New service, extremely slow

[Garyr]

You must have a better deal if it only costs $400 to break your contract, mine was $700 so I stayed with it. I must have talked to tech support 30 times over the last 22 months for issues with speed and buffering. I don’t think the system works well with Roku. They never could get my service to my satisfaction even using a different tv. It almost always tests Good on their side, even if they send out a technician. But I’ve had some techs tell me I had speeds less the 1 mbps even after they added extra data. Then an engineer says I’m get 3 plus mbps. It also depends how many people are streaming when you’re trying to stream. Unfortunately where I’m at there are no other choices for internet unless I go with Dish, which I hope is better.

[maratsade]

Gary, this site is for tech and account support. If you have a tech or an account support issue, please create a new topic under Tech Support or myAccount and Billing area, instead of piggypacking on someone else's ticket. 

For residential subscribers the ETF is $400 for the first 3 months, and then the amount goes down $15 per month.  If equipment is not returned, then there may be other charges.  

Are you still a subscriber or have you cancelled your account? 

Garyr wrote:
You must have a better deal if it only costs $400 to break your contract, mine was $700 so I stayed with it. I must have talked to tech support 30 times over the last 22 months for issues with speed and buffering. I don’t think the system works well with Roku. They never could get my service to my satisfaction even using a different tv. It almost always tests Good on their side, even if they send out a technician. But I’ve had some techs tell me I had speeds less the 1 mbps even after they added extra data. Then an engineer says I’m get 3 plus mbps. It also depends how many people are streaming when you’re trying to stream. Unfortunately where I’m at there are no other choices for internet unless I go with Dish, which I hope is better.

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[MarkJFine]

@Garyr 

Too many inconsistent things to unpack here:

1. To the best of my knowledge, the maximum fee for breaking a residential contract is around $400. There is no $700 fee.

2. Dish doesn't have their own internet service. I believe they resell HughesNet.

3. Speed is also decreased as a function of how many devices are simultaneously using the internet.

4. Speed is not the issue with streaming, latency is, and because of the distances involved in satellite-based internet, there's nothing that can be done about it. Depending upon the protocol and server used by the streaming service, not all services will be 100% compatible with ANY satellite internet.

If there's something you need worked on, please start your own thread.

[bokbok]

Garyr,

I signed up with Hughes a little over a month ago.  Had a line of site IP before, no problems till trees grew and stop the signal. Had no choice but Hughes.  I use the internet for everything, email, reading news, music, podcast, youtube, movies.  Overall with Hughes everything was much slower.  Since day one I had many conversations with tec support at all levels with many speed test and adjustments to my settings.  According to tec everything that can be done has been done.  because of the $400 cancellation fee and no other choice, I have resigned to the slow speeds.  

Since I want to watch movies most evenings the only way I have found to make watching watchable  because of buffering issues is to go into settings and turn off "data saver".  And this brings me to the core problem that I have with Hughes, data cap. 20GB will be eaten up if all I do is to watch 15-20 movies and do nothing else, no emails, no reading NYT, no podcast, no nothing.  Of course all I have to do is to pay for some more data tokens.  Ha Ha what a scam, no way to improve service until you pay more.  Good luck Gary.  I am telling everyone I know in my community do not sign up with Hughes.

[GabeU]

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@bokbok wrote:

And this brings me to the core problem that I have with Hughes, data cap. 20GB will be eaten up if all I do is to watch 15-20 movies and do nothing else, no emails, no reading NYT, no podcast, no nothing.  Of course all I have to do is to pay for some more data tokens.  Ha Ha what a scam, no way to improve service until you pay more.   

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Your plan and the activities you perform with HughesNet are YOUR choice.  If you burn through your data by streaming and then need to buy data tokens because of it, that's YOUR choice.  Offering extra high speed data in the form of tokens is hardly a scam.

How you use your data is entirely up to you.

[DebiS]

Gary, I seem to be getting the same run around that you are. I spent hours on chat trying to resolve slow speeds. The technicians got dropped three time due to their request for me to reset the modem, clear the cache in my browser and the 3rd time I don't know what happened. Next I called and after an hour and the technician upgrading the software on the modem the modem was basically crashed . The technician schedule a date 3 weeks out to have someone on site to restart my modem. The next day I spent another hour on the phone with two technicians and did get the modem restarted. Somewhere along the way it was redirected to the incorrect satellite. At that point after reading I started using testmy.net as recommended to check the speed. What I found is the technicians WASTED a lot of my time. That my speeds are absolutely great as long as I use my computer between 1am and 7am. Above or near the advertised 25Mb download. However the closer it gets to 8am the slower my speeds become and has been as low as 568Kb. Normal is around 1Mb. If someone would have told me as a customer and some of the technicians that this is all that could be expect it would have save Hughesnet staff a lot of time and myself. I'm only 3 days into this use and am surprised at the dishonesty, plus the issue that much of the technical staff wants to treat the customers like they are completely stupid.

[romeojones]

I fell for the commercial... smh. I had 3mps through Verizon that was faster than this... I feel like I just got scammed. $400 to cancel should be illegal.

[maratsade]

There are cancellation fees for pretty much all ISPs...though the terrestrial ones charge less, but satellite is very expensive to launch and maintain, so the price is more. 

romeojones wrote:
I fell for the commercial... smh. I had 3mps through Verizon that was faster than this... I feel like I just got scammed. $400 to cancel should be illegal.

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[maratsade]

It's $400 to break the contract for residential HN internet.  There's an additional fee if certain equipment is not returned.  Business accounts' fees are higher.  Interesting that you'd rather pay more over the life of the contract than pay the early termination fee. 

Garyr wrote:
You must have a better deal if it only costs $400 to break your contract, mine was $700 so I stayed with it.

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[romeojones]

There should be a one week trial period or something. I would gladly return their modem.

[romeojones]

With all of the complaints and bad press / negative Youtube reviews I think they would care enough to address the complaints. A glitzy website and bubbly commercial got me into a $400 rat trap. Lesson learned, always check for reviews.

[maratsade]

Checking the reviews is good advice, but keep in mind too that it's a good idea to have a balanced view. There are negative reviews about all the ISPs from people for whom the systems don't work as well as they expected. Just check the negative reviews about other ISPs and you'd think all of them are awful.  The problem is that those people who have few or no issues, or who are happy with the service don't post, and so all people read are bad reviews and so they get a skewed view. 

In any case, yes, it'd be great, like you said in a previous post, if there were a trial period, but there isn't, so getting as much information as possible before calling to subscribe is a good idea. 

romeojones wrote:
With all of the complaints and bad press / negative Youtube reviews I think they would care enough to address the complaints. A glitzy website and bubbly commercial got me into a $400 rat trap. Lesson learned, always check for reviews.

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[GabeU]

@romeojones 

You always have the option of taking advantage of this Support Community by creating a new topic and asking for such.

[romeojones]

Well, it's actually unusable after 8pm. I just started doing something else instead.

[GabeU]

@romeojones 

If you're having issues with your service, you should start a new topic in Tech Support, which you can do here.

[Canarygramma7]

Except it won't let you post there.  🤷🏼‍♀️ I think it is away to stifle unhappiness with service.

[GabeU]

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@Canarygramma7 wrote:

Except it won't let you post there.   

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Yes, it does.  Anyone with a HughesNet Support Community account can start a new topic in any section except "About the Community".