Worst billing method and service I've ever had
I knew my bill was due on the 20th, so 3 days earlier I logged in to pay my bill, it said I had $0 balance. This morning I received a email that my bill was generated and to sign in to view or pay. New bill was there, so I clicked on pay now, entered everything including amount to pay, received an error that I couldn't pay more than what was due. The amount was the same as the bill. Checked with bank and payment was already made. So as soon as the bill is generated Hughes net grabs their money, there is no review time. Normally a bill is generated and you have about 7 to 10 days to pay it. After that I didn't want auto- pay, called support to opt out. Apparently Hughesnet has never heard of paperless billing. The option to opt out meant I would have to incur a $5.00 additional monthly fee for a invoice that I didn't want. My best option to be sure funds were there was to change billing date. Took awhile while he talked to another department as he relayed questions as to why I wanted to do this, but finally got that done. I really don't like anyone except for my bank to have my credit card or checking account on file. It's the bad guys I don't trust! The web page under support states, "
To disable your automatic payment you can contact Customer Care at 866-347-3292, start a chat or email. Business customers call 800-347-3272 for assistance. Printed invoices are provided at the customer’s request and require an additional monthly fee of $5."
I was not requesting and invoice, I just wanted to opt out of auto pay. Surely the bills can be generated at least a week before the due date giving the customer the option to view or pay before its due or use another method of payment. I've been paying bills online for over 15 years and have never seen this method of "bill,grab, and run." Plus they deducted $1.00 from my accouunt when I changed cards 3 days prior, probably charged $1.00 to the previous card, Nice scam to collect a few extra dollars. I was furious and tried to use their contact us page to email my frustration. Another waste of time since it must have a 300 character limit but doesn't tell you that, it just stops accepting characters. So called support again to speak with a manager who offered me 3 free months of invoices,that doesn't resolve the issue, with 21 months to go thats an extra $105 dollars in their pocket, another nice scam. Told her the support statement was misleading,the contact us email was basically useless with its limit of characters.
If your reading this as a review of Hughesnet as a potential provider, I say Run and find a different provider. Service is the slowest I have ever had!!
Hi bc5989,
Thank you for reaching out to us here. We are the office which receives the letters you mention, as our direct manager is Ellen, the same one you addressed above. I checked around the inbox and inquired with my coworkers, but we do not have a letter from you yet which means our corporate representatives have not had a chance to discuss this with you.
All in all, the information you've already been provided is correct. We do not offer paperless billing without some kind of payment method on file and unfortunately there is not any kind of indefinite discount we can apply to cover the $5 if you want the paper bill but don't want to pay for it. We do have a new preference center area which you can use to adjust your notification settings, which if you have not seen, I suggest giving it a look to see if anything there would be helpful for you. Here is a short announcement on it: https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/About-the-Community/New-Notification-Options/m-p/110924/highlight/true#M1271
Thanks,
Amanda