Hughesnet Customer Service is rather bad.
God bless those reps from India, but the honest truth is that most of them have the most thick accents I have ever had to deal with from outsourced customer service and I have to strain my senses and stay at the top of my wits for most of the call to understand what they are saying. Still, much of what they say goes untranslated by me and I have to put pieces of words and phrased together in my mind in order to make out the approximate meaning of what was spoken to me. If I can't, I have to repeat myself to make sure they understood me and so they can give another reply that I can hopefully interpret better.
No one seems to agree on what day my bill is. I had been regularly told the 22nd, but I was on autopay and it started trying to collect on the 12th. When I brought this up, I was told something to the effect of "Oh, alright. Yes, I see now. It is on the 12th." And this didn't happen once. This happened very, very, very repeatedly with multiple reps. At one point, I started bringing this up just to see which date the rep would say. It was like flipping a coin. Every time, it could go either way. After speaking to maybe 10 or so reps about this, I finally, after some heavy complaint and holding them to the fire about it, got a rep to finally give clear and detailed confirmation that my bill was due on the 12th and explain why I was getting others saying that the 22nd was the date - explaining the 10 day grace period.
The error messages that you get when your bill is past due and you are browsing the web are borderline harrasment - with the intent to disrupt service and irritate the customer until the bill is paid. This is an issue that I have dealt with today. The reps keep describing them as pop ups. These reps show the quality of ineptness in describing them as popups. They are now. They are, more accurately named as reminders for most, but, as for me, what I am getting now are error pages. I too was getting reminders before. This changed when I had the audacity to request that they be stopped being displayed when my bill was past due - I did so because I have had Hughesnet for a long time and I know when it is past due. I was told by the rep that they could stop the reminder, that autopay was disabled, and that I would no longer get a reminder. But, instead of getting a reminder saying that my bill is due and I should check my payment method, now I am literally getting an error page. The exact words are
"Unfortunately, the page you are looking for no longer exist."
Those are the exact words - even the misspelling of the word exists. I can provide a screenshot if needed.
This only happens when my bill is past due. But, as you can see, this is not a billing reminder. As I told the customer support who I chatted with earlier today, it literally says the page doesn't exist. This is misleading and has nothing to do with billing. When I first saw it, I thought there was something wrong with my connection and had to eventually find that it was somehow a result of billing. She, the rep that I contacted initially, seems to have failed with regard to having autopay disabled, but she was right on the last point, though - after all, it really is not a reminder. I contacted Hughesnet today and was told that autopay was still active. Which is it?... I don't know at this point, but even though I no longer trust Hughesnet customer service, I assume autopay really is active and that this message is a replacement for the reminders that I had been getting previously. The best suggestion I have gotten from reps with regard to how to deal with this is that I could always just close the page and try again... Thanks... very helpful advice...
Plain lack of respect in dealing with customers. When I contact Hughesnet customer service, the reps have sometimes been referring to me as Ms. Brown. I am a man and have asked before if the records would be changed to reflect this. This has even happened in calls over the phone and I have a very deep voice that is obviously not female. Strangely enough, even with you reps in India, as difficult as it can be for me to understand them through their thick accents, I don't recall any of them making the mistake. My voice has been described as being soft spoken, but never... never in my 40 years of life, as being affiminate. At any rate, this happens mostly in emails, so my voice wouldn't be the cause anyhow, but instead it would be their records, which should have already been changed. I have worked tech support before and also billing and customer service. I really do think that Hughesnet some employees get a laugh out of messing with customers or just do things out of slight. Not all, of course, and not all the time. But I think it's more common for Hughesnet than for many other companies. I have seen what seemed to be high level reps for the company responding to online posts telling customers that if they are so unhappy with the service that they should just move themselves out of the sticks and join the modern world get another service. This was not posted within the context of a friendly suggestion, but as a boldly stated insult directed at the person who was complaining and the exact words fell just short of profanity in expressing their temperment.
But, in all fairness, I have been with Hughesnet for years and have also seen improvement develop. When Daily Data caps where being used, they did at least increase them once. I think mine was about 250 MB at one point and was increased to about 425 MB. I am not certain I am accurately recalling the exact numbers right now, but it was a significant increase. Although this improvement was basically undone with the use of montly allowances for the Gen4 upgrade. More on that below. The rollover of daily allowance was great. The introduction of tokens were great (mainly the free ones though because the price of tokens is pretty much ridiculous, especially when considering the high price already being paid for regular service) and the ability to accumulate them a wonderful compliment to that new service.
On the other hand, several of these good points were wiped out when Gen4 was introduced. Also, unlimited nights was traded out strategically. You could either stay with the antiquated services and keep your unlimited, or you could upgrade to Gen4 and lose it. I held out for a while, but eventually I had to do the upgrade in order to benefit from the lower latency and the higher download speeds - not to mention the lowered prices. Also, my connection was poorer and less reliable than it should be and so I was hoping that Gen4 would be an improvement. With regard to usage allowance during regular hours, the 10 GB limit was actually a large downgrade from the 425 MB or so that I was getting. It equats to about 340 MB /day now and my monthly bill is only about $7 less than it was before when I was getting the equivalent of 12.75 GB /month. So that was a loss - or, at the very least, I am actually not much better off than I was, if at all. Obviously, one of the main reasons Hughesnet switched to offering monthly allowance was not to convienince the customer, but instead to have it so that they could advertise what looks to be a good deal on the surface until you do the math when really its a downgrade overall. I hoped that 50 GB would be enough, but lately I have found that I burn through it. In addition to making use of streaming, I sometimes download online games that often range between 10 - 25 GB each. All in all, I'm a very heavy and regular internet user and can easily burn through 50 GB within a few weeks. My 10 GB never lasts more than a few weeks even when I am relatively careful. If not being careful, it will last 3 or 4 days. I am not necessarily complaining about the Gen4 upgrade. At this point, I really find it hard to decide if it is an overall improvement or not. I must say though that I would probably still swith to Gen4 even with what I acknowledge above because of the horendous download speeds of the previous plan - at least I can now say the speeds, even thought mostly bad, are not insuferable. But this is not a compliment, only a concession - saying that I am in slightly better shape than I was.
As for the speeds, they, at times, have been less than impressive to say the least. My previous plan was for a download speed of 1.6 Mbps. I have seen my speed drop down to around 2 and 3 Mbps even though I believe the plan is for 12 Mbps. This being at any time of day, even after peak hours. Even during the dead of the night. And not just briefly, but extending for days, weeks, maybe months. And this always occuring after having the services for a while. After a fresh upgrade or install, the speeds are always matching the advertisement and often exceeding it - consistantly no matter what time of day or night and over days and weeks, no matter when you test it. I know this because I have had several upgrades and fresh installs and I always get near perfect connection during the first few months or so afterward. This is how I know I understand that it is possible to have a proper connection with Hughesnet and be satisfied with the company and its service. However, this doesn't last long because the connection, instead of going bad all at once, gradulaly degrades starting at about month 2 until I am getting roughly 25% of what was adverstised for both download and upload speeds. This has happened nearly to exact proportion no matter what plan was being used. Meaning it always falls to around 25% of the advertisment, which leads me to conclude that the effect is manufactured with Hughesnet shaping the speed purposefully for whatever reason benefits them to do so.
The only consistant benefits to upgrading have been slightly or somewhat increased speeds for a slightly lower price. Also, the latency has decreased significantly, even though before everyone did all but swore before God that latency could not be made any lower than it already was.
There is good reason why most people complain about Hughesnet service and, despite what some might say, it's not simply because people are too idiotic to understand the terms of service or what is being offered to them with regard to the nature of satellite internet and the plans they sign up for.
