how-to block ads
|
next review in page
Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain hughes.net)
lodged 1.2 years ago
 Belzoni,Humphreys,MS
 Contract price not specified.
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
Whats wrong that the DNS Server is not working properly?
Comments:
 | | OPEN DNS Can't you use Open DNS | |
|
| |
 | next review in page (previous review)
Review by brian666 
member for 1.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
lodged 1.2 years ago
- Baileyville,Washington,ME
- Contract price not specified.
 "They're an alternative to dial-up when no other exists" "Everything else" "Use satellite ISPs ONLY if it's them or dial-up. ANY other type of broadband is an improvement."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
HughesNet is a satellite ISP, and as such, should only be considered if, like me, you have the misfortune to live somewhere where it's the only alternative to dial-up. I have to admit that their service has improved recently, the download cap (outside of the 0200-0700 unmetered period) went from 200 MB to 500 MB per day on my plan ($39.95/month), and they've moved the bandwidth up to 3Mb/s down (but you'll only get that towards the end of the free period). They're also claiming that they're rolling out a scheme to let you "bank" up to a day's worth of unused download capacity, but I've not seen any sign of that yet.
I think these improvements are due to competition from WildBlueYonder, the other satellite service we looked at. The main difference between the two was that Hughes caps downloads on a daily basis while WildBlue does it on a monthly basis. .If you're a Windows user, which I'm not, Hughes provides a piece of software which allegedly automates downloads in the unmetered period. As they "don't support Linux", I know nothing about it.
Their tech support STINKS, unless you can talk your way past the script monkeys (some of whom barely speak English, IMO) and get up to the higher levels of support. Once you have a USA-based tech on the line, you have a chance of getting some useful information.
My telco are promising to roll out fiber optic to all of Maine "within two years". If it happens, and I might have a fighting chance because I live within half a mile of one of Maine's major roads, then I will be dropping HughesNet so fast it will make your head spin. At least the two year wait will mean that I should have worked off the financial penalty for early termination - in my case, it was $400 for early termination, reducing by $15 for every completed month of service.
Comments:
| | a solution Wildblue is now available and its a 12m down and 3m up..I am an installer of both systems and the WB which just came online a week ago is by far simply amazing!!!!!! | |
| | | | Re: a solution that's all well and good, but there is still no "fap free" time period. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain hughes.net)
lodged 1.3 years ago
- Marydel,Caroline,MD
- Contract price not specified.
- "the answer the phone for sales"
- "Service sucks - tech support beyond horrid-slow- non english recognizable phone staff- can't speak to anyone in US-"
- "Been stuck with hughes for a long time - AVOID this company. They don't care and customer service is the worst-any industry."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
This company, it's customer service and support SUCKS!
I too am Rural and stuck. They convinced me to upgrade my modem when I
complained of how slow.....and they signed me up to a new two year
contract. End run is that the new modem is SLOWER then the old one, the
daily limit they give you is blown in like 3 you tube videos, and customer
service is BAD beyond bad. IF you can understand the tech support people,
they make you go through the same things from step 1 every time you
call...you can not get to anyone in THIS country, and they keep you on the
phone for hours and say it is working properly. Let me just tell you that
dial up I had 10 years ago with a 56K modem worked faster - more reliably
then Hughes.
Equipment sucks - customer service sucks - prices suck - download limits
are comical. Don't do it!!!!!
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
lodged 1.3 years ago
- Ionia,Ionia,MI
 Business customer- Contract price not specified.
- "Everything to do with Hughesnet is bad, I would Never recomend using them."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
Hughesnet is not even good as a last resort, I have spent countless hours on the phone with them and have never had any satisfaction, unless you are from India you will not be able to understand 75% of the people that are supposed to be helping you. I own an Internet Auction Site, and have tried them for the past month, you can count on huge upload times. A listing sent to our Web host containing 4 picture files can take up to 15 minutes, just trying to open our Paypal account takes an average of 5 minutes. I spent 1 hour 29 minutes and 31 seconds on the phone with them today because we have no connection at all, their Advanced Tech Support says we will not have internet every time it snows WTF? I live in Michigan! We Have Snow All Winter! The sales person never said anything like this! My Advice is do not get Hughesnet even as a last resort, extremely expensive and the worst internet service ever. If you remember Dialup internet from back in the 80's getting Hughesnet will take you for a trip back in the past!
Comments:
Reviews:
 ·Air Advantage
 ·HughesNet Satell..
| Secured sites Secured sites such as paypal will always load at dial up speeds because of the latency with satellite. For whatever reason https and latency do got go good together.
not sure why tech support told you you will not have internet when it snows. I too live in michigan and the only time it went out when it snowed was when it would stick to the dish and i would have to wipe it off. If your service is going out every time when it snows, it sounds like you need a repoint of your dish
I would recommend visiting the Hughes community forums for your service problems rather than trying to talk to the indian script readers.
here's the link
»community.myhughesnet.com/hughesnet | |
| | |
| | HughesNet High speed? LMAO! Its the same here in Tennessee! And it doesn't snow all winter here! The service sucks! I've spent a lot of time on the phone trying to understand their tech supports accents too! Its always some guy from the Middle East! I have outages every week or two and usually its back up on its own within a few hours but occasionally (three times in nine months) I have to call them to reset it. Two times they've sent out a technician. What's bad is when they told me they would send out a tech he said I would have to pay $29 for a service call! After I got a little redneck with him, he gave me a 10 day credit of $31. Still, I'm off the internet until they fix it! Way too expensive! Connection speed is extremely slow and tech support is all foreigners you can't understand! I wouldn't recomend their service to anyone! I can't wait til my contract is up so I can drop them and get a Verizon hot spot! Its a lot faster! | |
| | | Hughes Net is a rip-off As slow as dial-up!!!! Awful service...poor customer service...cannot understand half of what is being said. This is a rip-off and preys on people who does not have access to other services. I am praying for better days when I can drop them like a hot cake!!! | |
| | | hughesnet rip off people at this point in time I currently am a user of hughes net and if I can find another company I am definetly taking them up cause this company is a fuckingrip off I am paying 150 dollars a month for 350 mb daily supposed to have at least a 2 upload speed however my speed is less than dial up. They rip people off you can not understand a thingthey say. Plus they changed their plans without notifing me and I am getting less daiuly mb a day it sucks that in the countryt if I could get cable or dial up I would i think this company should be closed down | |
| | | | Re: hughesnet rip off people 150 dollars for 350mb? perhaps you should consider changing your plan? you can get the power 200 for $110 with 450mb plus the rollover | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by suceress
member for 5.1 years, 53 visits, last login: 186 days ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Oakdale,Allen,LA
- Contract price not specified.
- "It works sometimes; can be used when there are literally no other options"
- "Unreliable, overpriced, high latency, poor customer service, software problems, bandwidth restrictions, (much more)"
- "This is a last resort if you can't even get dialup. Dialup is more reliable and sometimes faster."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I live in a rural area in the woods with unpaved roads where cable, mail delivery, and other such conveniences are not available. Since I am so far out and my phone company refused to do maintenance on my lines, I soon found myself unable to even get dial-up to work.
I initially signed up for the base plan with Direcway in 2002. The installation did not go smoothly, but since it seems DW and HughesNet are different companies (or at least under different management) I will not go into detail. Suffice to say that my satellite was never installed properly.
I will cite some of my experiences with DW in order to compare/contrast it with HN. My speeds were initially ok-- better than the 2.6k dialup I had before the dial-up was unable to connect at all but I lost connection during rain, wind, cloudy days, etc. I was not told of the bandwidth restriction ahead of time but the FAP was tolerable-- bringing my speeds to about what they had been on dial-up so my internet was still usable. It never lasted more than 2 to 4 hours. I was allowed approximately 480Mb per day for use without being throttled.
In I believe March 2006, Hughesnet took over and there were changes-- not for the better. My monthly fee went up (without prior notice) and my bandwidth was cut down to 200Mb per day (also without prior notice). The FAP period lasted 26 hours (Hughesnet claims it is a minimum of 24 hours, but it never lasted any less than 26 hours every time) and during those times my internet was rendered completely useless. I was unable to load any webpages or use any online application whatsoever.
After a storm I noticed that my satellite was somewhat wobbly. I contacted HN to try to get them to send a technician out to fix it-- numerous times. Every time they refused.
There are far too many incidents to report on, but my speeds decreased and the service got even worse. Base tech support gave contradictory information to what advanced tech support suggested. In fact, there were times that base tech support told me to do things that advanced tech support said to never do.
Even when my modem was unplugged HN claimed I was downloading 5 to 20Mb every hour so I was constantly getting hit with the FAP. Furthermore, when I called tech support while subject to FAP they actually told me that customers under FAP were not allowed to speak to advanced tech support. That particular employee even refused to let me speak to a supervisor. I had to hang up and call back to get a different employee who was reluctant to let me speak to a supervisor, but then the supervisor gave me the same line of bull about not letting me speak to advanced tech support. (I wanted to verify that the advice given to me by the lower techs matched advice from advanced bc they were telling me to do something advanced techs said to never do).
The HN techies seemed less knowledgeable than the DW ones, and were far less helpful (although some were polite, there were a few rude ones, and most just read from a script and couldn't handle anything off-script). My service was constantly going out and I was given all sorts of excuses including "sun spots". It took me 3 hours to get one of their techs to admit that something had gone awry with one of their satellites and that it wasn't a problem on my end. Several hours later when I called back to check the progress of the repair, the HN employee denied that there had been anything wrong and insisted it was a problem on my end.
I believe it was 2007 when my transmitter died and I was told I would need a brand new satellite (at my expense) because the new transmitters wouldn't work on the old satellites. I also had to "upgrade" from the DW4000 to the HN7000S along the way. In a spectacular display of physics, my cat managed to make a glass of milk fly across the room and land under the desk and soak the DW4000-- which immediately sparked and smoked from shorted circuits-- it took me 2 hours to explain to the HN tech that I was certain my modem was broken. The installer who put in the new satellite had to put in a new pole because the original one was not only too thin/flimsy, but it was improperly installed. He pointed the dish at a different satellite than I had been on before though. My signal went from 80 strength down to 70-60. Over the years the signal strength has decreased and I now average round 45-50 on clear days.
At some point we got conned into taking the plunge and getting the "Pro Plus Plan" for $80 a month. We were told we would get better speeds and not have to worry about the FAP. They were wrong. Our speeds did not improve at all-- we consistently get around 300k down or less when we were told we shouldn't be getting less than 600k down and the modem software miscalculates usage and claims we use more than is even possible.
Initially we had to check the Hughesnet usage page to check to see how much bandwidth we had left, but it was not up-to-date and was very slow to load. Fortunately they added something to the modem which tells us somewhat up-to-date information on our usage. They also made it so we get one free uncap token per month to remove the FAP. The problem was, they made it so we had to load their webpage to use the token. I spent two hours on the phone going around in circles trying to explain to the tech that I could not uncap myself because I could not load ANY webpages-- including their page that had the utility to use the tokens. Finally it dawned on him and he used the token for me. I will say to their credit, they wised up and added the token usage to the modem itself. Unfortunately they did not fix the miscalculating problem.
One day the modem misreported that I downloaded 1500Mb in a single hour-- which even tech support admitted was absolutely impossible on my connection. All of my downloads were being magnified by 10. Tech support did actually uncap us, but the problem with uncapping at that point was that they didn't refill the bucket when they uncapped, they just lifted the cap, so if we loaded anything at all it would reinstate the FAP-- but they did fix that after a few months.
In the case with the 1500Mb incident, I was escalated to advanced tech support. I was hopeful that I would get a resolution. Unfortunately I got a call back from a very snooty and rude woman who told me in a condescending tone that I must have a virus on one or more of my computers that caused me to "upload" that much data. I explained to her that I had virus scanners on all of the computers, had disabled automatic updates, and it was a "download" not an "upload". She said there was obviously something wrong on my end and hung up.
In the past few months I have had multiple issues with the bandwidth miscalculation, the connection goes out for no apparent reason when it is sunny with no wind, and I have been having all sorts of errors about uplink queuing, dns entry errors, web acceleration outages, dns entry outages, and lately something wrong with the transmitter. Every time I call tech support I get the same script and no actual support.
When a power outage caused my modem to somehow unregister the tech support tried to walk me through a fix but the lower level told me to do the wrong things but then advanced couldn't figure it out. I had to drive 20 miles to go to McDonalds to use wifi to look on dslreports for a solution. (The McDonalds option was not viable until I got a laptop in October-- and I can't do it regularly because the seats are too uncomfortable, it costs too much for gas and food, my road cannot always be driven on after heavy rains bc it turns to mud, and McDonalds doesn't stay open all night). Fortunately there was one and I was able to fix the problem myself. It turns out their registration page had expired certificates and my browsers were refusing to load it. I had to find a work-around.
I have been told that people who have the HN9000 modems have better experiences than what I am having with the HN7000S, but every time I checked with Hughesnet I was told that I am not eligible for the upgrade. I have also been informed that since they are phasing out the 7000 I am only going to see my service decline.
I don't know if the web acceleration, dns acceleration, uplink queuing, etc issues have to do with the reduced space on the rented satellites or if it is just poor programming. I have to restart my modem sometimes 50 to 100 times a day. Some days my internet stops working every 2 minutes. When I have the TCP acceleration, DNS, etc errors my internet stops working completely. Sometimes the modem stops sending signal out through the ethernet cord completely and I have to unplug it for a few minutes and plug it back in to get it working again. It is highly frustrating and the techs never know what to do.
I saw a message in the diagnostic saying "if the problem persists, contact technical support", so I made the mistake of doing just that. The tech support guy was rather rude and said "Why did you even call?" when I explained to him why. He also informed me that Hughesnet's Pro Plus plan was not for downloading files. What else would I need it for if not to have heavier usage than the base plan? With all of the new java/flash applications, video ads, etc, just loading webpages can suck a lot of bandwidth away nowadays. They did increase my bucket by 50Mb but its too little too late. Plus I still get miscalculation errors where my bandwidth plummets for no apparent reason.
I am hopeful that with the advances in technology I will be able to get 3G coverage for internet instead. I am sick of Hughesnet and can hardly wait to get a new ISP.
Wish me luck.
Edit: As an addendum, I play online games and let's just say I had more luck playing EverQuest on 40kbs dial-up in Guam. It had less latency and was far more reliable than satellite. (and yes, I do know that satellite inherently has latency). If Dial-up was an option for me, I would go back to it, because at least it would work when it rains.
ps. Sorry for this being so disorganized and my apologies for any typos/misspellings.
pps. After I began posting on the dslreports forums about my problems with Hughesnet, my speed decreased even more and my bandwidth started miscalculating. After I posted this review my bucket mysteriously drained when no one in my family was even using the internet and I was subject to FAP at 0 so I could not load any webpages. According to the usage page I allegedly loaded over 700Mb during the regular hours in a rolling 24 hour period. During some of the hours when it claimed I was loading 20+Mb nobody in my household was even home and the wireless was turned off. Call me paranoid, but I can't help but suspect that Hughesnet is deliberately doing this to get back at me for giving a bad review. I accept that it is possible its just another software issue that I've had in the past where it miscalculates, but its rather convenient that it happened right after a negative review.
Update Dec. 11, 2011: I recently got Millenicom and have been using it for the past couple of days. I am only getting about 2 bars of signal but I don't yet have an antenna/amplifier. With that signal and no amp I am still getting better speeds and lower latency than I ever experienced my entire time with Hughesnet. I do get lag spikes in World of Warcraft and sometimes lose connection, but thus far it is no worse than Hughesnet.
Comments:
Reviews:
·Air Advantage
·HughesNet Satell..
| nice review of all the negative reviews on this site about hughesnet, yours was actually well thought out and thoroughly explained instead of just useless ranting that is of no help to anyone
It sounds like you just had the unfortunate luck of having a terrible installer and being stuck on a 7000 which is being put on the back burner by hughes nowadays with no way to upgrade to the 9000 series | |
| | Reviews:
·HughesNet Satell..
| Re: nice review Thanks. I tried to keep it clean and avoid ranting as much as I did on my personal blog post. I find it is more helpful to give specific examples rather than give generalized statements which are not backed up by evidence. I hope my spelling and grammar were not as atrocious as I feel it was. (I know I frequently end my sentences in prepositional phrases).
I left out the experience of calling to try to cancel a site visit because I resolved a problem myself and how the tech on the phone spent 45 minutes trying to figure out what I was saying and then put me on hold to speak with her supervisor, and then finally told me it would be taken care of. But she apparently didn't do something write because the company called to confirm the appointment the next day.
Before that incident, when my modem unregistered itself, I was talking to the lower echelon of tech support and the guy actually snapped at me because what showed up on my screen didn't match what he expected. He kept telling me to "click the little man" on the screen. I kept telling him over and over that there was no little man because the options available to a registered modem were not there. I kept asking for the direct url that I knew for sure had "advanced" in it and it took me 30 minutes to convince him to tell me. Then when I had a question about an option he said "there are no options" and I said "there is a drop-down menu; which option do I choose?" He actually raised his voice and snapped "I know what I'm doing! Just do what I tell you!" and he got impatient because when I did what he said to do it wasn't working and it took a very long time.
When I worked in a computer care center, I never snapped at anyone. I had people yell at me and swear at me about things over which I had no control, but I remained polite.
I will say that there have been some very friendly and nice techs although most of the time they are not able to resolve my issue. I even got some of them to tell me their real names and how the weather was in New Dehli.
I suspect Hughesnet didn't like my review because my bandwidth bucket mysteriously emptied at a rapid pace when nobody in my household was even using the internet.
I know it sounds paranoid, but it seems that it is quite a coincidence that it happened right after I posted a negative review. (My speeds basically dropped in half after I posted a message on the forums stating my intent to find a new ISP. This happened within hours of my posting so it just seems suspicious to me).
Although from the usage page it looks as if the modem is misreporting again. It claimed we were loading 20+Mb in an hour when nobody was even home.
All of the laptops have their wireless turned off when not in use and there are two computers hooked up via ethernet cables that have all automatic updates disabled and all webpages are closed when not in use. We frequently run virus scanners so there are no viruses.
If they try to say anything about someone stealing our wireless, the signal barely reaches all of the rooms in the house and we have a 32 acre farm. The nearest home where someone could tap in is half a mile away and our router is not very powerful. I know the nearest neighbors have Hughesnet as well-- but they have the base plan.
I need to learn how to make my posts shorter and not ramble so much. LOL. | |
| | | | | Re: nice review Hughesnet is a waste of equipment.. only allowing less than 200mb every 24 hr's i wouldent waste my anything with this provider... take it from someone who's read the disclaimer and online website | |
|
| | | Very detailed, well laid out review. I hope you have better luck down the road. | |
| | | Reviews:
·HughesNet Satell..
| Re: nice review This was meant to be a reply to higaintest.
Reading the disclaimer and seeing the website really can't prepare you for the actual experience.
I've been told that if you are not someone who depends on the internet for much and you only use it to sporadically check your e-mail and use mostly text-based pages (and you don't mind waiting a long time for things to load) then it works. But quite frankly, you can use dial-up for that at a much lower price. Dial-up at least won't go out when it rains.
If you have multiple members in the household, like to look at pictures, like to use Facebook (or have family members that like to use facebook), want to play online games, or want to download Youtube videos from time to time, then Hughesnet base plan is not for you. Even if you go with a higher plan, you still can't expect good performance for gaming. | |
| | | | Reviews:
·Verizon Wireless..
 ·wavebroadband
·HughesNet Satell..
 ·AT&T DSL Service
·Comcast
2 edits |  Re: nice review
The HughesNet FAP makes contemporary interest use almost impossible, unless you barely do anything data-"heavy" online - like substantial work, or school files - or, much Netflix, Pandora, etc.
As an aside, in 1990s dial-up was more usable than it is now, because web sites were built for dial-up speeds and 1990s web development. It's not 100% the case that people have become less patient, since the internet has many more uses (more data) now than dial-up's prime-days. This is all really obvious, but occasionally someone does complain that dial-up should be enough for anyone. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
 Review by deadheadrjp
member for 8.3 years, 217 visits, last login: 297 days ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Auburn,Placer,CA
- Contract price not specified.
- "hmmmmm..."
- "FAP; slow; many weather outages"
- "Terrible; only get if only option and maybe not even then"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I first had HughesNet when it was DirecPC (with upload via dial-up). I had no other options at the time. I still had no other options by the time were were two-way and named DirecWay. When they became HughesNet I still had no other options at my mountain place. Their FAP makes media (music, movies, etc.) virtually impossible. Speeds are OK before FAP gets enacted and FAP threshold is extremely low for the modern internet. Only get this is if it's your only option *and* if you don't do media and mainly just do 1990s activities like email and reading news web sites (but, forget the news web site videos, as you'll get FAP'd). The only positive use that I know of are things like isolated remote monitoring stations (for things like remote\rural land management huts in the middle of the woods) and bandwidth needs are low enough to not hit FAP. Use some sort of equipment that will automatically clear snow from dish would be required (if no humans are usually there) - if in an area that snows. If in an area that rains a lot, or other frequent weather events, expect unreliability. HughesNet is a nightmare.
---
UPDATE: 12/10/2011 -
Most of my friends have now been able to move to Verizon 3g\4gLTE service for home, with WiFi-creating devices. They have "grandfathered" Verizon Unlimited Plans, as I do - and that option is by far many, many times better than HughesNet. Of course this advice doesn't help new Verizon customers, that currently can no longer get unlimited data plans.
To clarify why HughesNet is worthless to me, besides email and basic web browsing, is because the vast majority of my personal and professional internet (data) needs far exceed HughesNet FAP - on a daily basis.
If someone else uses high data only occasionally or never, HughesNet would be fine, if it was last option on earth. I'll admit that much. I right now have WaveBroadband at home & Verizon 4gLTE for mobile.
---
---
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by dino195
member for 9.7 years, 363 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Sand Springs,Tulsa,OK
- Contract price not specified.
- "No connectivivty during peak hours with turbo page enabled"
- "Buyer beware"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
This service was fine for my needs until they unilaterally changed the "Fair Access Policy" (FAP). They decided to go with 24 hour bandwidth caps and their logs are often wrong, charging you with bandwidth usage that is erroneous. Sometimes they charge me for bandwidth usage when my computer is not even turned on. Once you have been FAPPED (trust me you will become very acquainted with this term if you decide to go with this service), you have no connectivity for 24 hours. They say that they throttle you back to dialup speeds but I have found this to be untrue as I have ZERO connectivity while under FAP. Look in the Hughes.net forum on this site and you can see what I am talking about. People are writing the BBB about the recent Fair Access Policy changes and contacting the AG's office to try to get something done. I signed a contract with them for a certain amount of bandwidth and certain restrictions that were acceptable to me and they changed it overnight. While most companies are trying to improve their infrastructure to better accommodate their customers and the growing needs for higher bandwidth that is ever increasing on the web, Hughes is spending millions on advertising when they cannot adequately service their existing customer base and nothing on improving their infrastructure. They are taking giant steps backwards by throttling their customer's bandwidth instead of trying to really resolve their problem by improving their infrastructure. Do yourself a favor and avoid this ISP like the plague.
Also expect hidden fees in the installation that they don't tell you about upfront.
EDIT: Update
Still shoddy service but one of the few broadband options in my area. FAP has become a tad bit more reasonable with unlimited downloading during the FAP free, unrestricted download period between 1 and 5 AM EST. Still not good but at least a large Windows update will not put you over your limit as long as you have your computers set to update between 1-5 AM
In the past month the connection has been intermittently unusable between 8 AM and 1 AM with short periods where you can actually browse. I noticed that I could always browse secure sites, put two and two together and figured out it was the Web Acceleration that was causing the problem. Disabled the turbo page and am now able to browse again. Still ridicules service...
Comments:
| | Fap free time The fap free time is from 2am to 7am est | |
| | | | Re: Fap free time Right you are. I stand corrected. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by Tango
member for 1.4 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
lodged 1.4 years ago
- Harwich,Barnstable,MA
- Contract price not specified.
- "I live in the woods so it was the only option."
- "Service continues to deteriorate over the last year"
- "New options have arrived, Verizon hot spot for one."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I started out with Direcway Internet service about 6 years ago, then taken over by Hughesnet few years ago. Upgraded to the HN7000S modem couple of years ago. Worked just OK, weather was always a problem. But for the past year it's alway down with some issue. Long list of problems. Recently they emailed me saying major upgrades have been done to improve speed and service. I believe this is just BS to calm down the complaints. I have not seen any improvement at all. I use a Verizon hot spot 5 Gig a month as backup now. Faster by a mile. Probably increase to 10 Gig on the hot spot and dump the dish. In the process of notifying everyone of my email change.
Comments:
Reviews:
·Air Advantage
·HughesNet Satell..
| hn9000 systems the HN9000 systems are night and day compared to the 7000 series in terms of performance and reliability since hughes actually owns the spaceway 3 satellite that services the 9000's. Hughes has slowly been cramming more 7000 users on fewer transponders as their leases expires which is why the performance of 7000 systems have been deteriorating.
i have the HN9000 system and I have been receiving consistently double my stated plan speed (i'm on the 1mb plan) since they implemented the network improvements over the summer. They have also begun to implement a rollover data allowance to where you can rollover any unused data allowance up to double your stated plan allowance (i.e. the 250mb allowance on the basic plan can be rolled up to 500mb) | |
| | | Flunking grade Just 3 words: DON'T DO IT . Had Hughesnet for 30 days and couldn't wait to get rid of it. Unacceptable speeds...overpriced...poor customer service....don't stand behind what they tell you...I could go on and on. When I called to cancel within my 30 day "trial" period, it was an annoying and difficult process. Hahahah about no $$ out of pocket. I have to mail back the equipment on my own dime PLUS they want me to climb a 10 foot pole and disconnect the transmittor myself. Nice, huh? | |
| |
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by jduck
member for 2.6 years, 93 visits, last login: 357 days ago
updated 1.5 years ago
- USA
- Contract price not specified.
- "Available where there's no other option"
- "expensive, limited, 24-month contract"
- "a far sight better than dialup anyday!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
|
Even though I live within 10 miles of the nearest city, I have no options other than satellite -- 2 miles away from cable and about a half mile away from DSL. Even a cell phone signal is marginal at my house due to the terrain.
Knowing of the expense, limitations, and other issues, I put off subscribing until last month. But the time came when dialup just would not do anymore.
I looked into Wildblue, HughesNet, and Skyway USA. I chose HughesNet mainly for 2 reasons: First, their FAP limitation in the HN9000 systems (with the fixed 24-hour reload time rather than a complicated rolling window, availability of restore tokens, and 2-7AM free time) sounded by far to be the easiest to deal with. Second, I had a competent local dealer to do the install; the nearest Wildblue dealer is about 25 miles away. The rebates didn't hurt either, though the $30/month is only for 3 months. I chose the lease option with free (after rebate) installation.
I know that on the older systems, and even on the HN9000 in some areas, contention in the evening periods can cause slowdowns, but I have not seen any significant slowdowns at any time of day (I'm on the lowest plan). The major speed test sites usually report my speed spot-on at the 1 Mbps (or slightly above) download, although uploads tend to hover around 100kbps rather than 128.
Ordering through my local dealer was simple - he took down my information, we set up the day he'd be out, and the next day I had a confirmation email from HughesNet. The installation process of course can vary a lot because you have to deal with placing a dish, and you will have to pay extra for things like pole mounting (mine cost only $75). Hughes apparently has some pretty stringent requirements for the processes installers must follow, including checkoffs from the customer and recording the system status online, but unfortunately the average customer is not going to know about these standards, so it pays to have a trustworthy installer. The installation DOES MATTER - this is sensitive equipment, and a bad ground or kinked cable can give you intermittent issues that will drive you nuts. To be honest, my installer made a mistake (dropped a gasket, and neither of us noticed) that let water in the feedhorn, causing me to lose my connection during and after the first rain we had after he installed it. He came out and fixed it within 15 minutes of me calling, at no charge. So there are good ones out there.
There are plenty of things satellite internet is not good for, but in my case, it works fine. If you just need to be able to browse the web without stupid bandwidth-heavy sites taking forever to load, view the occasional youtube video, download a reasonable amount of songs per day from iTunes, and keep up-to-date on your windows and other software updates, it is actually pretty good (keep an eye on your usage meter and be aware). If you want to do peer-to-peer file sharing or heavy downloading, allow internet access to any kind of services on your local network, watch streaming netflix movies, do heavy vpn'ing or interactive online gaming, or want it to "just work" without you having to watch your usage, you won't be so happy.
Not to be a satellite cheerleader -- I will leave the second my contract is up if I have an alternative by then -- but I have had to take a lot of the horror stories (about all the satellite systems) with a grain of salt. Many can be explained by not understanding the limits of the system (latency, running into FAP limits either by not knowing how much data an hour of streaming video is, or by updates being downloaded without your knowledge, or whatever), or more commonly I think, bad installation (bad grounding, bad cable runs, dish coming out of position, water in connections). I mean really, if you lose your connection "every time it rains", you either are prone to expansive hyperbole or have a problem that can be fixed, because that is not normal behavior of any kind of satellite system.
1-year update:
After starting off pretty well as far as meeting plan speeds, I did go through a rocky couple of months, though not as bad as some people have complained about. Then in July, speeds shot up to more than double my stated plan speed (a little less than double during prime-time) and Hughesnet has now announced this is due to technical improvements. They have also started being a little more customer-friendly in the last month or so. Facing competition maybe, but it's a welcome change.
The limitations of satellite are still there but it's hard to complain about your speed doubling at no extra cost.
Comments:
| | Good luck! I am glad that you are (so far) having a good experience with Hughes. I sincerely hope that you never have to call the support line as most (at least most in my experience) of them speak very poor english. For myself this has been a very bad roller coaster ride. Sometimes the service was OK, but most of the time it was literally as slow as dialup. Usually this was in the afternoon when I got home from work, you know, the normal time to get on the computer. And when I complained to Hughes I was told that I was getting exactly what I was paying (approx. $100/month) for. Good luck to you with them. Happily I am free as of today. My new WISP system is going to be installed today and (hopefully) I will never have to deal with satellite internet again. | |
|
1 edit | Terrible customer support My recommendation: If you have to use Hughesnet, don't EVER call their customer support. See if you can find a local technician. They'll know what the problem is when you say "My dish is pointing at the ground" and may actually get an appointment to you on the same day! What a waste of my time and patience. And I still don't have an appointment.
Read my full story here: »www.rateitall.com/rc-8248492.asp···1t8xfAb8 | |
| | | Good Bye HughesNet! I had HughesNet for 3 years. At first the service was fairly good (I had been on dial up). As time went on, the service got worse. Bad weather always made it unusable. Also, time rationing became worse. It got slower and slower due to the fact that they had more customers and wouldn't invest in putting an adequate satellite up. I stayed frustrated all the time. Customer service was never any good. I couldn't understand the people I was talking to and they couldn't understand me. We went round and round and got nowhere. They charge a huge fee if somebody comes to your home. When it was installed the person they sent to install the system acted as if he didn't know what he was doing. HughesNet is extremely expensive and absolutely not worth what it costs. Thank goodness, I now have Windstream which is wonderful. My blood pressure has gone down considerably since ridding myself of the horrible and worthless HughesNet Satellite Service. Stay away if you can! I came to the conclusion that even dial-up is better! | |
| Reviews:
·HughesNet Satell..
| customer service Yes, I have had some bad luck with customer service so far but fortunately it is nothing real important and I haven't pursued it, so I didn't mention it. I have no option to create email accounts in my customer care page. Wanting to avoid getting on the phone with support, and knowing this is not something I need interactive help with (just fix my account guys!) I put in an online request. This was closed the next day saying a callback was assigned and I should expect a call. Well, had I known they were going to call me back I would have given them the phone number I could actually answer during the day, as opposed to my home phone number on my account. I had a partial message on my answering machine and no further attempts to reach me as far as I know.
So next step, I was stuck at work one night and tried an online chat. The support person logged into my account and verified what I said was happening but was unable to fix the problem. That would have to be escalated, I was told, and the only way to do that would be call them and reference the ticket of the chat itself. Sheesh. It's not important enough to me to call them and run that gauntlet - I don't really NEED an email address at this time (but I know, sometimes there are services you register for that won't take a free email address like gmail/yahoo).
I do not have much confidence that I won't be utterly frustrated the first time I have a real problem and need real support. But this is no different than when my ISDN line went out, I couldn't find anyone at the phone company who could help me, and I eventually had to talk to one of the network guys at work who dealt with ISDN lines for the company and he gave me a phone number that eventually worked to get it fixed. | |
| | | hope...? I am in the same situation as you, except cable is 762 feet from my house by that want $8,000 to run the line to my house. I have had hughes.net for almost 2 years and I’m just fed up! (unfortunately there is no better option at this point) From about 6pm to around 9:30 pm every weekday my internet is as slow if not worse than when I had dialup. With download speeds of 0.07 mb/s, slow enough google.com won’t even load. During this ‘high usage time’ the bandwidth is split between all hughes.net costumers. Now I know this is a common practice with all broadband companies, but I doubt others render your internet next to useless. At least that’s my opinion. I hope you have better luck with your experience with hughes.net but even more hopefully that sometime soon the US will not have to rely on such a horrible product. (again my opinion after 2 years) | |
| | |  hughes net support sucks - it is a rip off !!
Never use hughes net !! | |
| | | | use these email addresses for HUGHES issues! bbbdc@hughes.net
executivecustomercare@hughes.net
william.smouse@hns.com
Those will get the ball rolling.... | |
|
| |
| next page (previous review)
Review by Red_Wings
member for 2 years, 146 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
lodged 1.6 years ago
- Grass Lake,Jackson,MI
- Contract price not specified.
- "Availability for places who dont get anything better."
- "Price for product, slow, daily cap, pretty much everything else."
- "If it wasnt for my in-laws wanting it, I would have gone back to dial-up."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
We bought our house and quickly figured out our only options are dial-up or HughesNet. We started off with dial-up and then switched to HughesNet. We quickly became very frustrated with them as we used up our daily usage almost daily without watching movies and such that eat up our daily download.
Our daily download limit is 550mb at a price of $130 per month.
Our system was the HN9000.
The order and install process was just fine, no problems.
Comments:
| | Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
·Dish Network
·HughesNet Satell..
| Re: FAP I already canceled my service with Hughes and went with Frontier. Faster, cheaper, no cap.
They tried their darnedest to keep us. But they should have done this long ago before I got sick and tired of paying extremely high prices for slow internet with a cap. My cap was at 625 per day when I canceled and my bill was $136. That is extremely unacceptable. I am now bundled with my phone and Directv and I'm now paying $20 a month for internet and modem rental.
I'm sure there is no justification for the high prices other than greed and knowing that customers have no other option other than dial up. | |
| | | | | | | | | | Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
·Dish Network
·HughesNet Satell..
| Re: FAP Where do you find your info on these numbers? I tried to Google it and could not find it.
I'm sure greed has nothing to do with knowing their customers have no other viable option as we did. It seemed really funny that they were willing to cut our bill nearly in half to keep us as a customer even after telling them about the service we were going to. Now why didn't they offer that before if the high costs were justifiable?
Not that it really matters now. It also doesn't change the fact they are really expensive, speeds are slow, service is sub par, and the FAP is a joke. I dont care about the reasons for the FAP either. I dont watch movies on-line and very rarely download large files nor do I do any gaming on-line but I still find ways to exceed the daily allowance quite a lot even after the tech told me that the 200mb download plan I was on would not be exceeded even if I sat on YouTube all day. I exceeded the limit the very first day just browsing the internet with no videos or downloads. Just browsing. We upped our plan to the next level and that largely took care of the problem until my in-laws moving in. We had to move to the biggest plan available. 500mb at a whopping $136 a month!!!!!! They also stated that you could stream a movie. How? Its too slow. The few times I watch a YouTube video, it kept pausing to buffer. Not to mention it would exceed my FAP.
I now have Frontier DSL and I'm enjoying 3 to 7mbps (and yes it is 3 to 7mbps as stated not the sub 1mbps that I was getting with Hughes). I am paying about $14 a month for internet with the Triple Play.
There is only ONE positive to Hughes. Its availability to a market where nothing else is available. I just feel for the people being taken advantage of by satellite internet. With company's like Frontier reaching out to markets untouched by others, satellite internet will either be more expensive for the current customers to cover the "high costs" of operation or just fold up. Either way, it doesn't matter to me anymore. Especially after making the HughesNet dish into a strainer with my Ar-15.
Bottom line, if there is a DSL or cable option out there, I dont understand why anyone would be dumb enough to still go with satellite internet. Just my 2 cents and my personal review of a product I could not stand for the money. | |
|
| |
|
|
·
·