dslreports logo

Review by Rayopt See Profile

  • Location: Calhan, El Paso, CO, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
NO GOOD at 1 MBps
Frequent outages during bad weather. Videos buffer or stop
It's fraud
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:

How did the recovery act get its name ? : Because it's slow. You're SO tired after being on line for SO LONG that you have to lay down and "recover"

member for 9.4 years, 2 visits, last login: 8.1 years ago
updated 8.1 years ago

wh7qq
join:2012-06-12

1 recommendation

wh7qq

Member

Way Over the Top

The poster has probably had a bad experience due to a faulty install or hardware problem but to label Exede with the term "fraud" is hyperbolic "and just plain wrong. I have had nearly 4 years of excellent experience with them and my speeds are much, much higher than he claims. Their organization seems to work hard at customer satisfaction and I doubt that the OP has pursued that, although the Recovery Act provider may have been in the way. If you are going to throw around accusations of fraud, put the blame where it belongs.
RH WS
join:2015-01-08

RH WS

Member

Info on the Recovery Act Plans

@wh7qq, assuming the original poster has the Basic Recovery Plan, the max download speed is throttled at 1Mbps with upload at 200 kbps. Both are bits per second, not Bytes ... so, yes, rather slow. The speeds are set and maintained by Wildblue/Exede/Viasat just as our data caps are set and maintained.

Info on the Recovery Act plans: »www.wildblue.com/options ··· very-act






Review by CCP See Profile

  • Location: Miami, Miami-Dade, FL, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
VERY BAD

I signed up with VIA SAT because I had been promised an internet speed of 11 g for a price of $60 a month. The day VIA SAT INSTALLED the satellite I had the 11 g - 2 days later it went down to .19. I called and complained and was then told I had to pay more money in order to get the speed I needed (11 g). How can somebody be lied to is this manner? They wanted not $2 or $5 more, they wanted another $60??? This was a scam. I immediately called comcast and was not able to get an appointment for weeks for installation. So I finally had comcast install and then I cancelled my via sat that continued to give me the lowest speed ever. As a filmmaker I was unable to do any sending of films or download films (it was hours of time) VIa SAT had the balls to then charge me 23 months for cancelling when I never received the speed that I was under contract for. I wish I had trusted the bad posts I had read about this company before. They are liars and money grabbers. DO NOT SIGN up for VIA SAT and get fooled like I was..

member for 8.5 years, driveby review (so far)
lodged 8.5 years ago

tyrant_
Wannabe Billionaire
join:2013-07-07

2 recommendations

tyrant_

Member

Uhh?.. What?

Who signs up for sattelite in a city any ways? It's a last resort for when no one has service!
Also, what do you mean 11G as in 11gb of data or 11mbps?

jtss1985
@wildblue.net

1 recommendation

jtss1985

Anon

wild blue BAAAAD VERY BAD

I too got ripped off. I have Directtv & saw their tv ad for satellite tv...got hold of them to add the internet to our packge...the direct guy said my internet would be from viasat..i was never offered a package option nor was i told i would be on a metered connection!..I tried to cancel the account 3 days after i got it...NOT...they, wild blue, said a contract is a contract....a 2 year contract at that..I was soooo mad i even got hold of a lawyer to start a class action suit against them...but i guess there are many actions against directtv/at&t..they didn't want to even try another action..I contacted another lawyer & he didn't even get back to me. my next step will be to go to the better business bureau.... rockport tx.

Review by wh7qq See Profile

  • Location: Maunaloa, Maui, HI, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
good speed, reliability at this location
Some parts of US don't seem to get good service
Find other users in your area
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:

I came to Exede via a Dish dealer and had been a Starband customer previously. Exede is, to date, the best ISP I have had at this location in the 14 years I have been here. My speeds are routinely around 18+ Mbps down and dependability has been very good, with minimal rain fade. I have a 12Mbps/10G/month package ($59.95 + tax/month) and I never go over my b/w limit but I don't try to download movies, etc. My usage is primarily browsing and emails with occasional downloads of large files and monthly software upgrades of 3 linux boxes. I am located in the middle of the Hawaiian Beam which may have something to do with my good experience. Tech support is spotty...like with everything else these days. Late night calls are likely to be answered by offshore folks who are English challenged and rigidly tied to "the script".

Several items of advise: Go direct to Exede if you can, avoiding Dish and DirectTV package deals because their marketing can be shady and they will promise anything to make a sale. Make your dealer/installer give you some references to other local users and check them. Their experience, good or bad, will be representative of yours. Once you're into a contract, you are stuck with it for 2 years. Don't switch if you have good service from a cable or DSL provider as satellite is always a last resort for under-served locations. Don't expect to do movie downloads or heavily use cloud services. The inherent satellite latency will make some services problematic (VOIP, etc.) but not necessarily impossible.

With a good installation and reasonable expectations, your experience should be pretty good.

4/27/15 Update: Still getting good service although not quite as fast as before but well over the advertised rate. I switched from Dish to Exede direct in Sept. 2014, taking the 5G Evolution plan. We will see how that works out...just finished the initial promo period of 15G. Exede seems to have dropped the Evolution plans for my area so it would appear I am stuck with the 5G or take the new "Liberty" plan which sounds bad to me. I like the 3-8 AM free zone on the Evo plan. From what I have seen on the WB forum, it is really important to control all of your network connected devices so that you know what and when they are updating. Failure to do so gets a lot of folks over their data caps. Heavy gamers have problems with this service as well. Expect around 700 msec ping time as this is due to the distance to and from the satellite, even at the speed of light.

member for 11.8 years, 998 visits, last login: 4.1 years ago
updated 8.9 years ago


Exede Zac
join:2013-03-06
Davenport, IA

Exede Zac

Member

Thanks!

Thanks for the constructive feedback wh7qq. I do remember replying to you on the WildBlue World Forum as well about this post. But either way, thanks for spreading the word of Exede to everyone possible! Every customer is different and of course, they too, will have a different experience. Of course, we want it to be a positive experience, but we are always here to help aid and assist our customers in every way possible. Thanks again for the review!

Review by LFX See Profile

  • Location: Parkersburg, Wood, WV, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Charge for anything going through router!
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:

My father in law pays $70 a month and gets 10 gig cap a month. He wanted an external hard drive installed to back up his 2 pc's. I installed an external and set both pc's to back up to it. After 3 days he was out of his 10 gig cap. He talked to 3 different Wild Blue reps before 1 finally said he was charged for "other". He asked what other was and they told him, "ANYTHING" that goes through the router is considered other and was charged an extra $110.

Even though backing up his 2 computers to his hard drive used no internet he was charged for the data that went through HIS router! I have to ask, isn't that criminal? He has since unplugged his external hard drive, but I would like other peoples thoughts on this since it doesn't use Wild Blues bandwidth, how can they charge for it.

member for 9 years, 1 visits, last login: 9 years ago
updated 9 years ago

Exede Kim
join:2014-05-09
Rockford, IL

Exede Kim

Member

....

Hello LFX, I believe there has been a miscommunication regarding the charges to your father-in-laws bill. The only thing ViaSat charges for, outside of your plan's price and your monthly equipment lease fee, is extra data that is purchased. Please send me your info to exedelistens@viasat.com and I will take a look into this to clarify the information and charges. Thank you.
IanLee
join:2014-11-24
Woodland, WA

IanLee

Member

Re: ....

DON'T EVER GET WILDBLUE.

I had Wild Blue for one year and it was by far the worst service I ever endured in my life.

Most of the time I never got anywhere near the data cap but Wild Blue insisted they shut down my internet because I was within 70-75 percent of exceeding the data cap.

They are criminals, and will do anything to rob people blind while providing you with a service which is akin to what you would expect of a prisoner servicing a few years behind bars.

Review by northwoodst See Profile

  • Location: Three Lakes, Oneida, WI, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:

Upload skyrocketing for no apparent reason was on the phone several times to no avail. Have had this service for several years and had upload problem once before. Wildblue adjusted usage. Now service is terrible and will contact Attorney General regarding Wildblue

member for 9.1 years, driveby review (so far)
lodged 9.1 years ago

Exede Kim
join:2014-05-09
Rockford, IL

Exede Kim

Member

Uploading.

Hello northwoodst, I am here to help and would love the opportunity to do so. If you can, please send me your info to exedelistens@viasat.com and I'll see what I can do for you. Look forward to hearing from you.






Review by deltad3 See Profile

  • Location: Mitchell, Davison, SD, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Can someone answer this?
FAP
It's ok, since I dont have a lot of options.

So I've had Exede for a couple years. Overall I am happy with it, the speeds are great most of the time and about the only thing I'm not satisfied with is the FAP. Recently I have been made aware that due to a new tower in my very close proximity, I can now get a wireless signal.

My question is this: the plan they tell me most people go with has speeds of Up to 2Mb down/512k up.

I have friends that have it and they say they are very happy with it and are able to utilize Netflix, etc....and that there is no buffering when downloading a movie. There is also NO download limit, which is very attractive to me, I'd like to be able to use the features of my "smart tv"

The friend did a speed test on her wireless signal and it said her download speed is 1.65 Mbps, upload speed is .057 Mbps and ping is 15 ms.

My speed test with Exede is 19.15 Mbps down, and 2.80 Mbps upload, ping is 671 ms.

I don't know a lot about this, but how is it possible that they can download movies at that speed, and be happy overall with that download speed? Does it have anything to do with Ping?

I am scheduled to have it installed on Friday, and of course will not be disconnecting my Exede until I see for myself how the service is.

Anyone have any ideas on this? Thanks!

member for 21.2 years, 31 visits, last login: 9.1 years ago
lodged 9.1 years ago


Review by bobmepp See Profile

  • Location: Hastings, Barry, MI, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Speeds so far are very fast (for satellite internet).
The slow pings are there but not quite as slow as I expected
Great service for my rural area where there are no alternatives
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:

I had been suffering for two years with deteriorating mobile "broadband" hotspot service via a Sprint smart phone. Speeds were dropping, often to no better than dialup, and the straw that broke the camel's back was a newly imposed hot spot data limit of 5 gigs per month, when we had been averaging 8 gigs per month. Overages were to cost $50 per gig. Not workable, do I dumped it.

About the same time, I received a mailer for the new exede satellite being offered by Wild Blue. I guess the new name of the company is exede, although my dish has "Wild Blue" on it. I ordered the 25 gig per month service at $130 because I need some capacity overhead for my photo editing and web design businesses. I called a Wild Blue dealer in Battle Creek, Michigan, and arranged installation through them. This whole process went very smoothly, with the installer arriving on schedule and spending about a half hour with me discussing alternatives for the dish location, and doing a good job of explaining maximum wire runs allowable, etc. He really knew his stuff, and did an excellent install, with a proper ground connection and careful wire routing in the house. I absolutely cannot fault the install process in any way. It was a nice clear day, so he got full signal strength promptly, he demonstrated the connection speed with some HD video, and he was on his way.

Over the past three weeks I have been averaging 6 to 8 mbps down and 1.5 to 3 mbps up. Very little speed differences during prime time hours. Peak speeds have measured over 12 mbps. I did a download of a 150 meg video card driver in less than 5 minutes. Have done a download of a full album from Itunes and just a few minutes. Pings, as expected, have been about 850ms. These hurt script laden page loads where there are multiple calls back to the server during the load. Still, most web pages are there in 5 seconds or less. There have been two brief outages. I called the support line during one, and the person who answered spent 20 minutes with me, providing very useful information when I told him I was a new customer. The second outage was weather related, and was over in about 1/2 hour. I really can't fault anything about this service. If they don't overload the beam with too many users, this promises to be a great solution for me.

Update 9-9-2012: Things are continuing to go very well. I haven't calculated precisely, but my uptime has been excellent. Total outage time so far due to weather: about 6 hours in 60 days. No single outage has been more than 2 hours. Speeds are continuing to average 6 to 8 mbps down and 1 to 2 mbps up. I've measured a peak download speed of 13 mbps. I'm having the heaviest month of usage so far, but still have not used half of my 25 gigs, and this after downloading most of the large adobe apps. I am not foolish enough to think that streaming movies is a viable plan with satellite internet. Overall, I would give the same scores as my initial review.

Update 8-1-2014: I guess I'm lucky. I see a lot of extremely negative reviews, but I'm still getting decent speeds from about 5 to 20 megs down, with 9 being typical. The equipment has worked flawlessly and no service calls have been required. If you can accept the limits inherent to sat internet, and your experience is like mine, you will be reasonably happy with Exede. I'm happy I haven't had the negative experience of some of the most unhappy reviewers here. My use is limited to web browsing, updating & installing my large Adobe apps, downloading the occasional movie (between 12 and 5 am) via iTunes for watching the next day, uploading large images to my Adobe folder, and buying a bit of music now and then. Anyone will be very unhappy and probably angry if they expect to use it like cable internet, and that seems to be the cause of at least some of the bad reviews.

I forgot to mention that my upload speeds are a very consistent 3 megs, and the latency is generally about 800 to 900 ms. I experience slower download speeds of 500k to 1.5 megs on occasion, but so far this has been only about once every 45 days during prime hours - I'd be very unhappy if this got worse.

member for 11.7 years, 3 visits, last login: 9.6 years ago
updated 9.6 years ago


barb
@184.61.215.x

barb

Anon

HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE COMPANY!!!

Run, don't walk, away from this company! They are incompetent crooks & after reading all these reviews I see that they somehow get away with pulling the same scam, over & over. Like many others, when our contract was up and we could (hooray!) cancel our service, they were to send us a box to return the equipment. Equipment was sent back the very next day but they charged my credit card $316 for non-returned equipment! When I called (took 4 different phone calls), they admitted the equipment was received - just never got "logged in" at their dock - how is this MY FAULT??? Like others, they said my refund would take 12-14 days. In the meantime, this was my debit account and it caused bounced check fees with my bank. They assured me they would refund those charges - just fax a copy of our bank statement (account number blacked out), showing the charges. Well, this was on 6/17 and here it is 8/25 and I still have not received my refund - this is after faxing the bank statement 3 different times.... It is almost worth looking into hiring a lawyer - a company should not be able to continue in business like this.

Review by tmblumen See Profile

  • Location: Fenton, Genesee, MI, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Returned Equipment and Charged $318 20 days after UPS delivered

We used WildBlue for 2 years not great service so we cancelled. They tried to charge me a cancellation fee which they supposedly waved (even though I cancelled after 2 years not sure how they explain that) but I was still billed $30 which I just let go it is $30 right. Then I see that late on Saturday, July 12th they charged me $318! We had carefully packaged up the requested materials to return and sent them via the provided UPS box so how could this be? I called customer service on July 15th and the agent checked into it and determined yes the materials were received at the warehouse. I ask when and he tells me on June 25th. So now I am confused how could you charge me for unreturned materials when you received them 18 days ago? The Agent tells me that well yes they received them but they need to confirm that the right material are in the box. “How long should that take” I ask and he says well I will put in a ticket and then you, that is me the customer, should call back in 48 to 72 hours. How is any of this ok? I suggest that maybe they could escalate this and call me back within 24 hours and he says no they really can't do that because that is not how the ticket system works. Then I ask for a supervisor and he says they can't help you any more than I can. We go back and forth and finally I very firmly explain that I wasn't an angry customer but now I am and I want to talk to a supervisor. He says okay then comes back and advises that he is going to process the claim but if they find out that the right stuff isn't in the box they will cancel it. Are you kidding me? It is also supposed to take 7-10 days to refund money that frankly they stole from me. I work is customer care and I am admittedly critical of service but this is beyond acceptable and likely not legal. I am not the first or last customer that this has happened to and based on what I have seen on-line I won't be the last. I am going to file a BBB claim which I have never done before but can’t in good conscious not report this kind of business practice.

member for 9.7 years, 2 visits, last login: 9.7 years ago
lodged 9.7 years ago


Review by SandDog See Profile

  • Location: Sandpoint, Bonner, ID, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
No service, no accountablility
DON"T GO WITH WILD BLUE

We've had Wild Blue since 2008 and it hasn't been great but it worked. Two year commitment forced us to keep them when we moved after first year. Now on June 10, 2014 our internet went down and we called for support. First tech had us do all the normal procedures, reset modem and router still no internet. Told us to go buy new Ethernet cable, we did, still no internet. Next day new tech said it was the dish out of alignment and we would need a technician to come help but first appointment was June 23rd almost two weeks wait. On June 23rd we got a call from subcontractor, First Class something or other, wouldn't be out that day. Had to call us later that day to schedule sometime between Thursday the 26th and Sunday the 29th. Company didn't call back that day so I called the next day, Tuesday and was told they would call me Wednesday. They had a tech making his way from Nebraska and they were working on schedule/route. No call on Wednesday still. Called Wild Blue again Wednesday and was told some supervisor would call within an hour. No call back all day. No one does what they say or say what they mean. I asked what a new customer wait would be like and they couldn't answer. If you need reliable service, any customer service don't get Wild Blue.

member for 9.7 years, 2 visits, last login: 9.7 years ago
lodged 9.7 years ago


none5498
@12.218.52.x

none5498

Anon

unfair disclosure billing

I recently called WildBlue to cancel my account May 2014. I was billed for the entire $79.95 for awful, slow service for the next month, through June 2014. Charging me for almost an entire month of services, when my account was cancelled. This was not disclosed to me when I called to cancel. After calling their customer service # and 4 supervisors later, they came back with the same answer. Keep in mind I was a customer for over 8 years and always paid my bill on time. This is completely unacceptable. I will be disputing my charges with my credit card. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this company.

Review by spacemonkies See Profile

  • Location: Lawrenceburg, Lawrence, TN, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Have service
so slow its not worth it
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Mail,DNS,News:
Value for money:

I live where satellite internet is my only option, and moving from a city I could get 30Mps unlimited for about $50 a month.... I'm tremendously disappointed with exceed. I work from home so am on the 15G a month plan and thats not enough.... and I dont watch videos or download/upload files.

They claim up to 12Mps, which means they can give you 1Mps and they're still honoring the claim... I was told by the installer that I actually would get about 8. I never have seen that value, 4Mps is the very highest I've seen doing a speedtest and my normal speed is around 2Mps. They need to advertise up to 5Mps to be more factual. Its ridiculous to pay this much money a month for such a crappy speed, and on top of that a cap on data. My contract is up at the end of the summer and I think I'd be better off going back to the phone company using slow service.... even the phone line gets me faster than excede with no caps and not paying $80/month.

member for 9.8 years, 1 visits, last login: 9.8 years ago
lodged 9.8 years ago