Direcway HughesNet ripoff, terrible customer service and fradulent advertising Ohio

In August of 2005 I made the decision to purchase DirecWay for our home business. Since no DSL was available I was left with DirecWay as the only option for high speed internet. Being a DirecTV customer I had seen the ads on a daily basis claiming "superfast connections", "always on", and the best of all "life changing" due to the amazing speeds and surfing abilities.

I placed a call directly to DirecWay and was put in touch with an installer in Akron/Canton Ohio. The installer backed up everything that DirecWay claimed and scheduled an appointment to install the dish.

On the day of the installation I was told that the installer would arrive between 8am and 10am because I was the first appointment. He showed up 7 hours late and offered no excuse as to why. He then said that he had to mount the dish on a metal pole costing an extra $100.

After it was hooked up, the speed seemed extremely slow. I was told it is always slow for a day or two. After a week things had not improved and I made my first call to customer service. I spoke to a man in India that didn't speak English very well. No problems were solved and I continued to call until I was finally transferred to "advanced support" in the states. This individual also spoke very limited English. The result was the same.

After nine months of fighting them for better service I finally spoke to an American. He told me that upload speeds were not guaranteed and that 21kb was "normal". Normal! That is much slower than my dial-up connection. Web pages take minutes to load and often time-out. I understand that during a storm satellite connections are poor but that doesn't explain the slow connection on a sunny day at 2pm.

I then tried to get help from the billing department. I suggested that the contract was not upheld and I wanted to cancel my service. He said for $640 I could be released from my contract. I explained to him that their advertising included an "implied warranty" if I remember my business law 101. You can't make claims like they do and not deliver on your promise. He said that I had no leg to stand on and would either have to pay or contiunue service.

Now that my wife has quit her accounting business due almost entirely to the slow internet, I have no use for this dish. It was being used to connect to her office server. She was working from home part-time so that she could watch our children. Now I am stuck with a $106 bill for six more months.

This company is the worst that I have ever dealt with. I would be very interested in seeing them taken to court over their "business practices". Good luck to anybody that tries to get out of their contract.

Keith
Vincent, Ohio
U.S.A.