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Review by Fourcpus4me See Profile

  • Location: Gladwin, Gladwin, MI, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Beats the heck out of dial up. Daily quota instead of monthly (good)
Lag delay from satellite, weather sensitive
Basic package fine for web use and rare video usage
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

Like many, we had no choice since only dial-up is available in this area. Satellite installer was decent... we have lots of trees and had to put dish on roof. We have the 'basic' package with a daily download limit of 250MB and an HN9200 dish/modem.

Most of the time it works as it should and we get full bandwidth that we pay for. Uploading is unlimited and only downloading is metered. Usage tools are provided and work well to keep you informed about going over daily download limit.

Weather and rain can make the service dicey at times, but still far better than dial-up.

Had to use tech support the other day... about a 5 minute wait to talk to someone and it appears to be supported out of India. Support rep was helpful and though my issue turned out to be hughesnet satellite config issues, it was resolved in less than 24 hours.

Large downloads and computer updates can be accomplished between the hours of 2:00am and 7:00am Eastern time, and I configured our computers to do all their updates during that time frame so as not to go over the daily download limit. This is useful and hughes provides a free download manager to help with managing large downloads that are sometimes required.

The service is not perfect, but it is decent and far, far better than dial-up. We considered Wild Blue, but the monthly download quota from WB is a deal-breaker and basically makes the faster speed useless except for going over your quota faster.

member for 11.6 years, 47 visits, last login: 9.2 years ago
lodged 11.6 years ago


Hopeless
@direcpc.com

Hopeless

Anon

Nightmare after nightmare with Hughesnet

This company has too many people on their system. We've been a customer of theirs for almost a year now. Every week, my wife and I fight over dropping the service in favor of going with Excede, but we don't because hughesnet will instantly take $400 out of our account if we do break the contract. On top of that we will have to mail the equipment back with insurance which according to a toss up between the USPS and UPS is over $80. My wife is also so jaded from this affair that she thinks Excede will pull the same crap as Hughesnet.
For the past three months we have been getting an average of 200 to 250 kilobits/sec download speed which is 1/4 what we are paying $80 per month for. Video is not an option. Even Facebook games are not an option. When they throttled our service (all lies on their part about this), at least we had the open window between 1 and 6am which was great when we wanted to download anything but for the past month we haven't even had that great time frame speed. It's always 200 to 250 Kb/sec. Somehow we ran over our 250 mg limit READING the news a few nights ago. My bandwidth monitor reduced to 170Kb/sec. That's just over three times the speed of dial up on a good day. I told my wife there wasn't any point in spending money to use a token to refresh our allotment. It was literally unnoticeable.
This is what's going to happen when you get their service. Your going to get your 1Mb/sec and then three maybe five months down the line, you will experience outages that last all day and then finally you too will get 200 K and you will be stuck like us with this TOTAL F*CKING SH*T UNTIL YOUR CONTRACT IS OVER AND YOU CAN SWITCH! And yes... we've had 2 different "technicians" come to our house. This company is dirty and they will hold that termination charge over your head like a slave master's whip. Don't get suckered in with this bait and switch crap. Save your sanity. Stay away from Hughesnet.

Fourcpus4me
join:2012-08-11
Gladwin, MI

Fourcpus4me

Member

Re: Nightmare after nightmare with Hughesnet

In our case, we only had 26kbps on dial-up before Hughes so we were desperate.

We've had it about 3 months and most of the time receive 1Mb downstream and nearly 200Kb upstream. Rolling quota is up to 500MB if you don't use the connection much the previous day.

I think they recently did something to the satellite in the last week because our signal strength used to be only 60-65 and now it is above 80db even in the rain or heavy clouds.

I've heard rumor more upgrades are due in the fall (major upgrades) but I don't know if any of that will affect us with basic packages.

We have no contract and paid no equipment or installation fees, due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama and other politicians scamming the taxpayers) and had to sign a waiver indicating there is no other way to get internet in this area, which there isn't.

els
@mycingular.net

els

Anon

Re: Nightmare after nightmare with Hughesnet

I'm in the same situation as you where I have no other way of getting internet access. How were you able to get everything waived? Did you just tell them that this was the situation and sign some sort of paperwork? I'd love to get in under the same circumstances since my new community keeps claiming that "soon" we will have other providers... but who knows when that will be.

scammednomor
@aol.com

scammednomor to Hopeless

Anon

to Hopeless
this sounds like my experience with direct tv - lie after lie and they helped themselves to my checking acct. thru my debit card - when i tried to cancel and advised them they had broken contract not me - they said i would have to pay $250 cancellation fee - i cancelled my debit card - got nasty letters for a few months - then i sent them nasty letter calling their service a big scam - they reduced my fee to about $50 - i sent letter advising them they had been paid for service and would not pay scam money - a few weeks later got letter wanting me back as valued customer - aint gonna happen
Expand your moderator at work

kelljjoes
@cox.net

kelljjoes

Anon

SCAM!!!

Do not use hughesnet. They will scam you out of $324.75 and refuse to refund it. RIDICULOUS. And good luck finding someone in billing that you can understand.

yikes
@verizon.net

yikes

Anon

Re: SCAM!!!

Thanks for these reviews, I'm running. I called them this afternoon to see if they had faster speed than Verizon in my area which is too slow for Live Streaming of Netflix on a new flat screen - I got this high pressure sales pitch & they wanted to lock me in before I hung up.
I felt very uneasy at that point and told him I had to go.
That's when I thought to look up reviews for this company.
Thank you for saving me from this place!!!

DBF
@myvzw.com

DBF

Anon

HUGHESNET

I didn't realize that I had other options when I moved to our new place. There was already a Hughesnet antenna attached to the house so I just assumed that it was my only option. We got the service and it was like going back into the dark ages. Couldn't use utube or skype. It was like being back on dial up, only slower!!. I was angry every time I used the internet. I got Verizon 4g wireless internet service and canceled the Hughesnet with a $370 termination fee. Best money I ever spent!!!

compuguybna
join:2009-06-17
Nashville, TN

compuguybna

Member

Re: HUGHESNET

Yeah, Hughesnet loves when they can make $370 off someone with an EFT fee knowing their service sucks royally.

ReverendT
@direcway.com

ReverendT

Anon

Not as advertised, plus termination fee.

I will give HughesNet this: their service is faster than dial-up...most of the time. And their customer service people are very polite and urge me to "have a wonderful day."

Beyond that, it really is not deserving of the title "broadband". The service has rarely approached the advertised "up to" speeds, has often slowed to a crawl even under excellent reception conditions. Have trouble uploading attachments to gmail because of intermittent or slow service resulting in time-outs. Even 240p video is an iffy download with lots of buffers, and downloading of YouTube videos into buffer will often just stop in the middle of watching.

In summary, the service is overpriced for the value, performance inconsistent at best, and as many others have observed you will pay termination fee (even after 18 of 24 months, $145) when something better comes along. Switching to WB-Exede now that it is available until real broadband comes out this way.

Fourcpus4me
join:2012-08-11
Gladwin, MI

Fourcpus4me

Member

Re: Not as advertised, plus termination fee.

WB-exede has been available for quite some time. Hughesnet is launching their WB-exede comparable service speeds in the fall.