Hughes
reviews and complaints

it does not work

they will not help

they overcharge and stop service as they wish
their rebagte is a lie
and i am not allowed to send emails

why is this company still allowed to lie and cheat the people of america.
gthey change their name and continue to cheat and rob us.

somone help me break this contract.

they lied to me of the type of service i would have.

do not under any circumstances get hughes net.

I have had to reboot my computer recently, I called hughes net to get a service tech out to my house to reinstall the hughesnet service page. They still have not come and i have had NO one contact me to let me know how to do it myself. I live in a rural area with no trees around my house and my computer is slower now than when I had dial up in the city. I am very disappointed in Hughesnet. I also found out if I want to cancel my contract with them it will cost me $700.00. Is there anything else I can do?

I have been a Hughesnet customer for a little over 2 weeks and i wish i had never heard of them ! First, when the installer (a guy in a mazda minivan with no signs or id ) shows up and after a brief site evaluation tells me i need a metal pole to mount the dish on, even though i have a existing pole already in the ground from a previous dish. I asked him why and his response was simply "i'm not allowed to use that one, and you will have to pay me $125.oo to install it." I then explained to him that no one at Screwsnet explained that to me or even mentioned any extra charge as i was supposed to be getting 'free' installation. After about 3 hours when the service was activated and i was $125.00 lighter i logged on and had a web page not found message. I called the customer support line and could not understand the tech at all, got frustrated and eventually figured it out on my own. Ever since the day i had this service installed it has been locking up, tons of pop ups through 2 pop up blockers, can't check my work email at all, a 'buffer overrun' error message everytime us it and anti virus and spyware offers galore. I have called customer service and gotten nowhere, they laugh and act like i am an idoit. one of them asked me if i knew where the F8 key was on the keyboard ! Another so called tech pulled the 'safemode' trick' and mysteriously my connection got better, and this fair access policy that they don't tell you about until it happens, SUCKS !. I only browse and check email as a rule and maybe spend 1 hour a day on my PC at home, so how could i be downloading 200MB of data ! Overall i give this company and 'F ' and if i had another option i would take it. PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THESE CONS ! THEY NEED TO CHANGE THE NAME TO SCREWSNET !

I've had this 'service' for several years. Living way down a dirt road, my only other option is dial up.
When it was direcway I didn't have any problems. When Hughes took over the service got slower, sporadic, and the ridiculous Fair Access Policy plays havoc with my time on the computer.
I do not download movies or even music. The most I do is update programs and play a few youtube videos now and then.
So, I get punished for using the internet too much.. punishment is even slower service. You wait around 24-36 hrs. for them to let you out of the corner.
When you call it is hell. Neither of us can understand what the other is saying.. and bottom line, they just tell me that I am downloading hundreds of MB during the middle of the night. I turn off and UNPLUG my computer and my modem every night.
It is a rip off and we who live in the country are being held hostage by these money mongers. 64.99 a month for a lousy connection. I cannot wait til the next innovation comes along and shoots hughes out of the sky!

Well the repairman just left here from trying to 'fix' my Hughesnet satellite system AGAIN. According to them there is nothing wrong with my equipment. I was also just on the phone with customer support asking about the terrible upload and download speeds I have been having. The speeds I am getting right now at this moment are LESS than HALF of what was advertised/promised when I began this nightmare over a year ago. The customer service technician tried to make an analogy comparing the horrible speeds to many cars traveling down a busy road; meaning when there's a lot of traffic it is congested and the speed is slow. My response to that was well if it is that congested why don't you build a BIGGER ROAD? Since i got up this morning at 6 a.m. (when the speed was good but unfortunately I was busy getting the kids off to school) I have watched the speed drop in half by 8 am and drop by HALF AGAIN by 10 a.m. According to their 'parameters' this is acceptable. What a load of crap. Something that doesn't work as it was advertised is of no use to me, especially something costing this much!

I might add this is not the only trouble I have had with them; 2 days after the original installation my modem went out and i had service only about half the time. They sent me a new modem but it was the wrong model and would not work with the dish I have. Then they got mad at me when I asked for a call tag to return the equipment. They actually expected me to return the modem at my cost. Ugh. Many phone calls later I finally got a repairman to come out. Not only did the modem need replacing, but the radio arm too.

Once the system was 'fixed' that time I then tried to recoup some of the money I had been shoveling their way, since i had sporadic or no service for about 6 months while they had me foolishly undoing cables and looking outside to see how the weather was, NOT WANTING to send a repairman although I had asked them to do so repeatedly in that 6 month period. Well, they didn't want to give us ANY credit on the bill, because I had stopped calling them every day. Go figure. I finally got a supervisor and asked her why in the world would I want to continue to call when they obviously weren't going to DO anything? I finally got one month free service for 6 months of B.S.

So now we are on the speed issue. If I quit my day job, and stay up all night in the middle of the night I guess it would be O.K. to use the computer then, but gee, I can't do that. The speeds are fine in the (late) night time and right when I get up to go to work, at 5 am. After that it all goes down the tubes. I can actually get a better connection speed on DIAL-Up!

The last call to customer service really got me steamed. I can get a better speed they tell me (now) if I upgrade my plan for another 10 or 20 dollars a month, and go to the 'pro' or 'business' service plan. I think they have already gotten enough of my money, and I am not going to upgrade.

On a side note, they are launching a new satellite, and the speeds are supposed to be wonderful as it won't be bouncing your signal back and forth twice before it gets to it's destination. Too bad this privelige is going to be for NEW customers and not for the ones who are already pulling their hair out.

If you live in the boondocks like I do, for goodness sakes don't get a HughesNet system, go with another provider or you will be sorry.

Hughesnet publishes (see FAQ 03-Connection speeds) that a Pro Plan subscribeer will geet up to 1.0 Mbps, with typical speeds of about 650-750 Kbps during peak times. They are right about the speed of 650-750, but its all day long! Peak hours are 24 hrs to them, not just a cuple of hours when everyone is checking email or whatever. I have been fighting with them for seven months to no avail. I can't even get them to cancel my service without a fight and a penalty. This company ought to be investigated for unfair and deceptive advertising practices, breach of contract, and ailing to meet their obligations to the public for satellite services. They ought to lose thier license to operate. Perhaps a class action law suit is appropriate. If one starts, count me in!

HAD HUGHES NET FOR 2 PAINFUL YEARS (CONTRACT).
GOT MAYBE ONE YEARS WORTH OF SERVICE OUT OF THE TWO WE PAID FOR. VERY SLOW SPEED SERVICE IF WE HAD SERVICE SOMETIMES WE HAD NO SEVICE FOR A WEEK AT A TIME.
TRIED CALLING THEM OR I SHOULD SAY INDIA THATS WHERE ALL THE CALLS WENT.THAT NEVER WENT WELL. FINALLY WE WENT TO A LOCAL SERVICE CALLED SKY BEAM THEY ARE WONDERFUL!
BUT NOW WE GET A COLLECTION LETTER FROM A COLLECTION AGENCY FOR A $ 20.32 BILL WE NEVER SAW, AND THE COLLECTION AGENCY DOESNT KNOW WHAT ITS FOR EITHER, IN A RUDE MANOR I MIGHT ADD!
NOW I REALIZE HOW PRINCIPLE CAN BE ATTACHED TO SUCH A SMALL DOLLAR AMOUNT. I WILL FIGHT THIS !

We live in a rural area where high speed internet is not available to us. We had HughesNet for less then a year when we were continually experiencing Satellite outage messages and very slow service - slower than dial-up. I spent alot of time on the phone with customer service reps who could barely be understood. After several conversations in which they had me continually resetting the modem, etc. they told me our equipment was out of date and needed to be upgraded. I asked them to upgrade the equipment and they told me that we owned the equipment and would have to purchase new equipment with a new 2 year agreement. We were not even a year into the first agreement. When I asked what it would cost to cancel the service, they told me $300.00. We have been paying $79.00 per month for service that at many times is slower than dial up. I have trouble sending any power point files, PDF files, JPEG files and Photos. Even if I try and send one at a time, we receive a message that the file is too large to send.

I would not recommend this service to anyone. Once our contract is up, we are definitely switching. This company needs to be held accountable for their failure to provide. If I performed in my job the way they performed, I would be guilty of negligence!

Here is information regarding a Class Action Lawsuit against HughesNet:

http://www.druginjurylawyerblog.com/2008/09/pbm_files_class_action_against.html

PBM Files Class Action Against HughesNet --- Satellite Broadband Company

The law-firm of Pogust, Braslow, & Millrood, LLC, recently filed in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a lawsuit against HughesNet, Inc., Hughes Communications, Inc., and Hughes Network Systems, LLC, for breach of contract and frauduluent business practices involving the marketing of the HughesNet® Satellite Broadband Network System.

Filed on behalf of HughesNet® subscribers and consumers, the Complaint alleges inter alia that the satellite broadband Company's nationwide advertisement of "Highspeed Internet by Satellite: Wherever Whenever" was materially false and misleading.

The class action lawsuit also alleges that HughesNet intentionally "oversold" its bandwidth, whereby thousands of HughesNet® subscribers and consumers were subjected to limited Internet broadband accessibility, speed, functionality, and connectivity.

Additionally, it is alleged that HughesNet actively marketed HughesNet® subscribers and consumers to upgrade their broadband plan under the representation that such would result in faster Internet broadband access. Despite this, HughesNet® subscribers and consumers experienced significant broadband delays, including extremely slow uploading/downloading speeds, unreliable connectivity, and the inability to access email. Furthermore, HughesNet® subscribers and consumers were often required to incur additional costs, fees, and early termination penalities, as a result of HugheNet's false advertising.

If you or someone you know is a HughesNet® subscriber and/or customer and have experienced similar Internet broadband related issues, please contact our law-firm for a free consultation.

Well said! I am in the same sinking boat, living in the boonies with no other option. Being an online instructor and graphic designer, I get very stressed out at not being able to complete my work despite paying a premium monthly like you. I saw someone suggested filing a complaint with ftc.gov and I intend to do just that. Perhaps if everyone did the same thing we might see some progress. It is unlikely we will ever get cable where we live. We do intend to move in the future and cable will be top of my list when looking for a new home. Its a disrgace and they should be held accountable. (Side note: almost 3 hours and still waiting for a product upload of 9 mb in size to complete and its only 44% there).

I had HughesNet for a year, and it was the biggest waste of money I ever got scammed into. The service went out whenever it rained - even a very light drizzle would knock me offline for hours! It was ridiculously slow when it DID work, and the VOIP phone service I had at the time had a delay of a full two or three seconds with my $90/month "lightning-fast" internet. The lag was so bad that my father got into the habit of saying "over" after every sentence so I'd know when he was finished talking and wouldn't interrupt while the delay had me thinking he wasn't going to say anything else. When the contract was up, I canceled my service, and HughesNet continued to charge me for service I didn't even have anymore - for three months straight! Every month, I would call and complain, they'd "apologize for the mistake", and promise to refund my money. By the end of the third month, I canceled my credit card, filed a formal complaint with my bank, and threatened legal action if HughesNet didn't refund every cent of the $270 they tried to screw me out of. It took two more months for them to finally comply, and to add insult to injury, shortly after I canceled my credit card, I received a very indignant phone call from a rude HughesNet billing guy who informed me that my monthly auto-payment hadn't gone through and if I didn't pay right then and there, MY SERVICE WOULD BE DISCONNECTED. When I told him I'd canceled my credit card, he reamed me for dodging my responsibilities and told me if I didn't want to pay my bills, I shouldn't have gotten the service in the first place. He laughed when he said this, and his tone was so annoyingly smug that I was not particularly polite when I told him I hadn't had service with HughesNet for three months and had canceled my card to stop the continued unauthorized charges.

Bottom line: the customer service is rude and unhelpful, the internet service itself is below average at best, and the company is nothing but a black hole of greed and incompetence. Stay as far away as humanly possible - even dial-up is better than what you'll get from this sorry bunch of con artists.

Thank you so much, they did the exact same thing to me, said they couldn't mount it and wanted $133.00 to set up a pole. Than billed me 30 days earily and won't give me a refund, if you go to the general I have several other people to back you up. I'm on a 30 day trial and they won't return my money, they asked me to return there dish and box and they would give me $200.00 and that was it. They took $475.00 out of my account and that's not including the $133.00 for that stupid pole... Please get bak to me if you can my e - mail is miss_canter@yahoo.com Thank You...

MARK WEAVER 02/18/2013
I GUESS I'M ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES. ALL THEY BILKED ME OUT OF WAS $40..00. ON SATURDAY, 02/16/2013,
I CALLED [protected], A HUGHESNET TEL. NUMBER, TO ASK ABOUT SERVICE. THE HACK SALESMAN TALKED ME
INTO GIVING UP M, Y DEBIT CARD NUMBER. WE SET UP A TENATIVE INSTALL DATE. I TOLD HIM I WASN'T SURE IF
I WANTEDS HUGHES NET OR NOT. HE TOLD ME I COULD CANCEL AT ANY TIME BEFORE THE INSTALLATION.
HE ASSURED ME THAT NO MONEY WOULD BE CHARGED TO MY ACCOUNT UNTIL I CONFIRMEDTHE INSTALL. CHECKING MY BANK ACCOUNT LATER THAT DAY I FOUND OUT $40.00 HAD BEEN WITHDRAWN FROM MY CHECKING. I HADN'T AUTHORIZED IT. I FOUND OUT TODAY, 02/18/2013, AGLS HAD CONTACTED ME TO ARRANGE THE INSTALL. UPON CONTACTING THEM I CANCELED IT. I HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS WHEN I HADN'T RECEIVED AN
EMAIL FROM HUGHESNET WITH THE INFO ABOUT THE EXCHANGE. I DID, HOWEVER, WRITE DOWN ALL THE
PARTICULERS EXCEPT, DARN IT, THE GUY'S NAME. SO EVEN THOUGH IT WILL PROBABLY COST ME $10.00 MORE TO
GET ANOTHER DEBIT NUMBER, I DIDN'T GET SHAMED INTO PUTTING UP ANOTHER POLE. I DON'T WANT TO
SOUND CONDECENDING, BUT DO THESE PEOPLE LIVE IN MUD HUTS? DON'T THEY KNOW THE DISH CAN BE
ATTACHED TO THE ROOF? IT'S SATALITE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

MARK R. WEAVER
gumboski@hotmail.com

I agree with you ...worst company in the world...internet does not work and they say it is my fault...I called and always talk to someone in India or phillipines...and they will not give me to a supervisor and then they say hold on I hold for 20 minutes and get another person in another country... I asked to speak to an american in the US and they say that is not possible...I hate Hughes Net and want everyone to in the US to ban Hughes net.. not American workers and terrible service and terrible customer service...I canceled my service because it does not work and they charged me 370, and want me to return the equipment at my expense...good luck with that...!

Hughesnet is a terrible company to deal with. They are either completely unaware of how poor their service is, or they strive hard to make sure you know you have no options when dealing with them. Based on my experience I think it is the latter. I could write a book on the crappy service I have received from this company. I, like the previous poster, had a very rude installer who also ran up the bill with various installation fees that amounted to over $900 total when he left (the pole thing brings back memories). Within the first few days I ran over their Fair Access Policy and upgraded by account to ProPlus. I started with the Home Plan, which has a 200mb download threshold. Never having had access to highspeed internet before, I quickly realized that 200mb is nothing. Next came a problem with the satellite which required someone to come out and provide a fix; I had no internet. This was immediately after their first email upgrade, which leaves me suspicious to this day. Hughesnet technical support said that the company who would do the fix would call me within 5 business days, which they did on the very last day. That company then arrived 4 days later and did fix the problem. Apparently hughesnet is too embarrassed to charge me for the event, though they told me I would be charged on my monthly bill. Months later I have not received a charge. That is the only good news on that "incident."

Fast-forward to June 30th, 2008. I am not one of those customers who was "affected" by the AI6 incident now posted on hughesnet's website. However, because the company has been diverting the traffic that usually went to that satellite (which crashed) to other satellites, my download speeds are barely above dialup speeds. I am on the ProPlus plan, as I mentioned. Under that plan I am supposed to receive up to 1500 kbps in download speed and a minimum of 650 kpbs, which includes peak hours. Anyway, on June 30th I go to download a program and it takes nearly 30 minutes for approximately 30 mb. Puzzled, I go into system control and everything is green. I had not surpassed my bandwidth limits, so i called technical support. After about an hour on the phone, I was told to conduct speed tests on their site every day during the morning, afternoon and evening for three days so that they could analyze the data and troubleshoot the problem.

Today is July 4th, 3 days later. I called hughesnet and they say they are aware of the problem and they are sending the issue to their engineering department. The technician told me than many customers are calling with the same complaint. Again, I was never aligned with the satellite that crashed. These speeds are a direct result of hughesnet rerouting affected customers to other satellites. The technican can provide no timeframe for when my speeds will return! I am paying for a plan that does not deliver the advertised speeds, and will be contacting their billing department WHEN the issue is resolved to have every single day I did not get the speeds promised to me under our contract refunded back to me. To make it clear, I am averaging 70/30 all day long here. Mysteriously at 12 a.m. each night I get speeds of 1000+/100+ that then disappear by late morning (9 or 10 a.m.). Every night it happens. It is hard to imagine thousands of customers logging off at exactly 12 a.m., thus freeing up bandwidth. They are doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes right now and are not keeping customers abreast of what is going on.

Hughesnet is, without a doubt, the worst company I have ever dealt with. Period, end of discussion. Their technical support guys are usually nice and friendly, but that isn't all their is to service. you need to deliver the goods, and hughesnet never seems capable of doing that.

My Aunts internet service has never worked since day one and she pays $ 71.00 a month. She is 69 yrs old so I have repeatedly call the peovider and they want to charge her $125.00 to send out a tech. We have went through all the process on the telephone and the connection is slower then dail up. But they arrsure us it is working ok. She can't attach files and the computer always says internet connection problem contact server. They won't work with us. We go over everything IPP ect and this dosen't change a thing. We want to cancel service but she has a contract for two yrs and they will charge her over $400.00 to do so. They are robbing her blind. She pays monthly for a service that dosen't work. Do not get Hughes internet service, you will be sorry you did so.

you know they should tell you about the[so called]fairness act when you order the service.i didn't know about it untill i called about my service was slow-if it picked up at all-then that's when i found out about the tokens for $7.50-that's bs

My service from Hughes net was so slow so I called them. Apparently because of some so called fairness act, all hughes net customers are only allowed a 300mb download per month. If you exceed this download limit, your internet will be slow and worthless. Here's the kicker, the tech directs me to Hughes services website where they will sell you tokens for $7.50 a piece and you will again have super fast internet. They also give 1 free token per month. I don't know about anyone else but doesn't this sound like it should be illegal. I mean, we are paying for service aren't we? And how exactly does that make it fair for all hughes net customers, whoever wants to pay more gets better service? This is ridiculous and I am going to file a complaint! By the way, I used the free token and my internet is super fast again. The website, so you can see for yourselves is www.services.hughes.net.

It IS possible that something is amiss with the computer. It may be worth your while to have the system checked, especially if it as older system. There are any number of problems that could affect Internet connection and speed. If you don't want Hughes to do the diagnostic there are any number of other companies who can do it for you. Its typically cheaper to take the computer to them, but they can test the internet connection if you have them come to the house.

Additionally, if you have a friend with a laptop they could bring it over and try the internet connection on their computer. In the event the laptop also has problems connecting then call back and have them explain why two different computers have the same problem.

I have Wild Blue and don't recommend you change to it. Our complaints about it are same as yours are about Hughes!

I am upset I have been trying to terminate my contract with them. I called them to terminate on May 29th they said they told me that I had to call them back on the 25th of May. I have been traveling and without my mail or computer for two months and find that they have charged my credit account twice and won't undo the charges so says Lola in the Philippines. I really don't like it when I have to deal with people in other countries about business that is supposed to be American.

My advice is don't deal with them at all if you can help it.

I had Hughes Net for almost 2 years. I was paying $100.
a month for a service that worked part of the time and then it was super slow. Broadband what a joke. I was finally able to get DSL and it is a godsend. I cancelled Hughes over 2 months ago and their equiptment is still here. They want me too spend another hour on the phone talking to someone I can't understand to get it removed. It can rust away before I call them again.

We are experiencing the same problem. Tech says speed of 17 kbps is good, but we have documentation that speed is normally up to about 7oo kbps. They are in breach of contract. We have been paying for a service they don't seem to be able to provide, all they are interested in is the money they collect every month. We must stick together.

Contact the state attorney generals office and the better business bureau in your area and file a complaint. If enough people file a complaints, something will get done.

Do not stream a lot of movies. Don't go on social medias a lot. But they say we used 50 GB in one month. That is impossible. Dec 2023 we streamed 3 movies and we did not even come close to using 50 GB. They are ripping people off. They want you to pay more.

I think the fair access is a bunch of bull, as we are in the middle of 72 acres no one around us for 2 and 1/2 miles. Yet we can wake up and be suspended check usage time and it says 364 mega bites in one hour, from 6pm to 7pm. First of all no one was home at that time and with our computers that 364 mega bites it would have taken way longer than 1 hour. As they brag faster speed downloads etc NOT. We have monitored our downloads and most updates might be one or two gigs so go figure. That wasn't the only download they also said more was downloaded at 11p.m. to midnight we were in bed then again the next morning from 12 noon to 1p.m. again no one was on the computers as it was when we got online we noticed everything lagging bad. That is when my husband called and complained as this has been a problem with them continuously at least every other month we fight with them. And again the same conversation who lives next to us "no one" this battle is at least every 2 months. We don't have ipods etc nor do we download movies etc. At first the tech said we can't undo the suspended fair access that was with our first complaint. Then my husband upgraded giving us more bandwidth time. And it happened again this time the tech undid the fair access ..hmmm interesting as they said it couldn't be done. Then it happens again they suggest we monitor our downloads well we are notified when we get updates, but for a month they told my husband to check and keep a record of downloads and usages and times, funny nothing happened that month but they gave us a case number and would look into it . Now 2 months later this happens again the tech lifted the fair access suspend and gave us a case number saying they would look into it. Oh did I mention you now get a token to lift this as you have been a longtime customer. We didn't use our token. But if this was not a problem why offering of the token. Also if we were downloading all this stuff that they say we are we would be out of memory. Since they have taken over the service has been terrible but there is no other server except one and they only handle so many people and you have to keep calling them to see if anyone in this area has moved etc before you can replace them. Yes hughes net can say they are faster than dial up but not by much as my computer doesn't look like the one on the commercial while dial up is still loading. We have had our satilite for 20 yrs with direct tv and it wasn't till hughes net took over have we started this problem.
Not a happy camper

Hughes net has to be by far the worst internet service i have ever used. Not only do they charge you a ridicolous amount for installation and thier 125.00 pole that is ### considering I have plenty of places to mount it. I can't get on the internet more than about two hours and my speed goes slower than dial up. And don't try and call them and have a conversation with some ###er in another country who speaks ninety mile an hour broken english which you can't understand a dam word of. I absolutely hate this internet provider, they are a rip off and all they want to help you is more money. After one month of service and the highest internet bill I have ever paid I am willing to tell them no english speaking ### to take that bill, and pole, and dish sitting on it and shove it up thier candy ###!

Boy, you hit the nail on the head! Once they have you in a two-year contract, they can inflict the "Policy" on you as an inducement to cough up more money. I called the foreign manned service desk four times today and got nowhere.

Another poster said she got good, fast service from this number: [protected]. Pass it around. I, for one, am going to mobilize a campaign to flood State’s Attorney Generals offices with valid complaints. If nothing else it’s fraudulent advertizing. Also, the BBB and Federal Trade Commission.

I agree fully, and have approached Hughes on providing a REAL TIME (why wait 15 minutes?) monitor more than once. I always get the same the response - nothing offered through Hughes, but they are working on it. Of course, that's crap. FAP may have originally been implimented to limit bandwidth hogs, but Hughes has since realized they can turn it into a revenue generator. I've been with Hughes for 9 years, and have watch the service go down, while the push for more revenue goes up.

I've been in the tech field since the mid 1990's, moving from dial-up to ISDN and finally to Satelite (no other high speed option in my area). If it weren't for the cost, I'd go back to ISDN simply for reliabilty, even though it is not as fast as Hughes (except during certain periods of the day).

Hughes recongized that even common web browsing is creating greater bandwidth demands, with more and more sites utilizing flash, etc. Add to that all the other large size downloads available, and Hughes recognized a cash cow. There are more levels of service available now, and each one has a higher threshold limit, theoretically letting you download more by paying more. The bandwidth is available - if you want to pay their horrendous prices for it. But if you want to stream anything, dowload movies, etc., you will pay to get it, right? that's their motivation.

There are real-time tools available to monitor usage, but they also generally cost money (so far I haven't found any good free ones). Hughes SHOULD provide something that, as you say, should give AT LEAST 15 minutes updates, but since the real time tech is available, that is what they really should use. My hughes usage will actually update with a 2hour lag, but you can still download a lot in 2 hours, so that's not feasible, either. The truth is they don't want us to monitor - they want us to upgrade and spend more money.

I have Hughesnet because I have no other option. The price is ridiculous and the service is horrific! If you have any other option, take it! If you download ANYTHING you will be put on the FAP and it's slower than dial up. The download manager is a joke! Applications like iTunes are not compatible with it.
If anyone knows of a better option in an area that has very poor cell service, no cable and no DSL I would love to hear about it!

Bill Moss, I can't even read your complaint. Ever hear of puncuation marks? It would help to know if you had a valid complaint if it were intelligible.

I dislike Hughes as much as the next person. I've been with them for 9 years (they have always been Hughes - Direcway was a branding name, just like HughesNet is now). They have always had a FAP - just like any other legal BS, you have to read the information. Don't blame them for having an FAP and you not knowing. Yes, it's vague and anything BUT fair, but they had it 9 years ago. Wild Blue also has one.

I don't recommend satelite to anyone. The only reason I still have it is because there just is no other viable option in my area. There are plenty of legitimate complaints about Hughes, including the implementation of the FAP. No knowing it existed won't hold water for a real complaint report, though.

Real problems - Implementation of FAP: i.e, over what time fram is the thrreshold accumulation calculated?
Reinstatement of service after FAP implimentation (discrestionary, and often exceeds 24 hours).
Why FAP levels can be raised by buying next higher service tier (availabitly goverened by monopolistic pricing).
Documented limiting of bandwidth between the hours of 4:00 PM and Midnight Eastern time.
Hughes charges $125 just to call a service tech to come to your home, without telling that you still have to pay them, OR telling you that you can call them yourself (i had to do both).

Hughesnet is the biggest rippoff I've been associated that I can remember. We got it ( DireCway) right after Hurricane Rita when the cable provider did not re establish service to my area. I was under the impression it was unlimited and never heard of the (Un ) Fair access policy until it became HughesNet. I was told I could upgrade to the HN7000S modem for faster connections and more usage.

hughesnet is the worst going to get dsl.they wont your questionsthey wont even answer the phoneshow do they stayin busniessif they dont get me fixedand soon two months is too long to be without computeri will call tv have them come out and watch me pull it off the roofthis is the worst service i have seen dial up is betteranswer the damn phonefix my net or get it off my rooff

highes net is a scam and should be closed down

Hughes net really should be closed down

They still have customers only because most of us have no frickin' choice. I've been looking for another provider only to find that every other one out there is just as sneaky and underhanded as Hughes. It's a monopoly, and it'd be great if someone could do something about it. I'd love to see this get taken into court. No one is happy with this joke of a company. I only wish I could find another ISP so my family could tell Hughes to shove it up theirs.

I THINK THIS IS THE BIGGEST FRAUD THERE EVERY WAS . As FOR as INTERNET. And as for fast serves it's not what they say it is. we might as well have had kept the diale up we had. I'ts about as fast as that. As for as money that too is a fraud they tell you one price and they take all the mony you have in the bank. I'm very dissadeisfied with the whoe thing, But they have you bye the balles now that they have you in there grips. once you sing a contrack you have to stay with them for 2 damm years befor you can get out of it or pay a large amount of money to get out of it.I was told that the price was 59.99 a month with taxes and they just took over 70.00 out of our account now they can't tell me that taxes or 20.00 dollors more a month.
people who are on social securty always get riped off it's not funny.I just hope I can find a news carrer to get this too and have it posted all over where the world Ive made a copy of this letter for my recordes.
yours truly custermer of hugenet.

HughesNet has a habit of cutting me off from internet access when they consider I've reached my "limit".
Even though I'm still paying for the service, after being cutoff, I have no access to the internt.
Within the United States, that's considered "Theft Of Services". Which is a punishable crime.
Gary Stanullwich

Hughesnet is the provider of last resort. These are the main complaints.

1. Fair Access Policy is poorly articulated and completely out of date with modern high speed internet needs. While it would seem that a satellite link is a sophisticated technology, the severe limits of their FAP render their services archaic.

2. Service is a joke. Their favorite trick is to not spend any time actually understanding a request, but replying to an question that has not been asked, usually with a response that is equivalent to a no. Using off-shore reps means they are hard to understand and do not understand you. They are often surley and condescending.

3. Cost. They are high end and considering FAP, they are a terrible value.

I've been a customer since 2017 because I really have no other choices (a long story short).

Flee! Run! Avoid at all costs!

I live in a remote area that doesn't have cable or high speed internet through the phone line. Obviously, the advertisement regarding ordering hughesnet appealed to me. When I talked to customer service, I told them that my job entailed downloading very large files. To the best of my understanding from the broken English speaking employee, that wouldn't be a problem. I ordered it and of course, my first download went over my fair usage amount or whatever its called. I called to ask why I was told that large downloads wouldn't be a problem, the response was that it wouldn't be if I did my downloads between the hours of 2 - 5 am! Those are typically not my working hours! I now have a wireless card for my computer with 5 GB of downloads per month and it it way cheaper than hughesnet. I'm getting ready to break my contract and can't wait to go to battle with them! In my opinion, it is absolutely the worse service in the industry!

I'm a Informations Technology guy. I was visiting a client to install software and during the day the client's satellite modem would shut off -- all the lights go out. After 5 minutes or so the modem would come back on, and the client would have Internet again for 20 minutes or so until the modem shuts down again.

So we called HughesNet support. Very polite people, but they _would_not_authorize_a_technician_to_check_the_modem_ ! When the modem was on, the "help" desk guy would say everything looked OK from his end. When the modem was down, the guy said there was an outage and their technicians were working on it. But most of all they wanted my client to re-boot the router. It's not the router guys! We can SEE the modem shutting down! Bottom line is that the lack of customer service means my client can't get the repair we know they need -- so where's the "service" in that?

I have had Hughesnet for 3 years now because I can't get cable or DSL in my area. It is awful. The connection speed is terrible. I am writing this at 2am and that seems to be the only time when I have decent internet access. I keep getting a message that the internet failed to connect to the server. The download time for my mail is just awful. It if has a large attachment, you can forget it ever downloading. Their site to view your mail is pathetic. The customer service is polite enough but not knowledgeable. They read off a script. They are difficult to understand due the the Indian accents. They have NO idea what to do if you are using a MAC. I just ask them exactly what it is they want me to access on the computer and find it myself. I know I am not the only one with this problem. My friend has it as well and has the exact same problems. If I need to download anything at all, I pretty much have to do it at 3am. The longer something tries to download the slower it goes. Then it just cuts you off for "exceeding the fair access policy." Yes, it is still better than dial up if this is all you have access to. But for the money they charge to set it up and the monthly payments, it is a rip off.

What a sham! Hughes Net should be called lose net because they claims internet speeds 50x faster than dial up and yet at $120/mo my download speeds are at times - slower than dial up. The installation was a complete disaster-the tech was reluctant to install the dish on my roof due to snow so it cost me an extra 100 bucks cash after working him down from $125-plus I had to dig the trench for the cable. In addition, the tech could not use my existing cable from the modem in my garage to my desktop location. He packed his tools and told me to get a wireless router?. Did I mention that the tech was a subcontractor so when you complain to "lose net" they pass the buck-WTF! I've had this "service" less than a week and I already canceled. Do yourself a favor and find someone else to provide your internet service-otherwise bend over and grab your ankles!

August of 2017, I installed hughesnet as I found myself back College and in need of a service that would provide me with the ability to take on-line courses. Up until June 6 of 2017 I was happy with my service (although it was expensive and had low bandwidth) and not intended to switch, but that all changed when my modem broke. Let me briefly explain the problem.
June 8, 2017 8am
I called tech. services and after they tried to determine the problem by phone made an appointment for a service call. I was told this would occur in 1 to 2 days at $29.95 (Case# 2304471) and although it would put me slightly behind in my Pre-calculus class I agreed to stay by both my home and cell phone in order to wait for the call.
June 9, 2017 12 pm
I called tech services to check on the status of this service call, as I had not received a phone call (Case # [protected]). I was told that I would receive a call within the next 2 hours.
June 10, 2017 9:30am
I called account services to find out what the problem was as I had not received the previously promised calls and they referred me back to tech. services.
9:50 am
I called tech services and they informed me that there was a note on my account saying that there were six failed phone attempts by the installer starting on June 8 at 4pm. Since I had not left the house since the original call I told the tech employee that that was impossible and he told me that someone would call within the hour.
1:20 pm
I called account services, again explained the prior information as well as the fact that no one attempted to call as was promised at approximately 10 am. I was placed on hold in order for the account specialist to re over the notes on my account. After being placed on hold, the call was disconnected and I waited for a call back.
1:56 pm
I called back and once again was transferred to tech services. This was when I was told that someone had tried to call and after getting no answer, left a voice message saying that an installer could not be scheduled at this time and one would be scheduled as soon as possible. After explaining that I was a college student and falling behind in my class due to waiting around the house for an installer to come fix my modem, that is when I was told that there was no installer in my area and they were trying to find one who would respond as soon as possible (Case # [protected]). I then told him not to bother as I no longer needed Hughes net at Verizon was going to have me up and running within the hour and canceled the service call.
After hanging up with tech services, I placed yet another call to account services to cancel my account in which I once again had to explain to a service account manager the previous calls my urgency in needing internet service and she placed me on hold to find out what the status was on this problem. She explained that they were trying to find someone who would be able to respond to my area, which would not be until Monday June 14, 2017 and in the meantime offered me a free service call as well as a month’s free service (Case# [protected]). She then transferred my call to a service manager who informed me that after six failed phone call attempts to schedule an appointment, my original call had to be re-scheduled, which happened at 2 pm today, and that he/she would call me. He then told me to call account services back once this was completed in order to receive credit for these promised offers. I asked if he would just send me a new modem, but he said no, as he could not be sure that my modem was the problem.
June 11, 2017
Have not received a phone call, opened account with Verizon wireless, receiving two ½ times more bandwidth for less then what I was paying at Hughes net.
June 17, 2017
To date I have not received the first phone call from a technician or accounts services concerning my numerous phone calls and active case numbers.

Why am I so upset?
One: I was lied to concerning an appointment time (1-2 days) and that numerous phone attempts were made (although I carried both phones with me for days in order to not miss the anticipated call).
Two: if I had been told the truth from the beginning I could have traveled to the University in order to use the computer labs that would have prevented me from doing a marathon Friday through Tuesday to complete my course homework and tests that were due by June 15, 2017.
Three: I have a connection to Verizon that has two ½ times more usages available to me for $20.00 less a month than what I was paying Hughesnet.
Four: I continue to pay my last two-month subscription even though I cannot use it, as the modem is broken.
Five: A company is only as good as its word and technical support….Hughesnet failed and I was the one who suffered when I needed my service the most.

I found out about Hughesnet doing a promotional offer about a month ago by ways of a work associate who lives close by and who had gotten the service installed and said it was great. I called the Hughesnet number listed in our phonebook and spoke with an operator who was very polite and had an anser for every question I had. He offered a deal under the "recovery act" saying our equipment would be free and belong to us forever, that the installation would be free, and pay only $40 a month which was normally supposed to be $70. I hastily signed up and 2 days later a technician showed up and had me outfitted and up and running in around 4 hours. He even stayed a while to make sure the service worked correctly. For the first 2 weeks the service was pretty fast to be a 1Mbps connection (speak easy bandwith tester averaged from 756kbps to 1.1Mbps), and sometimes during their late night download zone it would go to over 1.7Mbps. But starting yesterday, the speed during the daytime dropped to just over 100kbps and stayed that way until late last night. Today it is hovering around 300kbps. I called Customer service last night and discovered the only Americans youll ever talk to with hughesnet is the person who got you to sign up and the installer. All i got were East Indians and Phillipinos who did not understand half of what I said and I couldnt understand none of what they were saying. They ended up telling me I needed a computer technician because the issue had to be inside of my computer because their speed tests showed I was within acceptable limits. It was very frustrating, Im just glad that our deal states we are under no kind of contract with them, and if the problems doesnt clear up I will discontinue their service. Wish I would of came here and read all of the complaints befor I got the service in the first place might not have been so eager to sign up.

The installer arrived at a different time than scheduled and my grown son was here so he told the installer to go ahead. The installer put the satelite dish in front of my home 9 feet from my living room windows and 10 feet from my front steps and I live on 2 1/2 acres of land in a rural area. I immediately phoned Hughes Net when I arrived home and told them I was not satisfied. I told them to either come and move the dish or remove it. They now, without discussing any of this with me, have had an internal investiagation and informed me that since someone authorized the installation, (my son), I would have to pay to have the dish moved. I cannot get anywhere with anyone at HughesNet.

When our connection speed became longer than a dial up service we called to complain. Ended up paying to "upgrade" .Guess what we got? We pay more to be slowed down with any downloads (which we rarely do at home), have to buy TOKENS to be brought back to a usable speed, that doesn't disconnect a site because it takes too long to load, and still get slow service EVERY SINGLE NIGHT and ALL WEEKEND.
I had to get a Verizon 4G Hotspot for business travel and now i think we'll just cancel Hughesnet and use the Hotspot at home. We've had Hughesnet for years and have never been satisfied. They are extremely misleading .We had no choice at the time because we live in a rural area without cable. We have Direct TV and love it.At the time the satellite internet service was through Direct TV, but once it switched to Hughesnet, nothing but frustration.
It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I can't shop online because I barely have a bar and keep getting thrown off.Waste...a huge waste.

I just got it and about an hour after they left i tried to play on xbox live and it makes my xbox freeze and the connections horrible.I have tried multiple times and only once i got on for about 2 minuts then it kicked me off. also when online you can only get on 1 computer at a time.They told me it was great for gaming and you could have multiple computers online, but its all just a scam to get you hooked on crapy internet for two years.

The reason Hughes has a "fair access policy" is simple: it's a satellite ISP and everything has to go through the satellite and, unfortunately, Hughes doesn't have a lot of those orbiting the planet. Here on the planet, everything is routed through wires and routers. With satellite the signal has to be sent to the satellite, which takes about a second then get routed to the proper station on the ground, then receive a reply and make sure it gets routed back to your satellite. This isn't exactly easy when the satellite is 20, 000+ miles away and if it were to get overloaded with so many requests at once and broke down, then it's not as easy to fix. Hence "fair access".

Of course "fair access" to Hughes means just using the Internet to check your e-mail. I don't think they understand yet that broadband Internet is for watching videos and playing games.

HUGHES SUCKS but my surfing and gaming is really not TOO laggy yes its not as good as dsl or cable not it beats dial up butr i hate this "fair access policy" i mean wtf noother forms of internet have it

ya same here. i try to play w.o.w. and get nothing but lag. i upgraded and got the static ip and saw apsolutly no change in game play, just the pocket book. so i downgraded and it plays the same :(.
this is the only internet avable to me in my area so im stuck.

I feel your pain. I have hughes net also and I can't do hardly anything! Even if I watch youtube videos for about 30minutes I will go over what they call "fair access limit". If I didn't live so far in the country I would have cable or dsl. For now Hughes Net is the only service I can get unless I want the slow dial up.

Hughes net is horrible... I got it so i could simply play Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne faster and have a little faster surfing speed, but it failed to even do that. It was fast when i got it but then it got slower and slower. Now i can't play games at all, and i get kicked off the internet all the time, AND im paying over 100 $ month. When i called them they said i need a static IP adress. So i got one and it made absolutly no diffrenece. Hughes net sucks don't bother.

im sueing the company, if any one wants to be apart of this let me know . tubedude3@hotmail.com

There is already a thread on this. I would suggest writing your Congressman, your Governor, and both of your Senators as well as contacting a good Lawyer regarding a Class Action Lawsuit. These are all things I am doing in my state. Don't expect much to be done at the moment, however. The Government is far too busy NOT dealing with our current economic crisis.

Do not get too aggitated with the reps you think reside in India or elsewhere.
apparently you have not been to the DC metropolitan area. Many reps with English as a second language are right here in the tech corridor located in Germantown, MD and don't be surprised if you are actually talking to a customer support agent here in the good ol U.S. of A!
Just the same, I doubt that a tech staffer here would know any more than someone overseas because of the nature of the "soft shoe book reading tech" hardly ever knows more than the hands on field tech that comes to your house to service the equipment.

As for the service techs, there are only a few people that install the hardware in the state due to the "wired" broadband market and the sat internet market being scattered in areas like where I live. So never be surprised if you see the same and only tech come to your place to work on your hardware. I considered being a installation tech myself several years ago but there was not enough work to keep me gainfully employed.

I am a HugesNet customer residing in the rural tier of southern Maryland in a fringe area that does not provide any other broadband services, even the dial up is terrible... the connection I am using to write this blog is only 28.8 kbs to that tell you how bad it is. I have been a DirectPC/HughesNet customer for over 4 years and this is the first time I have had and major issues with my hardware. In the last few months, I have had issues with going over on the Fair Access Policy (FAP) which is annoying because the downloads are mostly updates! Considering that I have not had this issues in the first 3 years, I think this is a ploy to get customers to upgrade to the more expensive packages.

It is likely that my transmitter took some damage last moth during a series of thunderstorms, but my connection quality has been slowly degrading over 6 months. I chalked it up to the satellite and atmospheric conditions and even the trees coming into bloom, but my signal strength has been a average of 62 since I purchased my system in 2004. I cheked my dish for any potential damage due to a fallen tree brance on my roof, and only thing that i could see is a very stretched RG-6 cable feeding the dish's transmitter port. I changed it out, rebooted my modem and my connection worked better than it had in months!
5 hours later, the system began to cycle in and out as if it was continuously rebooting.
The Transmit status falls out every few minutes and the TCP Acceleration Status is red flagged in and Not operational. I gave it 24 hours to see if it will clear itself up before I called it in.

So today I finally called in and had it looked into. During the call, there was a recording stating that there has been outages on the 93 longitude's satellite.
OK, But my service says its on 95 West and "has not had any problems" so says the service tech.

The tech rep pinged my modem and conducted a test and the end result: He stated that my transmitter is bad and needs servicing. Needless to say, My dish has been out of warranty since 2005 and is the likely culprit but that dose not account for the 6 some odd hours of above average service before it crapped out.

So now I have been hit with the $125.00 service fee and a 5-7 day wait, and a day of leave i will need to use for the tech to check things out at my home. I also have to use Juno to do the basic online task until i'm up linked again.

The only positive I have is a 7 day discount to my service until a tech services my system.

i posted this on another forumn but i will post it here too, if i can save at least one other person the time and trouble (and lots o cash for very little in return) that is Hughesnet, so much the better: my girlfriend and i are finding out the hard way- you cant read the full details until you are online.. thier 'Fair Access Policy' (do not exceed 200mb of daily download for our package or you get effectively shutdown for 24 hrs)is anything but... AND, contrary to what they say on the phone, they DO close ports, .. online gamers(or anyone) beware. Dial up is a better (faster? in alot of cases)option... when i get mad enough ill see what the state attorney general's office says...there needs to be some regulation of these type of businesses... oh and to cancel ..$350.00 to get out of thier 2 year contract. i REALLY wish we could get the terms of use mailed to consumers before entering into contracts like these.. id have gone without internet if id have known itd be like this - mad in rural Idaho...one thing i d like to add... you wouldnt go to a store, see an empty shelf and let the store clerk convince you to pay him for the non-existant item- why is Hughesnet allowed to sell more bandwidth than they appearantly can supply?... this, im guessing is the reason for the F.A.P... i heard another reason... but seem far fetched, as if your like me, the nearest house is quite some distance away- (the sell connections to your neighbor reason). believe me when DSL finally reaches us here, we will be rid of this mess-- i would be ashamed to offer such a poor product to my customers- but then corp. america has no soul or conscience.

I got a message from "florance smith" (florancesmith114@hotmail.com) . In that there is written that i have won some in Euro Afro Asia Sweepstakes Lottery International Program. I wanted to know is this company true or Fraud?Perhaps this program happens in holand...

Hughesnet is HHOORRIFFFICCALLY AWFUL! I have logged over 17 hours to upgrade my ssllooowwww system to a faster speed. HAHA on me. I only pay a lot more and cannot get any quick access. I have talked to several different countries after arguing with the automated person for 15-20 minutes. They understand nothing, NADA, nil, etc. I even had my service shut off for an upgrade when it did not need to be shut off. I wanted to pay my bill by a different debit source and ended up being restricted to my online account because I am a child. I am 43 years old. I was unable to speak to an English speaking person, and was transferred after being on hold for multiple times and multiple hours, to other countries and never did get a number to talk to a real person in my language. If I terminate sevice with Hughesnet before 1 year I have to pay a $400.00. I have been trying to finish my masters degree online and have spent more hours at my neighbors on their service to complete assignments. I continually speak to anyone and everyone so they don't have to suffer the way I have and the way you others have also suffered. Hughesnet has cost me litterally thousands of dollars. Pardon me but individuals of other countries are certainly "screwing" us. I have never before in my life said anything so disgraceful sounding as that, but this company (Hughesnet) inspires that in me.

Hughes net has always kind of sucked for even web browsing because once you hit the FAP it takes you to below dial up speeds, I know this because whenever Hughes starts not loading anything(sometimes not even google) I switch to a dial up connection.

Thats great because it ties up my phone lines which is one reason i pay ridiculous prices for sat interenet. I can't even play star craft online. That game is 10 years old and only requires a 28.8k modem meaning hughes isn't even delivering that.

Hughes net sucks. I thought I had signed up for Dish Net because I called dish and every thing I talked about on the phone led me to believe I had signed up with dish net with a 1 year contract. The tech came out and installed the system and I didn't pay too much attention till I walked out side and saw the dish that said Hughes net and Informed the tech that I had signed up for Dish net and he told me that they were the same thing and I didn't think too much about it. I was not told I had a limit on the system. I was told by the person that I would get 25 mbs and when I reached my limit it would drop down to 10 mbs which would still be enough to easily stream movies. What I got was 25mbs to start and use my allotted gigs it dropped to 1 mbs upload and down load which you can hardly get on the internet with. They told me I had so loang that I could opt out. Wrong. They will offer you a little something to keep trying just long enough to your opt out period is out and then they put the screws to you. I am not going to stand for it. I am writing a letter to the Attorney General of NC< Cal and the US attorney general. I writing a letter to the BBB and going to start posting complaints to their face book till they allow me to disxontinue without paying 400 for something I didn't sign up for. If you don't like drama and problems don' ever sign up fo Hughes net.

I have been a customer of Hughes Net for 5 years, only because I live in a rural area and have no other choice for internet service (I don't consider dial-up a choice). The service has not been that good since I started but knew I had to live with it until a wireless tower was built within range of my home. The service with Hughes Net continued to decline through the years, and many frustrating hours were spent on the phone with people that can't even pretend to care. I upgraded my modem to the 7000 in February, and paid the premium price of $79.99 per month for 'the best' plan. It didn't seem to make a difference in my service, which continued slow. I have been thrown off through their FAP about three times a week, which is extremely frustrating. I tried all known wireless companies, but was forced to live with slow service with Hughes Net. (There is a wireless internet service tower within 2 miles of my home but it is blocked by my neighbor's pole barn). This did not stop my search for a wireless company, and last week I finally found one that is 9 miles away and they provide and excellent signal. I never thought the internet could be so fast, this is really amazing. NOTHING comes close with Hughes Net, THEY ARE NOT HIGH SPEED. When I called to cancel my service, they informed me that I will be paying a $300.00 'early termination' fee. After being a customer for five years? What do they want, a lifetime commitment? The girl was actually laughing at me on the phone and said I can't do anything about it, because they reset their contracts when someone upgrades the equipment. I talked to three people on the phone, and each one told me that this is something that Hughes Net has as a policy and I can't get around it. Now I know why I wasn't told of this fine print when I upgraded. I would think that if there is an upgrade in the equipment, that it shows customer loyalty and people should not be penalized for this. I am frustrated and have to live with losing $300.00 to these scam artists. I feel the $300.00 is worth the price to have service that is light-years ahead of Hughes Net, AND I'm paying $40.00 per month for this! I will never go back to Hughes Net, if I have to use a satellite in the future it will be through another company, or I go to dial-up. I recommend anyone considering this company for service to run as fast as you can the other way. You will not get good internet service or customer service, and you will pay a high price. Lesson learned.

I will never recommend HughesNet to anyone. We subscribed about 6 month's ago and it is the equivalent of throwing your money in the trash. Of course, like most people, we assumed we were upgrading from dial-up. Hah. Thank goodness we kept the dial-up account, because in an emergency we rely on that for speed. Or I need to get around 4 or 5 a.m. to take advantage of one of the few times that HughesNet offers high speed internet. I am in the process of finding something better (rural area) and will cancel my subscription immediately. Somebody needs to close them down or penalize them for ripping off consumers.d

Can you please give the name of the faster company you are now using?

I agree with the post that was made regarding Hughes Net. We are under contract with Hughes Net and do not have service much of the time. My husband has to go to the library to post his grades because he cannot get internet service at home and we pay $60 a month for the service (no service). We have more than 30 case numbers from calls we've made about the problems we have with our connection. My husband was on the phone for over 3 hours the day after Christmas trying to dissolve our relation with them, they told us we would have to pay $300 termination fee, but we could upgrade to the faster service. I'm so glad I read the other post which stated the faster service was no faster and that our contract would start over with the upgrade. This is the worst company I have ever been involved with and would never recommend them. If they would change their way of thinking and put the customer's needs above their greed I'm sure they would be a much more prosperous company. RUN!

I guess I might as well chime in. Maybe between us we can save someone else the misery of dealing with this low life company. This was also submitted on [redacted] .com

I have been a Hughes.net user since 8/22/06 in that time I have experienced the absolute lowest, most useless, most uncooperative tech support that it has ever been my misfortune to experience. I am an electronics tech with over 45 years experience both in circuit level troubleshooting and IT. I do not need a flow chart reader to tell me that my system is fine when I can't access the internet. I have had trouble with the Hughes.net system from the very beginning. On two occasions they have sent me new modems unnecessarily because they simply were too incompetent to isolate the actual problems. Before you contact tech support with this company you had better first have a couple of good stiff drinks and take a few valium. You will get a very pleasant sounding person with such a thick East Indian accent that if you have poor hearing as I do, you will only catch one word in ten. Then the first thing they will do is have you reset your modem, in the process clearing any diagnostic data it has stored. Of course in most cases clearing the modem gets you going again for at least few minutes, so then they can find no problem and simply apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced and tell you to call again if you keep having trouble. Of course when you do call again you will just go through the same endless loop. It is like an insidious "Mobius Strip" The greatest problem is that after you have wasted often an hour or more on the phone and hung up, ten minutes later the problem will often re-occur. I have actually had to reset the modem as many as a hundred times just to get my email, but they continue to say the system is fine. In one case I logged the error codes that the modem was reporting for over a week. It tallied over 26 different error codes in that time. Armed with that data I called again the next time the system quit and before resetting it. The first thing they did again was demand I reset the modem before they would run any diagnostics, and as they would not budge from that I finally did. As soon as it came back up working they simply told me that since it was presently not showing any problem there was nothing they could do. When I tried to give them the error codes they told me that at their level of support they did not deal with the codes and refused to connect me to a higher level because the system had responded to a reset.
In one particular incident about six months ago I went through this insane run-around for nearly three weeks, being told at every call that there was no problem. Finally one day I called in and upon describing the problem was immediately transferred to higher level support who told me that the problem was a router problem at their end in the network operations center and that they were already aware of it and assured me that their engineers would have it fixed within a few hours. IT TOOK ANOTHER THREE WEEKS! Then to really make it frustrating I had to argue with their billing department for a half hour to get just one month’s credit on my bill.
Now the final straw. The system has been only marginally useful since then with it becoming slower with time. This last week I have been trying to do some very large downloads of data that I need to get soon. Finally I hopes of getting a bit more speed and a little higher limit on their so called "fair access policy" (frankly that is a total joke, it should read unfair access policy") I spoke to their tech support and then the billing office who both assured me that going to the next higher service package would definitely improve my speed as well as adding 75mb to my FAP limit. Once they had me suckered into spending the extra money they told me the system would be down for an hour while the computers updated my equipment. After much more than an hour when it was still down I called their tech support. They walked me through a re-registration of the modem and said it would then work. Well it did not! In point of fact what they had done was transfer my system to a transponder that was completely non functional. They actually had a pre-recorded message on the tech support line before you could speak to anyone that plainly stated that customers on that particular transponder would not be able to access the internet for some time due to network operations center problems, and that their engineers would have if fixed shortly. I called them and demanded that they switch me back to the transponder I had been on, and they flatly refused. They said that it was their policy not to move anyone to a different transponder unless the signal strength was below 52%. It was just a few points above that at the time. The fact that they had switched me from a transponder with a 94% and fully functional only minutes before did not seem to mean a thing to them. When the person I was speaking to became rude about it, I demanded to speak to his supervisor. He flatly refused to transfer me to the supervisor! I then asked for his name and employee number so I could file a complaint. He gave me his first name only and said his employee number was classified. It is not! It is mandatory that he give that information if asked since without it there is no way to register a complaint. A first name is useless; there could be a hundred Randy's working for Hughes. I finally got him to transfer me to billing to cancel my service. The lady there said that she would definitely get it straightened out, and that they did not want to lose a customer, but that I would have to contact tech support to change the transponder. After jotting down the case number she gave me, I again called tech support, this time I got a different person who again refused to change it back, and if possible became even more belligerent and rude than Randy had been. I have now signed up with Wild Blue. I hope they will be a bit more realistic. In the meantime while I wait for them to install their equipment, the dead Hughes.net transponder finally came back online about 24 hours later, unfortunately it is displaying exactly the same symptoms as occurred six months ago when it took their network engineers 3 weeks to realize they had a problem and another 3 to get it right.

I see I am not the only one complaining about hughes net. I wrote a letter a month to their "corporate office" from February to May without a reply. I don't thing it exists. Their employees say they have no way of communicating with them. They did not have the decency to answer. Everytime I attempted to call, I was on the phone for at least one-half hour and being transferred to six or more people, most of whom I couldn't understand
(language barrier), with absolutely no satisfaction. I had problems with their equipment and their technicians could not fix it, they wanted me to buy new equipment even though we did not know exactly what the problem was.
I WOULD NEVER RECOMMEND HUGHES TO ANYONE. I SWITCHED TO WILD BLUE AND AM GETTING GOOD SERVICE WITH AMERICANS, SO FAR!

Unbelievable-4 days without consistent access-either at desk or web based. I get a random email once in awhile.

Only response i got with live (haha) chat was- we are sorry for the inconvenience.

I dont want to waste my time talking to someone in a noisy room who cant hear me and whom I have trouble understanding for an hour to get an answer of ...hmm, sorry.

I have to say that up until Saturday I have been very happy with hughes.net service. A bit slow once in awhile but a small price to pay for living in the "boonies".

Same here! - I believe the "upgrade" has failed or was considerably more difficult than they envisioned. I run a business and have not had access to my email or the webmail feature for two days either (same experience: website does not recognize my user name).

I don't know what to do either, since it's absolutely useless trying to call tech service somewhere in Bangalore...