I have answers and numbers to call. I have gotten the run around from everyone at the HUGHESNET site and phone tree. Talking to them is like talking to a brick wall with spikes. BUT...yours truely has found numbers and info for you to talk to AMERICANS that will hopefully do you some good. I have talked to them today and it SEEMS that i might have gotten somewhere!! WOOT WOOT. call this number (301) 428-5500. I called this number and pressed 6 and then waited and pressed zero. I asked for complaints dept. and this very nice lady Camilla (actually her name cause she is an AMERICAN!!) took all my info and said she would call me back...get this...SHE CALLED ME BACK WITH IN AN HOUR (I KNOW!!!) Camilla apologized for the crappy service that i had gotten since getting this system, credited me a months service, and...TOLD ME THAT THE PEOPLE I HAVE BEEN DEALING WITH LIED TO ME!! An actual admission of this crap!!She has a "go to" guy in her office and his name is Ronnie...Ronnie is going to call me on monday and he is going to fix my issues. I told her about my install "problem" with no place to go with the dish and having to shell out extra $$$$ for a pole and she is going to see what she can do about getting me reimbursed for that cost as well! I told her that for this area and for as many people i have talked to about this "having to have a pole" and being scammed. She said this was not right and that she was going to see that this practice was stopped! I certainly hope this helps anyone who has been having these problems! I am going to try to post this link and see if it works...It is to the BBB..has addresses phone numbers and email address. Even provides the address to the place i called! At least there is a place to throw eggs and protest...haha. Good luck and please let me know if this worked for you! My email address is [email protected]. Here is the link: http://www.dc.bbb.org/report.html?national=y&compid=9864 Copy and past to your browser...Happy hunting everyone!

Hughes Net Internet Service Provider exists to legally “hook” customers in a two-year contract and force the client to upgrade their service. Hughes Net advertizes to a clientele that has no other possible ISP in their area except 56k dialup service. They promise, through false advertizing, to provide 1, 000k satellite service for the standard fee.

Once you are a committed customer who has signed on the dotted line and invested your up front fees, you find out quickly that you can not operate in the Real World on the internet because of ridiculously low bandwidth restrictions. As you do what normal people do on the internet, you quickly exceed HughesNet’s unrealistically low “Fair Access Policy” (FAP) that monitors you use of the internet, laying in wait for you to exceed the remarkably low utilization of 2MB total during any 24-hour period.

My personal bandwidth declined from mid-800 mbps to between 12 and 17 mbps. That, my friends is a B-I-G reduction. If you are unfamiliar with the FAP you will continue for days trying to figure out what is amiss. As you do this your 24-hour “Penalty Box” time is extended. I couldn’t regain my speed for nearly 4 days! Next you will call the “Help Desk.” The Indonesian employees will explain with remarkable composure how you have violated HughesNet FAP. However, they will not resolve your dilemma.

HughesNet has six payment plans. The one advertized is the Home Plan, 200MB, 1.0 Mbps/128 Kbps, at $59.99. That is the hook. The Switch is next; Upgrade your plan.

Next is Pro, 300MB, 1.2 Mbps/200 Kbps, $69.99. 50% more use which will not resolve your usage problem. Pro is still inadequate. Or, try #3, ProPlus, 426MB, 1.6 Mbps/250 Kbps, $79.99. Perhaps one of the remaining Plans: Elite, 500MB, 2.0 Mbps/300 Kbps, $119.99; ElitePlus, 500MB, 3.0 Mbps/300 Kbps, $189.99; ElitePremium, 500MB, 5.0 Mbps/300 Kbps, $349.99.

Try to find a human being that is not sitting at the Help(less) Desk in Indonesia to speak with. I wish you luck. Even the HughesNet Corporate HQ in Germantown, PA will transfer your call to the Help Desk.

If our Federal Trade Commission was worth a hoot in a whirl wind HughesNet would be called to task on this obvious “Bait & Switch.” Your best course of action is to extract all the anger out of your voice and written communications, contact your State Attorney General’s Office and file a complaint. Only after many, many complaints will they take action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughesnet

Hughesnet falsely advertises no connection/install fee and then charges your credit card anyway. NO customer service, no itemized bill telling you what the huge and illegal credit card charges are for, they are thieves and at best totally dishonest and inept. STAY AWAY FROM THESE CROOKS

We live far up in Maine, in our area we have very few internet companies to chose from.

We were using Localnet which cost $9.99/month, it was very slow and we saw a HughesNET commercial on TV, which guaranteed highspeed internet and access from any area. So we decided to try this out.

A guy came and installed the satellite dish, which cost us $130.00 and we chose the cheapest plan they had which was $60.00/month.

Once we went online the speed was decent compared to LocalNet, but very soon our internet speed just dropped, it was even slower than dial-up. We looked through the paperwork and saw that our plan only allowed us to use up to 200mb of Bandwidth, if we exceeded this limit we would be penalized for 24hours and our internet would stay slow.

Pretty soon our internet kept getting slower and slower, we had all our backround downloaders shut off, to minimize the bandwidth limit, we also couldn't go to websites such as "Youtube" or it would quickly run up our bandwidth limit. Basically the only websites we could go to without crapping out our internet were pages with only text and very little pictures.

Even with the "green flag" our internet is still very slow and we have called customer support several times and have been given poor support where the staff can barely speak English and couldn't figure out the problem, they would just redirect us to a speed-test website and tell us to refresh it 5 times, which didn't do much for us.

We're done with HughesNET, we our paying $60.00/month for the same slow internet we had when we had $10.00/month dial-up.
I will be filing a lawsuit and I advise everyone to stay away from this low life ISP.

Updated my modem call their wonderful Indian rep and they could not register my modem and said I would need a tech to come out and realign my dish. The tech came out check the system call hughesnet registered my modem. Called me and told me he did not touch my dish that my system was fine it was hughesnets problem and that he wrote on his service ticket that there was no need for the call. Hughesnet charged me 125.00 because their tech's can't fix problems over the phone.