the equipment, which can run $600-$700 installed. This dish weighs 75 lbs, so if you don't want all that weight on your roof, then it's an additional $125 to put it on a pole. If you do that, I suggest you have some PVC pipe available so the installer can run the line through that before burying the line from the pole to your house. Now, if you let the installer bury the line, he charges another $3.25 per foot for burying ( I just had him run it on the ground and I buried it myself with a shovel). There is rain fade-out and it fade or drop quicker with the internet dish than with your TV dish. Their customer service, in my book, stinks. The first customer service reps you have to go through cannot speak English and do not know that okay means yes. ( I help you Susan, yes? Okay. Yes? Okay. Yes? OKAY!!!!!) If you have problems and they get you up and running for even a second then everything is "Good". You have to keep calling and beg and beg and holler for advanced tech, where you get an English speaking person that knows what they're doing. But still, I have had to beg and beg with advanced tech to get a repairman out. And I don't know where you live, but the closest installer/repairman to Jacksonville, FL is in Georgia and if there is a nonwarranty problem then I have to pay $125 trip charge and it takes them a week to come out. Right now I have only intermittent internet service, which is not enough to work, after waiting 3 weeks for a repairman, he says the problem is a warranty part - but guess what? He doesn't have it so now it's another 1-2 week wait. I have been fighting with them since this thing was installed. I can't get cable, and DSL was supposed to be up and running here over a year ago - all the lines and boxes are in, we're just waiting for someone to 'flip the switch'. But, hey, when this thing is working, it is as fast as DSL. A girl I worked with has it and has never had a moment's problem.
VR work & Hughesnet or WildBlue
I am looking into Hughesnet or Wildblue satellite to use with VR work. Does anyone use either for VR work and do they work well together? Thanks
no - don't check out wildblue. check out hughesnet. sm
i was on wildblue. i absolutely HATED it. i paid $400 for install and equipment and bill was $51.51 a month for smallest plan. no bills, had to be direct debit from credit card or bank. wasn't a lot faster than dial up and i frequently went over my download limit so i had to upgrade to the $80/mo plan. speed was no faster on their "fastest plan". they had a 1-yr contract and only 1-yr warranty. well 20 days (kid you not) out of warranty my tria (the eye on the dish) went out and it cost me a total of $275 for replacement and tech call (had to wait a week and a half before tech could come and then he no showed and rescheduled for the next day stating he didn't have the equipment he needed to fix me and the repair order had been in for over a week by that time. no call to say he wasn't coming either, just no showed). they TRIED to sell me the entire package all over again to get me locked into another 1-yr contract and i declined. it was best in their book so your warranty and equipment would be "new". i had to tell them for 5 months to change which credit card to debit from, never could get it right. had to tell them for 3 months when my phone number changed. i could not wait until the day my 1-yr contract was over. have heard really good things about hughesnet. i think it is a tad more a month, but supposedly a lot faster than wildblue and not near as many problems from what i have heard from others. wildblue was down for an entire week at one point throughout the year i was on it. always got lost signals and page cannot be found multiple, multiple times throughout the day. i used wildblue with VPN (with transtech) and could not keep a connection enough to get a decent line count as i was dropping signals too much and it did slow it way down. i finally got clinic work rather than acute care where time and speed wasn't a factor. research message boards for complaints about wildblue and hughesnet before deciding. also hughesnet i think told me a 2-yr warranty rather than only the 1-yr with wildblue.
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