When you live in the middle of nowhere Kansas you have one choice for internet provider: Hughes.net.
They have been my satellite internet provider for over a year. I need decent internet in order to do my job. They have generally given me slow, crappy internet but I don't have any other choice.
This morning I couldn't clock into work because the website would not come up. I was able to sign into the VPN and the Teams app was running fine so at first I thought I had something wrong with my computer. After spending 45 minutes with the IT guy and several restarts I was able to clock in.
But once I tried to do my job, all I got was the spinning blue circle of death. Things were taking wayyyyy too long to load so I called Hughes.net.
I asked for Technical Support, but instead of getting an ACTUAL technician, a voice came on telling me that I had reached my monthly limit. If I wanted more internet I was going to have to buy a “token”. They had several “tokens” available ranging from $5.99 for a few gigabytes up to $75. If I did not want to purchase a “token” my internet would resume as normal on February 22nd.
If I had to use one word to describe the way I felt at that moment I would have to say ENRAGED. Which is really bad and could possibly be a sin.
After saying “Representative” several times I finally got an actual human being on the phone.
I had to remain calm because A.) it's not this girls fault that the company she works for are extortionist assholes and B.) I was going to need her help to get the situation resolved. I do have a tendency to rant.
So very long story short – I had to cancel my landline phone breaking the contract (a one-off fee of $90 for breaking the contract is better than $75 monthly getting more data) and got a higher data plan.
This entire time I have never had this problem or heard about “tokens” before. While the girl had me on the phone, claiming she gave me a “courtesy token” and presto my internet was running fine again. Like pushing a button. This is just getting everything in place for the day when they will change “tokens” to “credits”. One of the reasons it pissed me off so bad. Then she kept trying to get me to go to the website and “register” where I could get all these great bonuses. No thanks. I will not be “registering”. What a nightmare.
I'm sure that most people would just have bought a token and not thought anything else about it. The squeeze is on. Unfortunately it will continue to get worse – especially by company's as slimy as Hughes.net when they know they have a monopoly.
I wish it would all go away.
9 comments:
I had HughesNet for about 10 years. It was the ONLY ISP with service at my house. They are TERRIBLE. There aren't enough words to describe how horrible their service is and how expensive they are. You only use them when there is literally no other choice. The SECOND an alternative ISP became available I dropped them like a diseased rat.
Oh yeah they absolutely suck. If I could switch I would in a heartbeat. Especially after this fiasco. Thanks for commenting!
Same deal in my area too. Hughes is the only option and we had to buy tokens all the time. Horrible service too! But then Starlink became available and we jumped on it. Highly, highly recommend it. Saved my job, frankly. Look into it...
I will look and see if they are in our area. they weren't a year ago, but I would love to get away from Hughesnet
Igor on Bustednuckles uses Starlink and I will send you the link that I have for their webpage, it is about $600 bucks to start and then about $110 a month. I am sending you an email.
I’ve been with Hughes net in Alaska For going on 5 years.
I can’t complain about the service I receive. It works most of the time for me.
If I remember correctly there were 3 service options available at the time.
I went with the middle one. I just pay a flat monthly fee. A few months ago they increased the cost by $25.00 a month.
This was just before Starlink was becoming available in Ak. Many people have switched to that although it is not expected to be fully reliable here until this spring. I haven’t heard any really bad reviews about it except for it not working constantly at times.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do about switching. I know Igor worships the altar of Elon, but I’m still trying to figure that guy out. I’m not sure he’s a good person. Not that I’m sure any corporation I’m forced to deal with is anymore. But that NeuroLink he’s working on has the potential of becoming truly evil, and I don’t think I can support that.
yep - no neurolink for me!
I'm not sure where you live in Kansas (and I'm NOT asking) but we're about a hour northwest of Wichita and have been on Starlink since it became available under Beta well over a year ago. Much much better than the fake DSL service we got from AT&T. I was out of town when the dish arrived. Mrs., who barely knows which end of the screwdriver is the handle, unboxed everything, more-or-less threw the dish into the back yard, plugged everything in and BOOM! 100+ Mbps right away. It's been consistently running well above advertised speeds ever since. It will go out during bad thunderstorms but it has to be severe to affect service. Say what you want about Elon Musk, but this contraption is great. Do recommend, would do again. Recommend you have a look.
thanks wild - ive heard good things about it too
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