I Hate HughesNet!
by Donna Schoenkopf
Being in the boonies means being limited to whatever corporate entity will deign to favor you with their presence.
Only DISH network will come out this far for tv. And they're fine. Expensive, but fine. They rarely have their satellite go down. Seems that happens only during a MASSIVE thunderstorm, complete with tornados, which makes taking cover a bit hairy, seeing as how you can't see them approaching on the weather station's radar.
And Credo, for my cell phone, good old Credo, is great in the Social Justice Department, printing on recycled paper, planting trees for every so many pounds of paper they use, environmental ink, free calls to Congress and the Senate when important issues are at stake, giving a portion of their profits to worthy organizations like Oxfam, ya gotta love 'em. I have to stand just right on my western hill to get a good signal, but with all the other stuff they've got going for them, I do not mind a bit.
But HughesNet! O, the misery. Expensive. Almost $100 a month for the middle range of speed. Temperamental. Haven't had two months of continuous, uninterrupted service since I started my "subscription". DON'T download anything like Acrobat because your "Fair Access Policy Threshold" will be exceeded. This makes your computer run slower than dial up. Seriously.
Need help with a technical problem? Hah! You'll get someone who's job it is to get you off the phone as quickly as possible. And it's not the poor worker's fault, it's HughesNet's fault. It's their damn policy!
Need someone to repair the shoddily made dish satellite or its connectors? That'll cost you $125, ma'am.
If there's a cloud in the sky, consider your satellite down.
I have lost twelve, TWELVE!, chapters of my fabulous book with which I was going to make millions (and give some to you, Dear Reader) because of HughesNet.
I have had to take my computer twice, TWICE, to the computer repair shop, at $50 a pop, only to find out that it was HughesNet's fault.
I now call the President's Office in Germantown, PA at (301) 428-5500, trying to find some justice.
Feel free to tell them that you don't like how they're treating me.
Am getting out of this contract in February if I can save up $250 for installation fees for a WIFI system that good old Rocky Barrett, chairman of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, brought in for all us boonie folks.
Thanks, Rocky. And screw you, HughesNet!
Comments
I canceled my hughes net service because there technical service was run by folks who couldn’t speak English nor did they have the tools to needed to diagnose the problem let alone the problem of my download allowance disappearing with no explaination. Canceling the service was another adventure that took 20 min of phone mail hell.
2011-08-31 by David Hilpert
Hooray for the Potawatamies! Our internet system and servers, compared to the rest of the world, is, well, third world. pathetic. Other “civilized” countries recognized that The Internets were a “national security/nation priority” type technology, one that could help the country as a who9le prosper, and so invested in, supported, contributed to, helped finance & etc. so they’re WAAAAYYYY ahead of us in that (and so many other) fields. The reason we’re so far behind is we think anything “national” is COMMUNISM, and that unregulated competition will get you the best of the best. Nope, it gets you high priced crap that doesn’t work and gets you a nation that’s third rate and can’t compete because other nations understood that there’s certain infrastructure items (and the internet is certainly an infrastructure) that should be “national” and fully supported since it gives the “nation” a leg up on the competition. Not America. Well, maybe America’s First Nations (i.e. Native Americans) will figure this out since we don’t seem able to. Go Potawatamies! Next up, Municipally owned power sources (clean energy technology) and power grids. Not for profit Municipally owned. i.e. “national” sorta, benefiting the People, not some CEO somewhere.
2010-01-9 by Ann Calhoun