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@wildblue.net | Satellite is better than Skybeam The owners of the defunct Zip Broadband, a small ISP that had its headquarters in the Colorado Springs area, should be deeply ashamed of selling out their customers to Skybeam. Zip wasn't perfect, but it was decent and I liked that I could make a local phone call and talk with someone not far away when I had a problem.
Skybeam was a rude surprise introduced to us last summer in the form of a drastically inflated monthly bill. We were all paid up, but for some reason Skybeam didn't know that. When we said so, Skybeam's representatives told us it was our responsibility to prove to them that we had paid, so that they could then make a claim to Zip. What we had to do, they said, was provide scans of our canceled checks.
Meanwhile, our service — which had been reasonably reliable — became spotty. We'd go out for two or three days at a time. Getting Skybeam representatives on the phone to get answers about what was going on was difficult, sometimes impossible.
After some weeks of back and forth, we finally decided it wasn't worth the trouble to keep fighting and so we provided Skybeam with the proof of payment it continued to demand. Our service seemed to settle down for a few months.
However, Skybeam was easing into a new way of ripping us off, in the form of a monthly $3 "billing" fee. Call us paranoid if you want, but my wife and I think it's unwise to provide our bank account or credit card information to the entities we deal with, particularly entities that prove themselves to be as unreliable, unresponsive and generally incompetent as Skybeam.
With Zip Broadband, we received bills by email and we paid on time. Skybeam sent us bills through the mail, and when they were correct, we paid them. Our basic service rate was supposedly the same, but the $3 was tacked on a few months ago and if we got any notice about it, we missed it. So there was the fee, and ISP options in our area are severely limited, so we bit our tongues and paid it.
A few weeks ago, our Skybeam service abruptly cut off at the end of the business day. We called and couldn't get an answer, although a voice message stated there was an outage in the Colorado Springs area and promised updates. That message was never updated. My wife stayed on the phone until she got a human being, who ran her through Skybeam's routine of trying to figure out what was wrong with the equipment at our end. Skybeam did this every time we called, even though there was NEVER a problem at our end.
Anyway, no answers that time and service stayed off. We called back. The person she finally reached this time let slip that Skybeam was decommissioning Zip Broadband towers in our area, then tried to take it back with a claim that this wasn't happening yet. Blah blah blah. Someone finally said they'd send a tech to our house to install a new antenna pointed at Skybeam's newer relay tower, with a promise that we'd be happier with the new tower.
OK, fine. So the guy comes by, an actual human being in person, and he tells us that the Zip tower had actually broken down and wasn't likely to be repaired, ever. Not only that, there was no substitute because Skybeam was quietly cutting off service to customers who couldn't get a signal directly from a mountaintop about 20 miles away.
He didn't do much while he was at the house except giving info we couldn't get elsewhere, but we appreciated that much at least. After he left, we checked into satellite and signed up with WildBlue ... which, despite our reservations inspired by generally poor reviews online, so far seems to be an improvement.
My wife called Skybeam and asked to shut down our account. The rep said no, the person with his name on the account (me) had to call. I figured life was too short to spend time on hold waiting to talk to someone, so I sent notices to a couple of Skybeam customer service email addresses. Those messages were apparently ignored.
Today, we got another bill from Skybeam for several months of service we haven't received. From now on, we're throwing all communications from Skybeam directly into the trash.
Terrible, terrible, terrible ISP. The worst I've ever encountered. Satellite is better. Dial-up is better. Carrier pigeon is better. Avoid even if you have absolutely no other alternatives. |
