This must be one of the worst Internet service providers on the market! There is nothing I can say that is positive about these despicable bastards! In the five years I have been a subscriber, I have endured countless service failures, exorbitant prices, technical “support” that would be laughable if not so miserable, and now, finally, this nightmare has culminated with a “Fair Access Policy” or bandwidth restriction that was implemented without notice and without agreement or stipulation! With the repeated service outages and failures I have sustained over the years, I should have accumulated bandwidth access that would allow daily downloads of the Library of Congress!

Regardless of what type of problem you are having, calling their Indian technical support will only exacerbate your frustration! Foreigners with goofy accents, made-up first names, and English language abilities that compare with an average 2nd grader!

Hughesnet formerly DirectWay has had a monopoly on access to rural areas but that seems to be decreasing more and more. I will be terminating my service with them as soon as there is a viable alternative. Furthermore, I encourage everyone who has been the victim of Hughes to file complaints with as many government entities and consumer protection agencies possible.

From their website ...

The new HughesNet email service is not yet fully operational.

Hughes is in the process of upgrading the HughesNet email system which will provide customers with enhanced email features. Unfortunately, the upgrade is taking longer than expected and the new HughesNet email service is not yet fully operational. We expect the email system upgrade to be complete by Tuesday, April 29th 6:00 a.m. EDT. During the email upgrade process, we securely stored the contents of your email account(s). When the upgrade is complete, the contents of your email account(s) will be fully restored along with any emails received during the upgrade period. We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced during this email upgrade. Please note that the email upgrade only affects email service; your Internet access is unaffected.

Been down since Saturday night, and it is now Tuesday morning. Credit? Doubt it ...

Also, when I send an email to myself from my work email .. I get "address not known at hughes.net" ... so I am losing mail while they do their "upgrade".

The underlying problem here is .. and I see this in all the complaints .. why are we with them when they cost so much and suck so bad ... we have no choice. They are a tad bit faster than dial up, and we have no other option as we live in the country - no DSL or cable - so this, as bad as it is, is all we have.

I work in IT Outsourcing and if my company provided this kind of service, we would not be in business. Somehow, Hughes stays in business … I hate that commercial where she says at the end “your welcome”

This is truly pathetic.

This internet company is a rip off!!! You want to charge me $640 for early termination. Early termination because the connection is slow!!! because i don't get what you have promised!!!

I can't believe it!!!

Let me tell you about an extremely unsatisfying conversation I just had with Hughesnet. yesterday. It was over their “fair excess policy, ” an Orwellian Newspeak at its best. Every three or six months, it seems, I browse around the Web and reach out for something that looks interesting, but is entirely optional, and find out only after-the-fact that I’ve been “FAPped.” For the uninitiated, FAPped means that Hughes shuts down your satellite signals for a whole 24 hour day. (Yeah, they say they don’t actually shut it off, they just slow it down to dial-up. Great.)

Don’t expect any relief from their techs (all in India, reachable only after the usual 10-step-voicemail maze – but you can try 301-428-5500 for customer service in the US or “Investor Relations” at -5607 – they won’t help, but might help bypass the maze). They all read the party line that when they promise “unlimited” usage, that doesn’t mean unlimited BROADBAND usage. They only “guarantee” unlimited trickle usage. And that’s all you’ll get if you go over the FAP allowance.

So, here’s how it works. Depending on how much you pay each month, they give you a fixed amount of download capacity per 24-hour period, which I believe is midnight to midnight (but I’m not too sure, and they aren’t saying). For $70 a month, you get 375MB (that’s already a “Pro upgrade” over the basic package, with less.) If you go over that limit, even by a single pixel, they shut you down for 24 hours. Penalty box. It doesn’t matter that you underutilized system for the previous day, week, month or year. If you trip over the wire, even by a pixel, you’re blown away for a day. “Fair” access?

A daily 375MB sounds like a lot, but it isn’t. iTunes is impossible – you’ll blow the whole day with a download of a TV show.

The culprit for me this week was trying to subscribe to CNBCplus, for access to some streaming videos. The installer didn’t even work, and there was nothing playing on the screen, but when I walked away from the computer for a couple of hours, I returned to find out that it must have been downloading something (or trying to, or in a loop), and the Hughesnet feed was shut down to a crawl. That was at 9pm, so there would be no Internet access for the next whole day. That could be REAL expensive if you’re trying to track the stock market nowadays, as volatile as it is. And if you use VOIP you have no phone service either. (The culprit about six months ago was trying to download a free trial of WordPerfect 13. That was a 200MB file – Fapped! Go take a day off.)

So, I called tech support to explain the situation, and they readily conceded that I scarcely use even half of the allotment on average but once again, while browsing around, the computer stepped on their land mine and blew up. No sympathy. All I got was a lecture on the sanctity of “fair” access, how wouldn’t it be terrible if everybody was downloading everything all the time until the satellite exploded in orbit, sort of something out of Star Wars I suppose.

They have no provision for the very rare, unintentional “spikes.” They would be happy to sell me a more expensive package, with a few more bytes each day. One of them even pounced on my comment is that for the day I was shut out, I couldn’t contact clients – that is, by e-mail – and he went on and on and on about how will the “home” packages are not “guaranteed” for business use (so why do they call it “Pro”?), but he would be happy to sell me a “business” package for another $30 a month.

In his dreams. Not a penny more will I spend on this.

Sure, it makes some sense to prevent any one user from so monopolizing the system that no one else has any access all, but Hughes’s policy is arbitrary and punitive. It does not FAIRLY take into consideration that a very modest user has scarcely dented the throughput capacity for the previous day or week or year.

Their old policy, which was a constantly depleting and replenishing bucket of megabytes, was more fair, because it allowed a user to manage one’s own use without being shut out completely. Wildblue and Starband each have more fair systems, using a rolling average (30 days for Wildblue and 7 days for Starband) to smooth out the spikes. But Hughes is absolutely, positively adamant. Take it or leave it.

So, I called the Corporate Office Customer Relations rep, but got only the same party line.

In the end I told him that I loathe being a Hughes subscriber, I stay only as a last resort, I will leave them the moment I have any alternative, I will not recommend them to anybody, I will warn anybody away with them, and will tell the world about my opinion and experiences (hence this post).

And his response? A sarcastic “Is there anything else I can do for you today.”

No, nothing whatsoever.

We pay over $200 a month for service, or should I say, lack there of. We had to upgrade to the business package and had to have a new dish installed. We not only had to pay for the dish, but the installation as well. A few months later, the service went out. A technician was sent and informed us that we should not be charged for the repair since we only had the dish a few months. We were charged $250 and informed that 2 technicians were sent when only one was sent and actually showed. My husband has now been on the phone for over 2 hours trying to get resolved and not having much success. Hughes is a ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE!!! There should be laws against such companies!