Hughesnet "Fair" Access Policy bad, REAL bad. For customer service, better be fluent if foreign languages Nationwide

I bumped into the Fair Access Policy limit by letting my daughter watch a youtube video of the Littlest Pet Shops online. I've been with Hughesnet/Direcway since September 2002, and only in the last six months have I had trouble with FAP.

On Feb 2nd, I called tech support to ask why I was restricted, I had been told prior to today that the limit was 200MB per hour by a tech guy at Hughesnet the last time I bumped into the limit. After struggling to understand tech support on the Feb 2nd call, I asked to be transferred to someone who was IN the United States and could speak English without an accent. I was told that HughesNet has NO tech support IN the United States at all, and I COULD NOT be transferred to anyone in the US.

After spending over an hour on the telephone I learned the truth- you are limited to 200MB per 24 hour period, not per hour. This is NOT hard to exceed. If you spend more than 2 hours on Youtube, ABC, CNN, or download more than half a movie purchased on Itunes, you'll bump into it and be locked out for 24 hours or more... I just got finished with another one hour phone call because my 24 hour lockout turned into a 25 hour, 20 minute lockout. Oh, and one of the techs I talked with yesterday upgraded my account without my permission, which took 20 minutes to fix.

After 6 & a half years of paying either 105.00 or 55.00 each month, enduring weather outages, satellite hiccups (one of which knocked me offline for about 45 hours and cost three hours with tech support chasing a cause when they knew what it was already) as well as losing connections for no apparent reason countless times... none of it matters. They voluntarily shut me down even though my average usage month to month is FAR below maximum.

Hughesnet says they supply High Speed Internet. They do, if you consider 84Kb/S High speed. However, if you try to USE the high speed internet for anything but rudimentary surfing, they'll lock you out for 24 hours or more, and there's NO getting around it.
In short, Hughesnet is terribly bad. Bad tech support, bad customer service, and FAR too expensive for highly restricted dial-up internet service, which is about what Hughesnet is.

Owning a car that'll do 70 MPH is cool, but imagine if the car would do 70 for 20 miles, then you're restricted to 11 MPH for 100 miles... That's Hughesnet!

I'm making arrangements to go with Verizon Wireless Broadband and kiss this absolutely horrible company goodbye!

James
Nashville, Tennessee
U.S.A.