1 edit | ViaSat's business practices are as bad as Hughes' Sadly, ViaSat's business practices are just as bad as Hughes'. But if you are stubborn, and refuse to back down, you can sometimes get them to concede:
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1 edit | When did you sign up with Exede? I don't know the exact date, but Exede eliminated the lifetime equipment lease fee sometime in or at the end of September 2012. As soon as I heard of this, I printed out my bill dated September 18, 2012, with:
Equipment Lease Fee - Lifetime 219.99
in case they deciding to start charging me a lease fee after 24 months.
Edit: Here's a the ending of a locked topic that you might want to read. The lifetime lease was dropped sometime between Sept. 18, 2012 and Oct. 3, 2012 : »[Exede] HN7000S -> Exede questions. |
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| I switched from HughesNet to Exede 12 in August, 2013. |
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| reply to ltm
Here is my synopsis of my take of the email that you posted. You chose the 24 month pre-paid equipment lease fee. You asked the installer what happened after 24 months. According to you, the installer contacted ViaSat and was "repeatedly" told that the $199.99 which you pre-paid for a 24 month equipment lease was a "lease for life". After much email discussions, Exede eventually offered an an extra year in lease credits. You insisted upon a lifetime of lease credits. Exede eventually agreed to that. And then for some reason you decided to follow through with your threat to "blanket the internet with an account of this dispute".
One of a several things which you have documented is that Exede's business practices are dissimilar from HughesNet. At HughesNet, you would have been offered to five to ten 500 MB tokens after 10 one hour telephone calls escalating your case.
As I've said, the lifetime equipment lease hasn't been advertised for around a year now. (It was too good of a deal, even at $219.99, not $199.99.) |
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| I won't disagree with your interpretation of the email exchange. It is true that "Exede Zac" settled the dispute after a few emails. But HughesNet does the same thing, if you confront them forcefully and directly. Before I finally cancelled my service with them, in August, 2013, they had given me five months of $30 credits. |
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| reply to james1979
Exede has their terms, and other retailers may have followed, or did not.
For instance, I paid nothing, but after two years, if equipment breaks/etc., I have to pay full cost of repair. |
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| reply to ltm
said by ltm:I won't disagree with your interpretation of the email exchange. The reason that I provided a synopsis for you is that readers was to save other readers the time of reading through your email exchanges.
I honestly don't understand what you think that you have exposed at ViaSat. "All plans require 24 month commitment and $9.99/month equipment lease fee (or if prepaid, $199.99 for 24 months)." It seems "obvious to me" that after 24 months, the $9.99 lease fee will begin applying, but they do seem to need to rewrite that. As ExedeZac pointed out, the Customer Agreement states that Exede is not bound by any oral agreements made by their partners. The installer works for a dealer, and the dealer is one of their partners. |
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| reply to DrStrangLov
said by DrStrangLov:For instance, I paid nothing, but after two years, if equipment breaks/etc., I have to pay full cost of repair. I was told over the telephone by an Exede / Viasat employee that all repairs / replacement costs are "on them", for the lifetime of my Exede-12 service. That's what made it such a good deal that got dropped about a year ago. |
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| Overall, I think most common issue will be a dish re-point.
After Wildblue was launched in 2005, they had earlier production versions of power bricks and TRIAs failing. TRIA itself was well made, but there was a loose sealing-screw that was not tightened in production, which allowed atmospheric air to enter TRIA, and this caused failures.
I would suspect ViaSat's "second generation" TRIAs are a pinch better designed. To my awareness, I'm not aware of any TRIA/Modem/Power-brick issues with Exede's equipment.
ViaSat is mostly an engineering company...I would expect most all of these units to last a long time; its not to their economic interest to have a high failure rate. |
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