I’ve been meaning to do a post on how important having dependable high-speed Internet access is for bloggers and anyone else who works online. I will eventually do a post on how various types of broadband Internet access compare and which is most suitable. This can’t wait though. Some may have noticed me complaining on Twitter about being unable to work or noted my post frequency has varied greatly lately. The reason is HughesNet is simply horrendous.
After collecting over a dozen case numbers which they never use for anything and escalating my issue to their Executive Customer Care they finally patched me through to Level 3 support again. Level 3 and Customer Care both told me that:
- We aren’t supposed to EVER open more than one tab at a time
- They never claimed their service would work for filling out forms on the Internet on sites like Yahoo Local or Google Maps
- That even if I couldn’t use the Internet there was absolutely nothing wrong – I should just “wait a few hours and try again”
At that point I knew that they were never going to admit what they were probably doing (using the ability to limit bandwidth – they hold patents on ways to do that – see graph below) and I was never going to have reliable Internet access from them. I hope if you’re reading this you have not signed a contract as there are complaints from people who paid their ridiculous early termination fees and were still being hounded by collectors for HughesNet.
I am moved to post this to hopefully prevent others from going through the pain of being stuck in contracts that are very difficult to break. I am, in fact, still paying more for an unusable HughesNet account than I am now paying for excellent fixed wireless that makes using the Internet a joy again.
In one review of HughesNet on DSL Reports MichaelRS posted this image of his speeds over several days:
HughesNet Speed Graph
Note that the speed switches dramatically between about 1.5 meg and under 33.6 kbps (older dial-up) at regular times each day. This is NOT what you would see if more and more people got active online.
Instead of writing any more about it I’ll just share the latest Tweets from suffering HughesNet users. My apologies in advance for any bad language. I can’t blame them for being so frustrated. If I weren’t graphics challenged I’d pretty them up, make them uniform in width and edit out the profanity.
Hopefully you’ll forgive me for just getting this done quickly so I can move on to getting caught up from all the work I’ve missed being able to do while trying to actually get HughesNet to fix my connection – or at least admit they were intentionally limiting my access. Any time my service was particularly bad there would be a rash of complaining Tweets. Just do a Twitter search for HughesNet any time to see them.
Note that these Tweets are all from the last few days. There are hundreds more complaining and these ARE representative of the issues involved. I preserve these here for posterity in hopes someone takes action to force HughesNet to release people who are stuck with long term contracts – contracts that HughesNet has broken because they are NOT providing the service for which they are charging.
Since these are images I provide here the links to reviews of HughesNet service:
- DSLReports HughesNet Reviews – 852 reviews (147 positive) (445 negative) as of today
- RipOff Reports Against HughesNet – 155 complaints as of today
- RateItAll HughesNet Reviews – 85 reviews, most have 1 star – many comment they deserve 0 stars!
Tweets Complaining About HughesNet:
If you’ve read this far you probably have or are considering HughesNet. I urge you to search diligently for a quality local independent fixed wireless company. They are usually owned by technical types who are not very good at marketing so ask around or try searching these links:
- WISP Directory - Find a Wireless Internet Service Provider
- DSLReports – They provide several ways to search for service, great tech support, speed tests, and forums with really sharp broadband knowledgeable techs.
Do be sure to read the reviews and search online for complaints. A wireless company is only as good as their people and the equipment they install. They tend to be either very good or very bad. You can also try searching in Local Search Directories.
If that doesn’t pan out then consider wireless cellular service. Instead of contacting the major phone companies call 3gstore.com. They are widely recommended for their quality tech support and knowledge of current and soon-to-be-announced equipment availability and limitations.
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Is Hughesnet still in business? I wonder how long you can stay in business when you s*ck so much.
Reading this makes me think about my internet provider.
I’m with one of the two biggest internet providers in China and after 6 internet always gets really slow. Maybe they are manipulating the speed, or it’s because of my housemates coming home…
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Twitter: n/a
June 17, 2011 at 2:31 am
Twitter: @n/a
this review sealed the deal..i will not sigh up with them..thanks for the honest opionions
Twitter: stutterwear
June 17, 2011 at 12:30 am
Twitter: @stutterwear
one of the worst company that i have ever encountered…just terrible and their help desk is no help at all
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HUGES NET SERVICE SUCKS AND CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS. WORST CUSTOMER SERVIC E EVER.
HugesNet provides a terrible service. Spread the word so that everyone’s aware of it !
Damn, I didn’t know that HughesNet was providing such a poor quality service, and I was about to apply as a subscriber. Thank you for the warning,
Twitter: chrismillerjr
March 18, 2011 at 11:11 pm
Twitter: @chrismillerjr
I should have noted on my previous comment… we are on a business level plan. Support is horrid, and from what I have read online, we’re not doing any better than those on a regular Hughesnet plan!
Twitter: chrismillerjr
March 18, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Twitter: @chrismillerjr
You all are lucky… we moved to the mountains with our business and we’re relying on them to provide at lease SOME level of service. No such luck though. SSL sites don’t work at all…. and these days, everyone uses ssl for login (ebay, amazon, facebook, hootsuite, all of our business sites, etc).
It’s so useless, it’s not even funny. I cannot even tweet about how bad it is because it wont load! Every day sites and email work fine though. Go figure!
HughesNet is WORTHLESS!!!!
Twitter: GrowMap
April 10, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hi Chris,
I totally agree..the worst dial-up I ever had would run circles around their so-called “high speed”. When Yahoo.com takes 5+ minutes to load and it is so slow that just following people on Twitter will make you want to pull your hair out it is time to just forget them and move on. Alas, you may have to pay out a contract for years to get rid of them though! That is what I ended up doing. Used them for backup but could never get my work done at all.
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” * We aren’t supposed to EVER open more than one tab at a time
* They never claimed their service would work for filling out forms on the Internet on sites like Yahoo Local or Google Maps
* That even if I couldn’t use the Internet there was absolutely nothing wrong – I should just “wait a few hours and try again”
”
I just can’t believe that!
haha
in this time and age where you win something in one second, and you can lose it in another…
The internet should help you work nearly as fast as the speed of your thoughts.
thanks for the post
Twitter: royalty
February 19, 2011 at 12:50 am
Twitter: @royalty
Hughes offers a great service for remote areas, BUT it’s a SAT service, meaning lot’s of delays and thus unsuitable for realtime services like VoIP or fast webbrowsing. It’s also problematic for services where there is lots of interaction with a server (aka ‘near realtime), like most HTML5 webpages (often used in webforms) and paymentservices.
If you need/want a realtime service, you need a fixed connection (Copper/DSL, Fiber/Ethernet, whatever), if some lag is workable than a wireless connection will be workable (Wimax, 3/4G). If lots of lag is no problem, than SAT might be a solution.
If you are a ‘download only person’ (downloading big files, with little to none interaction with a webpage), than SAT offers a good solution too, but it will cost you, since good bandwidth never is cheap.
Twitter: GrowMap
February 19, 2011 at 2:44 am
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hi Roy,
Unless HughesNet works a lot differently anywhere else they do NOT offer a “great service” for ANYONE anywhere because it can take 2, 3, 4 or more MINUTES to load ONE simple page. Not even 2400 baud dial-up was ever that slow. It is ridiculous and unusable.
I assure anyone reading this that theywill be far better off with regular dial-up than paying premium rates for simply horrid access. Even on days when it takes ten or more minutes for a single page to load HughesNet support will still insist that the load times “are within normal parameters”.
They have you run their speed test, the first few are well outside even their excessive target speeds and then they “do something” and all of the sudden your “test loads” are faster – but never actually loading even pages that have almost nothing on them like Yahoo.com or DuckDuckGo.com.
I had Earthlink satellite at three previous locations and THAT worked fine (keeping in mind that I don’t do gaming or other things for which the inherent latency of satellite is unsuitable). Since Earthlink uses Hughes satellites I do not know why theirs worked better or whether it would work better now.
I phoned Earthlink when my HughesNet contract was fulfilled trying to find out whether switching to Earthlink (to use as my backup Internet access – WISP) would work better but could not even get their rep to understand that I did NOT want to buy ANOTHER dish – only to switch the equipment I already bought to their service.
If ANYONE has decent satellite service please let me know. Just reply to this comment or use the contact tab or Tweet @GrowMap or Skype to GrowMap.
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Twitter: royalty
February 19, 2011 at 3:08 am
Twitter: @royalty
Let me clarify: I have no experience with consumer products offered by Hughes or their American offerings, but lots of experience with their b-to-b offering in Europa and for non-realtime webstuff and big downloads it really is a great service with good multi-lingual support. Like I said: it costs you (>200 euros a month, per site). In the US you can try Echostar as an alternative, but be warned: they just bought Hughes
To be clear: I run a b-to-b fixed connection broadband provider in Europe and we mainly service shops (paymentservices) and hospitals (client data, alert services). For Petrol sites we make extensive use of Hughes Service and I have experienced them to be very professional with lots of knowledge.
Twitter: GrowMap
March 15, 2011 at 1:29 am
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hi Roy,
It sounds like they treat their business clients better than their consumer clients. If you read the details of this post you will see that what they told me was simply outrageous.
I am decidedly not your average Internet user since I work online, spent 23 years at IBM as a technician often working with Telcos on data transmission issues, and once even lived in an ISP where I assisted with tech support.
The HughesNet connection I got stuck with contractually was so bad that it was almost useless even as backup and was definitely slower than 33.6, 24 or 21.6 dial-up connections back in the 1990s (although we both know that back then there was less multi-media on a typical Web site so that will affect page load times).
What I still would like to know is why Earthlink satellite access which I used in two different locations worked fine even though it used Hughes satellites and HughesNet using newer equipment is so worthless. That could be an install problem but HughesNet refused to send someone to check to see if that was the problem and I am pulling the plug since the contract is up and even at $30 off per month for 6 mos. – what they offered me when I last tried to get them to fix it instead of actually admitting there must definitely be something wrong – it isn’t worth having at any price.
It literally can take more than 5 minutes to load a simply page like Yahoo.com but their tech support insists that is “not a problem” because their little speed test thing (which fails the first times you run it suddenly returns numbers that are “within specs” once you give them the first numbers – even though you can count how long it takes to load and it is far longer than their test says it is). If you ask me they just return false results to get you to go away.
I urge anyone considering HughesNet to simply type in HughesNet on Twitter search any time and see all the complaints. I have never searched that there weren’t tons of them.
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I have been a customer since 2008 and I would do anything to get out of contract. I am having issues with this system. Most often, I got a error message while browsing the net, I firstly I thought that it was because of the problems of the website or something like that. But soon I have got a realization that it is because of this huge net only! Nothing else! And sometimes the download speeds dropped to around 10-20 kbps! And the promised speed is 800kbps. . i called support but it only fixed it temporarily. And they were telling like if I upgrade speeds will be faster. But I am not daring to give e try! I am really waiting for the 3 months, for then only I can get out of those 24 months. I am truly join with you don’t never ever use this!
Twitter: GrowMap
February 19, 2011 at 2:47 am
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hello,
I upgraded to the Pro version and that did NOT help. Get out of the contract and move on if you can get ANYTHING else. If there is no other high speed alternative, first try various dial-up companies. I sincerely believe that you will find them much faster and more reliable than HughesNet ever is.
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Luckily, where I live now, I have WONDERFUL broadband connection. Been quite happy with it, but I have lived in areas that didn’t offer any type of broadband. I am glad that I didn’t waste my time with hughesnet. I would have been using that kind of language, as well. You pay for a service, then it is not too much to ask to receive it.
Hughes is horrible, I thought i was the only one who hated them, then I found this blog post lol.
Twitter: GrowMap
February 19, 2011 at 2:50 am
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hi Tony,
Just search Twitter for the word HughesNet any day of the week any hour of the day and you’ll see all the complaints (as well as many trying to make money convincing others to sign up with them!). Sometimes I reply to them and send them this post.
Has your tree trimming company claimed their free local listings yet?
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this is a great site full of great content
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hey
( my second post on your blog and a second big conclusion)
one of my Internet Marketing menotr- James Schramko, says this ;
there are three major points that should be considered for anybody who wants to work on the internet
all three are obvious but rarely considered:
1. have the right mindset, know why you want to do ti
2. have good internet connection- respect your time…if you will not, nobody else will
3. get a great chair
essential stuff
thanks for your post
cheers
Ryan
i dont like hughesnet
I was looking into hughesnet and they are way too expensive
Has anyone tried running a proxifier on this company, with the right proxy software and proxy, you can maybe get past their daily limitations. Your speed would remain the same though.
Just a thought, i have been doing this in South Africa with one of our mobile networks, they charge us ridiculous rates here, so i am getting them back over and over. FREE internet for all is what should happen.
Twitter: GrowMap
September 16, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hi Dawie,
I wonder if it would be worth setting one up for me. Since I was locked into a long-term traffic I still have HughesNet as my backup connection. It costs twice what my local WISP charges and is almost useless for any serious work.
The problem with HughesNet is not so much the speed as it is the way they limit how much you can download. Even with images blocked and never watching videos if you work the way I do they throttle your ability to work.
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Well, Even if you are using it for business, HughesNet is not recommended. This is the worst ISP ever and their support is useless.
Even if you are not on the blogging business, HughesNet is not recommended. This is the worst ISP ever and their support cannot not actually provide one.
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