Mon Tana
@wildblue.net
| Wild Blue Poor Planning Begets Poor Service I've been a WB customer for about 4 years. Here are some of my observations.... more from the "How not to run a business" perspective than the disgruntled customer POV.
Has anyone who is a WB customer ever communicated with an actual Wild Blue employee or corporate principal? I doubt it because the organization is structured to insulate the decision makers from those affected by the decisions made.
Every part of the Wild Blue experience is contracted out to individuals or firms that are completely disassociated from the paying customers and have no ownership of the resulting mess.
This creates two results: Unhappy customers with limited alternatives but high levels of irritation and an organizational structure that will eventually collapse under the weight of unsupervised and uncorrected errors.
For instance: During the week of 5-10-09, the portion of the Google network that includes Gmail and the Wild Blue Start Page function essentially collapsed for several hours and still remains (today is 5-18-09) unstable. The event made the national news but Wild Blue customer service (if they noticed) didn't bother notifying a single WB user. [No Ownership of the Problem]
Many ISPs think that customers have to have email as part of the service. Wild Blue is included in this self-delusional group. I have owned my own domain name for over 10 years therefore the same email address for the same period of time. [I wouldn't use Gmail or Wild Blue mail if they paid me]
So, why is it that, when I send an email from my computer using my own email client with my personally determined setting and addresses, the Gmail SMTP server replaces my "reply to:" address with my Gmail login so people who reply to my email send their replies unknowingly off to an email inbox that I never check? I assure you this is not SOP for any ISP. Just the unsupervised youngsters at Google. For Wild Blue this is one more example of Poor Planning Followed By Zero Supervision. Absentee and Uninvolved Management is the quickest path to destruction. So be it with Wild Blue.
I contacted the Wild Blue customer service contractor regarding this "hijacking" of my outgoing mail and was told that I could remedy the problem by using the Gmail web interface (as gawdawful as it is) where I could apply a "workaround" to their screwup or I could just live with the way Gmail corrupted my outgoing messages. [No ownership of the problem]
I started looking for a wireless solution today. No reason to keep sending my money to the criminally stupid. | |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
 ·WildBlue
 ·TDS
| Re: Wild Blue Poor Planning Begets Poor Service quote:
I have owned my own domain name for over 10 years therefore the same email address for the same period of time. [I wouldn't use Gmail or Wild Blue mail if they paid me]
So, why is it that, when I send an email from my computer using my own email client with my personally determined setting and addresses, the Gmail SMTP server replaces my "reply to:" address with my Gmail login so people who reply to my email send their replies unknowingly off to an email inbox that I never check? I assure you this is not SOP for any ISP. Just the unsupervised youngsters at Google. For Wild Blue this is one more example of Poor Planning Followed By Zero Supervision. Absentee and Uninvolved Management is the quickest path to destruction. So be it with Wild Blue.
I've been a customer since 2005 and I have never had wildblue intercept my own non-wildblue non-gmail outgoing mailserver using it over the wildblue connection. That is truely odd.
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Very happy TDS DSL user | Wildblue in Lake Michigan | |
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Earth Signal
Earthsignal
Premium
join:2002-10-03
Burlington, IA
·WildBlue
| Never had the problems you described after using the service for three years. Not certain who you have your WB service through but would suggest you go to the forum WildBlue has setup and contact one of their moderators. They seem to have a way of getting problems fixed. »wildblueworld.com/forum/index.php
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Ron ~ Wildblue Select Pak since 01-2006, Anik F2 Beam 26, service through NRTC, Dell XPS, 2Gig Ram, XP Pro, Router DD-WRT- WRT54GL, Laptop, XP home | |
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Liberty
join:2005-06-12
Tucson, AZ
 ·Cox HSI
| "Has anyone who is a WB customer ever communicated with an actual Wild Blue employee or corporate principal? I doubt it because the organization is structured to insulate the decision makers from those affected by the decisions made."
Are you serious?
Ask the same question but replace WB with:
Verizon
GM
Tyson
Proctor & Gamble
WalMart
you get the idea
So long as we continue to support huge corporations, we kill off all the little guys & gals who you could call at home if necessary... | |
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BasilAR
WildBlue
join:2006-07-20
Parks, AR
| Re: Wild Blue Poor Planning Begets Poor Service said by Liberty  :So long as we continue to support huge corporations, we kill off all the little guys & gals who you could call at home if necessary... We have to support them.
They are too big to fail.
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Beam 35 - value | |
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| Spice300
Premium
join:2006-01-10
| said by Liberty :So long as we continue to support huge corporations, we kill off all the little guys & gals who you could call at home if necessary... Due to the nature of the beast, the little guys and gals do not have enough capital to create and deploy Internet access via satellite. Subcontracting is how the littles ones get a piece of the pie.
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Value Pack, beam 31, Riverside gateway | |
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N4ST
Jim
Premium
join:2005-11-25
Jersey, VA
·WildBlue
| WildBlue's success is what has led to some of the problems you describe. Their rapid growth is sustained by contracting out services. And then a big business tolerates a percentage of "unhappy customers" as a fact of doing business. It isn't necessarily fair, but it is a common business model for those that survive in the corporate world.
As to your email problem, no help here, because I have not seen it. Are you sure you haven't filled in one of the "reply to" fields inadvertently when setting up your mail program?
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Anik F2 | WildBlue Pro Pak | Beam 37 | Laredo NOC | Since Nov 2005 | Linksys WRT54GX-v2| Windows XP | Homebrew PC | |
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cmcdaniel
join:2009-06-01
San Andreas, CA
| I have been a WB customer for 3 months(unfortunately) and I do online gaming. From 1 day of gaming I go to 120% of my threshold and my internet service is then limited and slows down to almost no internet at all. Is there a way to speed up this shitty internet connection? I'm paying 85$ a month for service that is supposed to be 30x better than dial up but right now I wish I had dial up. I'm stuck with this for another 21 months or I can cancel at the price of $315
PLEASE if there is a way of tweaking some settings or downloading something to speed up my internet connection speed and page loading speed as well as lower the ping on my gaming so there isnt so much latency PLEASE REPLY HERE ASAP!!! | |
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