I am not much of a complainer. Actually, that’s a big lie. I am a HUGE complainer. I just don’t usually complain publicly. But when I spend my entire day dealing with internet problems, I feel like I need to say something very loudly.
Before I moved into my new farm, I called around to find out what the internet options were. I run a business from my home and the majority of my income comes from internet retail sales. Having fast, reliable internet access is a necessity. In fact, I consider internet access to be a utility, just like electricity: it’s something I have to have.
When I found out that satellite internet service was the only option for my new house (excepting dial-up ,of course) I was capital L leery. I hadn’t heard much about satellite internet and everything I had heard was bad. But I didn’t have any other option, so satellite internet was it.
Then I discovered that there was only one satellite internet provider that was servicing my area at the time. Red flag. HUGE RED FLAG. But I didn’t have any other option- it was Hughes Net or nothing, so I chose Hughes Net.
When I called to set up my internet services, I was all kinds of honest about what my internet needs were. I told them about my business. I told them about my website. I told them about my online shop. And most importantly, I told them about the lambcam, our 24/7 streaming video camera in the barn. And the representative on the phone ASSURED me that none of it would be a problem. I was skeptical, but I didn’t have any other option.
I can’t remember the exact figure but I can safely say that purchasing the satellite (yes, you have to BUY the satellite) plus paying for installation cost damn near a thousand dollars. Yup. I was in to Hughes Net for nearly a grand before I had even a moment of internet access. There were all kind of problems when the installers came- Erin said that the two young men appeared to have taken a day off of cooking meth to come install our satellite- and my employee had to do some of the legwork and ALL of the thinking to get the system working, but installed it was. I opted to pay a fortune every month (around $169) to get the plan with the most upload/download MB per day since there is no such thing as an unlimited plan.
And we have not had one problem-free day since then. Not one. There has not been a single day since October that I couldn’t have been on the phone with Hughes Net pitching a fit about their service. Not one. Either the internet is down completely, or it moves so slowly that most websites time out before I can even log in. The USPS website is impossible for us to use AT ALL, even though paying for shipping online and printing our own postage would save me close to $1000 a year and hours of standing in line at the post office. Paypal is usually unusable as well. Hulu and Netflix On Demand sound really awesome; I wouldn’t know.
Now, you might notice I said that I could call Hughes Net everyday. I could but I don’t. Know why? Because I can absolutely count on the being on the phone with them for no less than half an hour and probably closer to a full hour. And most days, I honestly just can’t stomach it. In addition to being a middle-of-the-business-day time suck, the technicians that I have to deal with seem to start every conversation under the impression that the problem is user error. I spend at least half the time I’m on the phone with them trying to convince them that the problem isn’t my fault (“Yes, the modem is turned on!“).
Mostly I don’t call, though, because it’s completely fruitless. Either the problem will cease while I’m on the phone with them due to exactly nothing that they have done or they will decide that it’s a “Level Four” problem and they will have someone call me back within two business days. 9 times out of 10, the problem resolves due to exactly nothing they have done during the two business day. Two business days is a really, really long time in the internet retail business.
Last week our access was so bad that I finally broke down and called tech support. I was on the phone with the Level One problem tech for about half an hour (after waiting on hold for 15 minutes to talk to someone.) Next, I was transferred to the Level Three tech (what happened to Two? Not a clue.) who had me run through the exact same things that Level One had- turn the unit off, wait 30 seconds, turn it back on, etc. I won’t bore you with all the details but I can tell you that, although Level Three started off belligerent, he saw things my way by the time he’d run all his tests. He apologized, sort of, and told me that he was escalating the problem- Hello, Level Four!- and that someone would call me back within two business days.
I had a message on my voice mail from Hughes Net explaining that they needed to replace my modem and could I return their call and enter the following pin number. I called back, entered the pin number and was told that my pin was invalid. I must of copied it down wrong. Rechecked voice mail. Nope, I copied it down correctly. Called back, entered pin, was told it wasn’t a valid pin number. A recording gave me a different 800 number to call. Called it and wait 30 minutes before a representative came on the line. I explained the situation- phone message, Level Four, new modem, non-working pin number, etc.- and was told that the reason the internet was down had nothing to do with the modem but was a system wide “9 and 10″ problem.”
ME: “Excuse me?”
HUGHES NET: “All the units on 9 and 10 are currently down. The engineers are working on it and we hope to have service restored in a few hours.”
ME: “No, I’m not calling about today’s internet outage. I’m returning a call that said my modem is broken. This has nothing to do with what’s going on right now. I’ve had this problem for weeks.”
HUGHES NET: “As I said, the internet is down now because of a system wide problem. It has nothing to do with your modem. I don’t know why you think you need a new modem”
ME: “Can you hear me? I’m not calling about the current outage and I don’t think I need a new modem. I am returning a phone call FROM HUGHES NET telling me I need a new modem.”
HUGHES NET: “Well, I can’t help you with that while the internet is down. You’ll have to call back when it’s up again.”
ME: “Are you crazy? I was on hold for HALF AN HOUR TO TALK TO YOU. AND I AM RETURNING A PHONE CALL.”
Get the picture? See why I almost never call Hughes Net? BECAUSE IT MAKES ME INSANE.
There is currently no solution to my problem. My phone company had hinted that they would be making broadband service available in my neighborhood soon- I am currently 29,000 feet too far from some big piece of equipment- but it turns out that their idea of soon is really different from mine. There is an alternative satellite internet provider that specializes in rural access, but according to their website “due to overwhelming demand” new installations in my area have been temporarily suspended. And the cable company in my area doesn’t even come close to my house. And I can’t use the internet services that rely on cell service because there is no cell service at my house either.
I just read this post out loud to Maggie, because I was a bit afraid that it makes me sound crazy. She said it was fine, that I just sound frustrated. But you know what? It’s okay if I sound crazy because this situation is making me crazy.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the library to check my email.
{ 47 comments… read them below or add one }
That sucks! I’m so sorry you are having this kind of problem. If only there were a better way. Strings and tin cans?
And I was feeling sorry for myself today because there are none of my favorite bands playing in my state tonight! Love you Susie…
Gah!
That would make me insane too. I work in tech support, and hate hate hate it when I have to call them.
Feel your pain. Hope things get better sooner than later.
Eep… this just sounds so, so awful and 1000% frustrating. I don’t know how you can stand being condescended to by a tech person on the phone… their WHOLE JOB should be to help, in a supportive and non-judgmental way, without assuming incompetence.
Really hope something excellent comes along to make this less miserable!
suzi
you don’t sound crazy
i’ve been and i’m sure others too have been on hold and
spoken to ‘tech support’ people who have NO CLUE
and normally DO NOT listen
and NEVER assume the customer calling has a BRAIN
it sucks
i had a similar only different problem a few times with earthlink and was LIVID @ the requests to do STUPID things over and over again.
finally, someone handled the issue
omg it actually happened! a tech support person who did
?????
tech support
listened to my sentences
and used their BRAIN
and trouble shot the issue
a system reset ‘cured’ my issue with NO SPEED
but this is DSL not sat. service.
sorry to hear about your issueSSSS
i’d rant till i got to someone who had a CLUE
AND
i’d make them refund some $$$$$$$$$$ to compensate for lost service time
(not to mention lost revenues for you due to THEIR mashugana issues)
persist
sorry to hear it sucks
the only good news? it’s only up from here~sometime
hopefully SOON
(insert curse of your choice here)
lots of love
hugs included
rona
And what’s really bizarre is you’re, what, 20 minutes from Charlottesville and 45 from Richmond, aka the State Capital…
all i can say is I don’t want to be Hughes Net, because you are a force to be reckoned with and this has all kinds of refund and free service and bowing down meekly written all over it.
I know how maddening something like this can be. Hope it resolves somehow.
Oh Susie I know how frustrated you must feel. I had a similar problem with my internet in a major metropolitan area. I could see that the signal strength was dropping several times an hour. Comcast swore that it wasn’t them. I bought a new modem, router and router booster and it worked a bit better but then eventually got bad again. When I moved to a new area and had to set up the network again it only worked intermittently. I spent hours on the phone with Comcast, and then Lynksys to no avail. Then I broke down an called Dell and spent hours explaining things over and over again telling them I thought it had to do something with the ethernet card because I noticed that sometime the light that usually came on when the ethernet connection was on was frequently off. It took a lot of arguing, because they only know how to read their script cards and follow step by step their re-set instructions. They don’t want to skip ahead because you’ve already followed that process twenty times. And they don’t seem to want to believe that someone calling tech support might actually have a clue about computers. They finally agreed to send a replacement. I think just to get me to go away. When the technician opened up my computer he found the fan had sucked in a ton of cat fur and dust around the ethernet card connection. I don’t know if it was just the fur and dust or if it was the card too, but after replacement and cleaning out it works like a charm again. I was lucky that it was covered under my extended warranty. I hope you find a resolution.
Ouch.
I empathize, having spent a lot of time in libraries picking up my email, or, when the local library got wireless (which I could not get even years later and less than 6 miles down the road), parked in the library parking lot in the wee hours of the morning sending hi-res image files to editors, because it was not going to happen on my dial-up.
You are between a rock and a hard place, aren’t you? Even if you could get all your money back from these folks, they are the only show in town for a web-based business. For now.
Maybe outing them on the blog will have the positive outcome that patience has not. Hope so!
(Also hope there is not about to be an ominous online silence from Juniper Moon, and I’ll be looking for updates on rav.)
Good luck!!!
Maggie was right, you do sound really frustrated.
Hang in there.
Well Susan, I’m so sorry that you are enduring the hell of HughesNet….I’m in exactly the same boat where I live, and this is the main reason why I have no internet service at my house. Fortunately, I am not running a business from my home over the internet (not yet anyway). A few of my neighbors do have the satellite service and they hate it too. I’m hopeful that we’ll get an alternative by the time I really need it.
There is nothing on this planet more irritating and frustrating than tech support, especially satellite internet service tech support. You are not crazy…it totally sucks. I see lots of free (but probably craptastic) service in your future….
you are not looney, just frustrated. i think that’s quite understandable! hope there’s a realistic resolution soon!
I’m not sure about most of the big problem (although I completely empathize!), but we recently got an Airave (we have sprint cell service) which gives us 5 bars at all times in our house for only $5 a month. It’s a nifty little device, if you get even a whiff of cell service, that is basically a cell tower in your house and about the size of a cable modem.
I wouldn’t expect the satellite company to help you at all, but a computer networking company might have some better solutions. Get some money back from Hughes and funnel it to an IT person who can provide actual solutions and let him call the satellite company to work his or her magic.
My husband’s an IT guy and I would volunteer him, but we live in Florida! Good luck!
I let my husband read this and this is his recommendation:
He recommends setting up a tower on the farm where you can make a wireless link to a remote location (prob about 7.5 miles away) that can get decent Internet (pay for someone’s Internet service).
Hope this is helpful!
So feeling your pain. Been in similar situations and I am positive you’ve been nicer than I was! You’re not at all crazy!
Umm, sounds like a winning Huff post to me… Rural America, FCC, home based businesses. And you’re really not that rural which makes it all the worse.
Wouldn’t that be so satisfying? Hughes Net wouldn’t know what hit them! Go, Susie,Go!
I feel your pain Susie. I’ve been doing the same song and dance number with Comcast for the past couple of years. The 2 companies must be related. Have you thought about contacting 60 Minutes?
Curious if Danielle’s husband’s suggestion about the tower is feasible … wish there were some way we consumers could have a lever to work against these cable/internet providers! So infuriating.
Argh! If you need someone to just keep calling over and over some day let me know all your info and I will sit on the phone until someone is at your door to fix it. I don’t mind calling over and over until they see there’s a zillion open tickets/calls from the same place.
I’m enraged and I think you should show up at their office. You need to make a massive stink – and then we need to figure out a new option for you.
Honey, I feel your pain. I am a Hughes Net customer as well. With 4 and a half computer users (the 6 yo counts as half a computer user) in our house we frequently kill our internet hamster (the hamster they have running on a wheel to connect to the world wide web). My 14 year old’s addiction to iTunes and my husband’s love of YouTube often spell disaster for our connectivity. I have spent ages on the phone with customer dis-service and it is always such a joke. Keep bugging the cable people. When we came upon the crew hanging the cable on our road, I literally jumped out of my car and started yelling “I love you guys!” It may be a year before Time Warner actually connects us, but there’s hope. There’s also me calling twice a week and being a very squeaky wheel. Huge internet hugs from the Stones! We miss you!
HughesNet sucks!!! I had two friends who went back to DIALUP because HughesNet sucked so badly, and everyone knows that dialup is almost as bad as no internet at all. Nuff said.
A couple of weeks ago I ordered AT&T’s DSL for my mom. Wow, was that fun. The day it was supposed to be turned on came and went with no DSL service. Called AT&T, waited on the phone for 20 minutes to talk to someone who made me jump through a lot of hoops (turn it off, turn it on) while I just kept asking “Has the DSL service been turned on?” “Mam, I will check on that after I make you jump through these hoops.” And no, it had not been turned on. It hadn’t even been assigned to anyone yet. So it was rescheduled for the next day. I got to do this same dog and pony show with AT&T every day for TEN DAYS. I was ready to pull my hair out. “Why hasn’t it been assigned to anyone yet? It was supposed to be done 10 days ago.” “We don’t know, mam.” “Can I speak to a supervisor?” “There is no supervisor available.” “Why are you trying to drive me insane????” They had no answer for that either.
And the sad, sad, sad thing is, you can tell the whooooole internet that Hughes Net service is effing TRASH, and it doesn’t change a single thing, since they’re the only game in town.
CRAZY MAKING.
I should admit that I was WAS a computer professional, programmer, then manager for many years before retiring, and this stuff isn’t any easier for me.
But I must also reveal, I have Verizon Fios (fiber optic high speed internet, TV and telephone) and it has never failed in two years. It’s wonderful. So sorry.
Ugh, that’s horrible. Why can’t companies only offer what they are actually capable of offering? Instead of down services all the time and when it’s up, only mediocre. I had those same problems when I was stuck with Earthlink DSL *shudder*
While my net connection is now beautiful, I’m about two seconds from trying to kill a tire dealer who lied about a tire being in stock, took my money and hasn’t yet issued my refund. And won’t answer their phones, won’t reply to email, or keep putting me on hold if I do get through. In others, I’m feeling your pain. Good luck!!
okay, my disclaimer. I know NOTHING about internet providers/servers/whatevers. I have an air card. My Army friend lent it to me when he went to serve in Korea. I think it’s AT&T. I don’t know if it is cell phone tower dependent or not. I plug it in to my lap top and voiala, I have internet. Sorry if this is way down on the intelligence totum pole, but I admitted my lack of knowledge up front.
Thanks to Evie for the cat fur story. Gotta love the babies even if they contribute to your lack of sanity.
Between the tweets and this post I am in stitches. Not because I think it’s even remotely funny, but because I can feel the frustration bordering on psycopathic hilarity that tends to set in in these situations. It wasn’t much better when we moved out here several years ago and Sprint’s slllooooooooowwwwww DSL was the only game in town.
And don’t get me started on Fluvanna shopping.
And also, I am totally having Paul go scope out your house to see if his EVDO card (that air card thingy) works there.
Make your next call to the FCC!!!
I have similar feelings toward Tracfone and the incompetent employees that work there (no offense if anyone reading this works there…..).
Once again you inspire me. With a move to rural Virginia in my immediate future, I am glad you are blazing the trail in this area. Hughes Net should be totally humbled and all straightened out by the time I get there. Thank you. I feel your pain, though… even in New York where we are located, Netflix on demand is a joke and internet is not always reliable… DSL is not cable. But I guess satellite is not even DSL.
i so feel your pain. We went through a similar situation with our internet/cable provider last year. The problem had been plagueing us for the 4 years we had been with them. They sent people out to check who agreed that there were problems upline from our home, they sent out higher skilled tech’s who found problems upline, they monitored us for months, doing drive by scan’s to test lines, etc. We were instructed to not pay the internet portion while they upped us to their highest level to continue tests. Then one day our cable/internet were both turned off, due to non payment. (huh?) Now the cable was always paid, but not the internet, per their head(king) tech’s instructions and verified by two cust service rep’s when i called in as it was still being billed to us. After 6 months of nasty calls from their billing dept it took hubby and i only 3 days of walking loudly into their office to get a head supervisor to speak to us (as the head(king) tech refused to answer phone or email messages any longer choosing to blow off even those in their company in regards to our problem. Like you we have no other options at our home for either service, which i have sworn will be a contingency on our next home, seriously! (our problem company starts with a W and is like a big ripple on the ocean) Good luck to you!
The problem with DSL is that with the current technology it only really works well for about 2 miles from the distribution point. They have devices that can extend it, but I imagine that they are looking at your area and figuring that the number of potential customers doesn’t make it worth their while to extend it out to there. (not saying it doesn’t royally suck, but that’s the sad reality of DSL)
that all sounds truly, truly horrid. it drives me nuts when technology doesn’t work and i’m paying for it to work but my difficulties pale in comparison. may it right itself into something glorious, flawless, and high speed.
oh yeah! that’s called life in the country!
Sounds like my short time in the Catskills nearly ten years ago… I hope you get some competing internet service in town to force this company to do things right.
do not ever go to dish network for service, it is the same crap and when you finally disconnect they accuse you of stealing their little plastic parts and charge your credit card 2000.00 dollars. then you need a lawyer to write a letter. or have your credit in the toliet
Fran’s suggestion about an air card is worth looking into.
While on vacation last year, a friend had an air card (also AT&T I think) that worked well and the closest large city (Myrtle Beach) was about 30-45 minutes away.
Sorry to hear you’re still having trouble! A few observations:
1) Don’t bother with the Airave. It redirects your cellular service, data plan and all…over your home’s Internet connection.
2) An airnet card won’t do you any good without cellular service.
3) I agree your best bet is to set up a line-of-site airwave connection to someone who has a strong, wire-based connection to the net. Setting this up would be non-trivial however. If you’d like some help (and can find someone whose willing to rent you bandwidth), let me know and I’ll try to arrange a weekend visit.
4) If HughesNet is like every other large corporation, they probably say (using the computer that answers the phone) that “this call may be monitored or recorded.” You might consider leveraging this by recording your tech support calls and posting them online, to document more clearly to your fans (and their potential customers) the issues you’ve encountered. This might also be helpful if you file a complaint with the FCC, which you can do here:
http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm
5) I still recommend using Toast.net’s dialup service with their accelerator. See here:
http://www.toast.net/services/dialup/
Note esp. the business-class-service link at the bottom. A friend of mine uses this service and loves it.
Good luck! Drop me a line if you need a hand.
While I am all for the cathartic power of witching and bhining, I am all about using that to get my dander up for ACTION!!!
So, here’s what I think:
All of us who check this site to purchase yarn, equipment, etc. or even just to check in on the lamb cam, to check ‘the investment’ in a share or just for a warm fuzz, all of us are customers of Juniper Moon. And when the farm has internet problems, we are thwarted in our business relationship with the farm NOT because of a problem with our propriatress but because of Hughes Net. That makes this a problem for us too.
So what about a letter writing campaign?
Dear Hughes Net,
In this tight economy, when businesses are cutting down to ‘just in time’ delivery of materials as a way to stay afloat, we must be able to rely on the professionalism and efficacy of the internet providers which connect us with suppliers. Sadly, Hughes Net has failed on both fronts: not only is the connection to Juniper Moon Farm unreliable but HN customer service has consistently failed in its role to respond to customers and resolve problems in a timely manner.
This failure has not only affected the business of the farm itself, but has also negatively affected the many and various businesses and individuals who rely on the Juniper Moon Farm.
We insist that you take immediate action to provide a reliable and robust internet connection to the farm or we will have no choice but to take our concerns to the local offices of the Better Business Bureau.
Thoughts? Suggestions? It’s easy for a company, especially when they have a local monopoly, to ‘divide and conquer’ because each customer thinks that the problem lies with them. A few of the comments here have made it abundantly clear that this is not the case.
So what if we all wrote in to complain as a group on behalf of Susan and the JMF, with those other customers making sure to indicate their displeasure with their service as well?
Who is with me? Power to the knitters!
Rebecca
You have identified yet another difference that divides city from country. While people in many parts of rural America would love to have an Internet business and have the close relationship like you have with your readers, for the most of us, it ain’t gonna happen. For one thing, we lack the computer skills and the cost to get a web site up and running is prohibitive, plus Internet availability is spotty at best. (I have lucked out because a little mom and pop Internet provider in our area needed a place for an antenna and my 100 year old barn is now sporting a wireless antenna). No wonder many farmers feel isolated and under-appreciated. (And if you think it is bad there in rural Virginia, imagine what it is like in the West,where geography and distance are much greater issues. You may simply have to modify your business model. There is a shepherd who lives about 25 miles north of me who has been maintaining a successful Internet business for her handspinning wool for around a decade now and *only has dial-up!* She just doesn’t have any bells and whistles, not even a shopping cart on her web site. I am sure that your support network and faithful customers would stay with you if you had to simplify a bit. In the country, you live with a different set of expectations. I expect to see great sunsets. Great communications availability is not one of my expectations.
Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I am dreading when we move to the boonies next year.
I have experienced similar problems with cable/internet providers in the past, though on a much smaller scale. The problems didn’t get resolved until I contacted the BBB. Then my claim was escalated to an actual person who could do something. They fixed my issues and refunded some of the money I spent.
You know what one of the awesomest things about meeting someone in person is? Now that I know you, I could read this post and “hear” it being said in your voice! I love it! *mwah* even though the internet people are stupid!
CritterCam questions – I am trying to figure out if it is a local problem on my computer – but I can’t get the Lambcam to work? I re-downloaded WMP – hope it’s not another Hughes issue!
Hey Jane! We’re switching over to a new server and it’s taking longer than anticipated. Hopefully the lambcam will be back up in a few hours.
If it comforting, we have had a terrible time with Verizon…not anywhere near what you are, but it took my DH coming home twice for hours, including once while our son was in the hospital to get our internet hooked up. I think all internet service providers are requred to not have a brain…sigh!
I can’t imagine running an Internet business in these circumstances. It makes me even angrier to think that true stimulants of the economy such as your business are hampered by the lack of broadband access. All those TARP funds that went into “infrastructure” to change road medians would have been better spent on broadband to support the businesses that are new and growing and stimulating the economy. I am so sorry for your loss.