Hughes.net (formerly DirecWay) Are They Missleading Us? Do They Care About Us? What happens when you have a problem with your service? Germantown Maryland

11-2007 I had HughesNet installed. My installer told me that he had the exact same equipment as me and the same package. 1.5 meg download and the 7000s modem. He assured me that the FAP was 425 meg in any given 4 hr. block. That is NOT true. Its in any given 24 hr. block. Any 24 hrs that you go over the limit, you can be throttled back to mere dial-up speed, and a poor dial-up speed at that. I didn't like being lied to, but I got over it as I figured I should have read more closely about the FAP. Thats not my biggest problem with them. Recently, I have noticed that my browsing speed was very slow. So I did the speed test that is supplied with Hughes Net. Starting shortly after noon each day, my speeds would drop like a stone. Early mornings I would get 1100+ kbs which I thought was very acceptable. Late mornings and early afternoons it would drop to as low as 80 kbs with the normal drop being around 115 kbs. This goes on like this on up into the night past midnight. At some point, I assume it comes back up because in the mornings, its back up again.

I've talked to customer support the last two days. I assume they were in India. Very hard for me to understand them but it was very clear that they were simply reading cue cards as my impression was they didn't really know what they were doing and they kept repeating the same things over and over.
After doing all of the tests and configurations that they had for me, I was still getting the slow speeds. I was told there was nothing that could be done as Hughes Net does not gurantee their speeds. He was right. There is nothing that says they will gurantee any speed. They simply say you may have speeds up to a certain point, which I have not gotten any closer than about 75% of. I understand about shared bandwith and that when more people are online that the speeds will slow down somewhat. But when you pay $80 a month for 1.5 meg and you only get 80 kbs (which is just a little over 5%) you begin to wonder if they are being forthcoming in trying to supply an honest service to you.

To sum up my little rant. If you plan on Satallite internet, keep this in mind. From my experience, it is not worth the money. The company is vague and they don't even have an obivious posted telephone number that you can call corporate. My thinking is that its because they don't really want to hear from you. They just want your money and don't want to spend money for more bandwith so that you will have a pleasant experience while using their service.

If you have had a bad experience with Huges, please post about it as it may make a difference... Thanks

Cuzz
Elkview, West Virginia
U.S.A.