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The good, the bad, and the ugly - discover what customers are saying about Wild Blue

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2:03 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

Wild Blue Slow Slow Slow

I had signed up for Wild Blue before doing any research. I thought this would be a good choice for internet because all that was available was dialup. This was the worst and most costly mistake I have made years. They said it would be 500 kps but we were unable to get over 100. They said it could vary but I couldn't imagine it getting this slow. I assumed that since it cost 5 times more than dialup it would be at a minimum of 5 times as fast. No way. Quit them after just 2 months and paid the penalty to get out of contract. Slow speeds and unresponsive to fixing it.

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HughesNetSales
HughesNetSales
Germandtown, US
Apr 05, 2011 5:25 am EDT

Hello There.

I work for HughesNet in the Sales Department.

I'm sorry about the issues you had with wildblue. If you're looking for a reliable means of internet, feel free to check us out! We're the #1 Provider of High Speed Internet by Satelite with great deals and rebates currently running!

Sorry for your troubles, hope everything gets better!

- HughesNet Rep

Name: Hughes Network Systems, LLC
Phone: [protected] * Corporate Office Number
Tech Support: [protected]
Sales Department: [protected]
Address: 11717 Exploration Lane, Germantown, MD 20876
eMail: bbbdc@hughes.net
Web Address: www.hughesnet.com
BBB file opened: January 01, 1998
Business started: January 1972
Primary Contact: Ms. Ellen Martz (Senior Director, Customer Service)
Complaint Contact: Ms Robin Chapman (Executive Customer Care)
Other Contacts: Mr Pradman Kaul (President & CEO)

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V
6:07 am EDT
Resolved
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

Wild Blue Terrible service!

We have a bunch of reference numbers given by customer service representatives and have more disconnected phone calls then reference numbers. Yesterday I was disconnected 8 times, before I was ever able to even speak to a representative. Twice I made contact with two different customer service representatives and each time, I was disconnected again being transfered to 'DSI', what ever that is. On my third conversation to a live person I pleaded not to be put on hold or transfered, but to find a manger that I could speak with. 'Can not do.' she says. You have to be placed on hold. I explained how many times we had been disconnected while on hold and the time lost trying to keep calling in to customer support.

Although she still placed me on hold. I did get a Manager who again kept placing me on hold, though we never lost connection. Her way of helping me was giving me a phone number for their Corp. Office because she can't even get through to talk to someone herself. She said she would follow up on this to make sure I did eventually get to talk to someone for help on getting service. I've yet to hear from her though.

I did however call the Corp. office for Wild Blue. Guess what? I was disconnected several time while in their automated answering service. I still have not spoken to anyone and don't have the time in my work day, to keep trying. Keep in mind this was yesterdays day of trying to communicate with Wild Blue. I've been going through this almost everyday Since the 12th of April.

I'm writing this report and then I'm sending a letter requesting to end our internet service with Wild Blue. Thank goodness we are on a month to month service now and don't have a contract. Maybe my letter will not be disconnected.

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cheaper to have a satisfied customer
Gilroy, US
Jul 22, 2012 7:46 pm EDT

I have had nothing but problems from the start. They show up on a day I told them I wasn't going to be there. They bill me three days after I had installed for the full month. They neglected to say that they will slow down my so called streaming after I use my allotted amount which took all of 1 week to use by the way. Even when it is running in full speed mode it SUCKS. DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT!

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teddy331976
almond, US
Sep 08, 2009 10:16 pm EDT

We have had this internet provider for 4 months and they suck they get into our programs and block things the speed of the internet is slow we live in the country so we don't get alot of providers where we live and we had no choice but to go with them they get into our files and block us from going on to certain web sites I highly don't recommend this company to anyone.

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LH
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Jul 14, 2008 12:33 am EDT

Wild Blue does not honor their part of the contract. Nothing is the way the sales people present it. Yet you are held in an 18 month contract. Their service is SLOWER than dial up. And yes, when you call you are on hold - even at 2:00 a.m.! My contract is finally going to be up in 4 months - I can't wait!

Don't make the mistake in getting Wild Blue - they call it high speed internet service - don't let them kid you! It's anything but!

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Jesse Osborne
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Jan 17, 2008 12:00 am EST

Me and my girlfriend signed up for Wild Blue roughly 6 months ago. From the beginning of our experience with Wild Blue it has been dreadful. To start at the beginning. We had dial up which is slow for downloading large files and such which i am sure every avid internet venturer knows. We were excited to get this "high speed" service being fans of surfing the web. Faster is better right? So we call a local dealer, end up paying 200 dollars for a cheap satellite. The installation was free during a promotional period we were in. (our only lucky break). The installer gets to our house after about a week. Tells us our tree's are to close to our house so he would have to buy a metal pipe and some concrete and put it in our front yard, but this would cost us an additional 100 dollars (installation was suppose to be free) or so. We are still excited so we say ok, but he didn't bring these things with him so we have to reschedule. He was suppose to call back when he got home to where he left his appointment book but didn't. I called 1-3 times a day trying to get in touch for the next 9 days. No answer to calls or return of voice mails. Finally he calls back one day. He sounded drunk. Said he could make it 2 days later. He shows up at 6pm at night that day. He promised to be there between 8am-11am. Tells us he just then found out he cant put the dish on the pole because of our powerlines nearby. This made me very angry being he claimed to have been dong this job for almost 15 years, I'd think he'd be aware of this. So he leaves. We really want satellite internet still believing they are "high speed" so we pay a guy to cut down the problem tree so the dish can be installed on our roof. Guy shows up about a week later again. Is able to install it this time and leaves after he makes comments about how i should buy him a beer for his trouble coming to my location 3 times when it was his fault. Since then. Internet works. Suppose to get 512 Kbps download. We get 100-200 at the faster times. It rarely goes beyond that. That paired with a download threshold and the delay caused by satellite communication completely ruins the high speed idea. The delay is what mainly gets me. Having little experience with satellite tv or internet i wasn't aware and they didn't tell me. Guess i should have researched more first. I am a fan of online games and this is completely impossible with satellite. Even surfing the web, you click on a page and their is like a 5 second delay before anything happens then the page slowly loads. Not much faster than dial up. We get all this for 50 dollars a month and are stuck in a contract. Why do the people who live outside of town get targeted by scammers like satellite companies seeking to abuse their situation of being outside of DSL and Cable service areas? Sorry for such the long rant this whole thing really pisses me off. I take classes online which sucks because of the service. I use to play online games and voice chat with friends and now i cant. Web browsing is the same as dial up. Waste of money.

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joy1936f
Nacogdoches, US
Jan 02, 2011 12:49 am EST

Please let me know if there are any resolutions to all these complaints.
My daughter has suffered all the same ones. No service because of oversuse, when she can't even access the internet. How can that be?
I feel very bad, because of a fast talker several in my family went with Direct Tv which is connected to Wildblue, she is the one with all the problems. Why does she have the problems, when I use my computer much more than she does, and so far I haven't had very many problems, not saying none, but not very many.
Please if anyone has solved their delima with WildBlue please let me know how you did it.

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P Thomas
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Nov 19, 2008 1:08 am EST

Well ! I'm hurrying and typing my complaint before my internet service is interrupted by Wildblues wonderful "FAIR ACCESS" policy that i knew nothing about before getting their service. No one, not the customer service rep, not the installation technician, not even the five tech support reps who i spoke to trying to find out why i had no service for fives days and counting. NO ONE made me AWARE of this "mind boggling stupid policy" from Wilblue.
But my wonderfully painful journey into internet service with Wildblue doesn't stop there. That would be too simple.

After i finally get someone with the guts to tell me why i don't have internet svc and i go on my tirade for ten minutes (why no e mail, phone call, web page that says you've been bricked, smoke signal, stuff like that.) they explain to me that i can get unlimited internet access if i pay ten dollars more! I'm no lawyer but i know extortion when i hear it! So after i go on another tirade for about ten minutes (You know the kind( Then what the hell am i paying $70 a month for now if i can't use the service when and how long i want to tirade.)) I finally calmed down and let them transfer me to the customer service department where i could pay the extra ten dollar extortion fee to get my service back on so i can A: Make my money and B: find a new internet service provider. But my wonderful journey doesn't end there.

After waiting for about 30 minutes for a customer service rep i was rudely and abruptly told that their system was down and call back tomorrow and hung up on! YEAH HUNG UP ON!

Now i can put up with occasional bad weather that would knock out my service or (although it has never happen to me) service interruption due to nonpayment but to have my service cut off because i use it too much is beyond belief; and to not be notified of it is even worse, it might be criminal.
To top it off some of the worse customer service in the history of customer service makes my experience with Wildblue the worse decision i have ever made at any point in my life! Yes even worse than when i ate that old cole slaw in the fridge and got sick or stuck my finger in the wall socket as a baby! LOL!
I'm just wondering is there any possible legal action that can be taken!

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12:00 am EDT

Wild Blue Service unreliable, support worst ever seen

My experience with wild blue for the first year was fair. That changed for the worst two weeks ago. First, they had an outage that affected their DNS - the DNS Server was available but unresponsive. My troubleshooting this with a “network explorer” tool was seen as hostile and my service was suspended at the same time they corrected the issue. A phone call to explain the issue got me back up the next day. The very next day after, their "Lerado" site went down hard and their support staff had no access to their own PC’s. They could not even take my information or provide me with a ticket number. I am told that someone cut some fiber. Once they figured that out, most everyone came back on line but me. The Satellite modem would not provide an IP address to any of my 3 PC’s. After nearly 20 hours (no, I am not kidding) on the phone with 6 support staff (tested every imaginable thing - from your lan cord is bad to your coax cable is damaged to your network card is bad), a decision was made to send a new modem. I was told that under no circumstances could this process be expedited. I offered to pay the overnight charges as it would be cheaper than commuting and they told me this was not possible. 5 days later, there was no package at my house. I called support seeking the tracking number and after some silence, was escalated to a “Brad” who told me the order was placed in the system incorrectly and never "went up for approval". I had to just laugh at this point. Brad promised to enter it correctly and thought that maybe I’d have it in 4 more days. He told me I'd been through enough and promised me a personal follow up the next day. He also said that despite being 1 month out of warranty, he'd ensure it was covered and not at my expense. At 4PM EST the next day, after receiving no follow-up from Brad, I called yet again. I asked for a supervisor and if you can believe this was transferred to an external scheduling company instead (after holding for 15 minutes). I asked this person to transfer me to a supervisor and she was unable to do so. She did transfer me to service. I asked again for a supervisor and was told that the only supervisor in their department was a HR manager. I eventually agreed to let service transfer me back to tech support again. After restating my business now the 4th time on the same call, I requested again a supervisor. This time, I got to speak to one – Mike. Mike researched the status of the order placed by Brad and explained that the order was denied by the procurement department (despite supports recommendation to replace it). At this point I am just a bit short on patience. Fortunately, Mike had the right personality to keep me cool. Mike was sure he could figure out the issue with the modem (it had also been stuck in a loop downloading firmware after each restart according to a call a week earlier). After commuting back to my home, Mike called right on time. Within an hour and through what I could only call black magic, the service seemed to be working (I am a network engineer by the way). I expressed concern to Mike about the slowness and he said that this was likely due to the time of day. I gave it some time. The next day, I ran 4 speed tests at speedtest.net and found that I had been throttled to 20kbps upload and about 128kbps download and with super high latency exceeding 1 second. I called support again (Friday before long weekend) and was escalated eventually to "Maureen" at level 2 support. She reviewed my account and asked me who I was sharing my service with. I explained that I live in the middle of the woods and have not done so. I asked her for examples. She cited examples of suspicious behavior that occurred at 3AM during the period that I had no service. She also determined that my bandwidth usage was well within average range. She thought that the LNB may have a problem. I explained that I had already replaced one that had a recall and did so at my expense during warranty period. She kindly wrote a letter to a "super secret" organization within the company called “Abuse” or [protected]@wildblue.net She requested that they consider lifting the restrictions. I explained that I VERY MUCH needed the service up for Tuesday to telecommute to a VERY important business meeting. My expectations were set that they may not get to this until Tuesday morning. Well, Tuesday came and went with no response and the meeting was a disaster with no high speed internet. They let me down again. I called in once more around 9AM to express urgency. I called again later that evening to express frustration and try to escalate once more. I was in a call queue for 56 minutes before my call was initially picked up. I know the hold music by heart and it is maddening! This time, the woman who handled the call said she’d forward the request to restore full speed to another department that her manager recommended so as to ensure prompt handling. I asked to be CC’d this time. When the note was sent, it was sent seemingly to the same place (above). I replied to all Wednesday morning to express my situation and to plea with the abuse folks. There was no response to my message. I sent another message seeking a simple acknowledgment (after all, what should I expect for $79 per month and $1,600 spent so far in 13 months?). This message went with no response. At 9PM the following day (now Wednesday, two weeks since the issue started), called support and held for 30 minutes before reaching Stephanie. I explained the situation (again) and asked her to check status of my account. After another 20 minutes, she was able to transfer me to another “level 2” support engineer. It was Maureen again! This time, Maureen did not seem so empathetic. I asked her how we escalate to a manager that has oversight over abuse. She said none existed – there was no escalation path – just service (remember they had an escalation path at an earlier call to an HR person and that was it!). I explained to Maureen that I wanted to terminate my service at this point because it would be cheaper to buy the Hughes equipment and have it installed in 2 days than to continue to commute each day. She placed me on hold and came back moments later to advise that service had left 45 minutes earlier (now on this call more that 1 hour).

This company is clearly VERY dysfunctional. They have an ineffective escalation process and a system with no oversight. They clearly are not sensitive to or interested in their customers’ needs. They need to understand that the communities they service are typically rural areas. There areas are typically wide spaced but tight knit. People talk and share their experience.

So here we are two weeks later and still, no results. Clearly, if my experience is representative of the company, you cannot possibly consider this company as a provider of a business or municipal class service never mind telecommuter. My experience is based upon a ton of data points and is not based upon a single call or interaction.

Please do not make the mistakes that I did!

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Abdul B.
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Jul 18, 2007 12:00 am EDT

The Customer service at Wild Blue is horrible. I was placing an order then afterwards on the same call needed to cancel due to some of the terms and was placed in a Que for over 50 minutes with no answer. I called then on another line and was placed in another Que after talking with a customer service representative and ten being told the wait time 50 minutes again. That's why people off-shore the customer service the people in the US are horrible when they have to do some work.

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lazlofan123
Alberquerque, US
Apr 08, 2011 12:15 am EDT

DO NOT GET WILD BLUE! This is the worst speed i have ever seen ever ever ever EVER. Sometimes i just want to get a jackhammer and hammer the sh** out of our $400 dollar satellite. I. AM. NOT. SATISFIED. AT ALL. I forgot to mention, i have a ps3 account and when i try to play online, i just say SHI*. It is so terrible, i cant get anywhere without skipping across the map. Did i forget to say that it also says "CONNECTION INTERRUPTED" at the bottom of the screen! I want to change to another internet thing, but NOOOOOO. Its too late! We just cant throw away a 400 dollar satellite! Save yourselves if you haven't fallen into wildblue's shi*-covered hands!

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MommaStob
Zeeland, US
Sep 28, 2009 12:27 am EDT

Besides all the complaints that I've read, they don't tell you that all it has to do is sprinkle a little for you to lose service! This is the most expensive worthless crap that I've ever had the misfortune to use! And they don't tell you how unreliable it is. They should be required to provide dial-up service free of charge for their customers to use when their freaking service goes out while you're doing something important!

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Tall David
Southaven, US
Feb 12, 2010 7:56 am EST

Six pages of complaints & count me as number seven. I was introduced through Wild Blue via a friend. Who along with his parents didn't know how god awful this service is.

I was going to school at the time I got Wild Blue. It was early 08 I think. But I was told I'd be charged a one time set up fee of 183 dollars, and then I could finance my modem at 54 a month and tax would make it 61. Which isn't bad even though when I had Com Cast it was 45.99 and I loved the cable.

Anyway even though I could have paid off Com Cast, and let me tell you I wish I did. I ended up going with Wild Blue. They guy even offered me a job but since I was going to school for Heating & Air its not like I needed a ### job with them. So for the first 6 months this Wild Blue was amazing. I've had it go up & down but never slowed to dial up which I was told could happen but as long as I had standard email and the general browsing I'd be fine. Now Wild Blue is slower than Christmas. I honestly could run circles around their service.

I hate that it goes out whenever it rains, and it seems if I sneeze my net goes out. The dependability of this is really horrible. I'm hoping to get a tech on support to find out how much it is to cancel because if I cannot get a direct response I'm going to do it the old fashioned way, and they can let my account sit without any more activity. Either way they are getting canceled.

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D. Miller
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Sep 15, 2007 12:00 am EDT

I am in a rural area of the flatlands of Kansas where cable and DSL are not available. I had Wild Blue internet service installed 3 months ago. I have waited to complain hoping it would improve since I have called tech. support numerous time with complaints. Needless to say it has not improved at all, in fact it seems to be getting worse. My first call to set up an installment was horrible. The company's phone system was so bad I could hardly hear or understand the person I was talking with. The person was very rude and not helpful at all. That should have been my first clue that this company technically challenged. I got the installment scheduled, they deducted the equipment charge from my bank account but no one showed to do the installation. This really made me question the decision to go with this company. I did finally get the equipment installed. I was very disappointed in the internet speed... it was not much if any faster than my dial up had been. The first week I had the service it was down more than it was up. Of course when I called tech support they blamed it on the weather which is what they have done every time I have called. I have called three different times about not receiving email. This has to be the biggest rip off ever. I have started documenting the times I am without service so that I can present it to an attorney if need be. I would think with all the complaints I have read online about this company there should be some way to do a class action suit or something along those lines. I really hate the fact that I am paying for a service that I do not have a lot of the time and that is no better than the dial up I was paying $19.00 a month for. If anyone knows of a way to get out of this contract, please let me know.

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tonipugh
Frankfort, US
May 14, 2010 11:58 am EDT

I had wild blue for 11 months. I paid for a year of service. I had 227.00 credit when I canceled the service and knowing that I had a $190 cancellation fee, I was told I would get a refund. I canceled in February, this is May and I am being sent to collections for $188. I have spoken to 4 people and 3 of the 4 say I do not owe anything yet one does. I cannot get any straight answers and the hold time on customer service is crazy. Rude employees and not very knowledgeable.

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Sasha
Glyndon, US
Mar 28, 2009 1:43 pm EDT

Wild Blue is a horrible company! I would urge anyone thinking of using their services not to! They are rude, they lie and they charged me a restocking fee after telling me that I would not be charged anything since it was not my fault that I could not get the services. I signed up for wild blue internet services about two months ago. It took them a month to get someone to our home to set up the dish. When the installer got to our home he informed us that he could not install the dish because of our roof is not the right material. He spoke to someone on the phone at wild blue and then told us we would not be charged any fees if we sent the dish back and canceled our services. We did and a month later we were charged $53.20 as a restocking fee. I called and spoke to a man at Wild Blue. He told me that the charge would be refunded. The charge was taken off and then recharged. When I called them again they said that my refund was denied because they did not believe that I was told I would not be charged. The woman I spoke with was very rude! She would not listen to anything I told her and kept saying that my refund was denied! Their customer service is a joke. They are extremely rude!

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coupdegrac
Abbot, US
Dec 07, 2009 7:25 am EST

I was informed that Management would return my call in 24 hours and I have called every day since (over a week ago today). I have left many messages and I still have not heard back. I am not impressed with the company thus far, I wish to have my hundred dollar deposit returned in full, and the package of WildBlue equipment picked up. I have been treated unfairly and I have not signed any contracts; they refuse to let me cancel my services without forfeiting fifty of the hundred dollars.

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David Ingram
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Oct 13, 2007 12:00 am EDT

Three months ago I canceled my account with Wildblue because it quit working. I called their customer service line to report it and it took 37 minutes to get a person on the phone. I know it was 37 minutes because my phone has a timer and after the first 15 minutes I started watching. The tech told me that they were having a system wide problem and they would have it fixed soon.

I waited a week and called again. It took me roughly the same amount of time to get a tech on the phone. She told me that since I did not file an official outage report with them they would not credit me for the week of lost service. She also told me they would charge me $85 to come out and check my service.

I canceled at this point. Fortunately I canceled my credit card that I was using on the account. They continued to harass me with bills saying I owe them for two months service.

I kept calling their collections department at [protected] and not one time did I get a human on the phone. When telling this story to people I challenge them to call this line and try to get a real person on the line. It’s not an exaggeration; you cannot ever reach a real person.

If I had not canceled my VISA they would have just taken the money. Keep in mind this is after months and months of very bad service. It is fortunate for me the company I work for had a dial up internet account for its employees use. At least I had some way to get on the internet every time Wildblue was down.

I am 42 years old, the father of 6 children and the owner of my own company. Wildblue is the absolute worse internet provider I have ever used since the early 1990’s when I first started using the internet.

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Sheri Ashmead
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Aug 13, 2007 12:00 am EDT

This is quite possibly the worst internet service experience I have ever had to deal with. Connectivity is about 50 %, speed is often slower than dial up! Oh they promise speeds up to 512mbps, take note of the part where it says "up to"., I have never had better than 100. Tech support is completely incompetent, if you are lucky enough to actually get a hold of them without having to wait on hold for over an hour. I am kicking myself for signing this contract! If you are even considering satellite internet service don't do it! If you are fortunate enough to have cable or DSL available, don't even think of this garbage for a second! If, like me, you have no high speed options, save the $50 a month and over $200 equipment costs, I never thought I would hear myself say these words "You are better off with dial up"!

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