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$70 month for internet that I can only use for 2-4 days monthly

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rmilcoff
New Member

$70 month for internet that I can only use for 2-4 days monthly

I have seen where many people are having this same issue.  I read that if you post a new conversation they will review your sales call and determine if you can cancel without any fees.  I would really like to get out of my contract without the early termination fee because whoever the guy was that we talked with initially was EXTREMELY misleading.  I pay $70 a month for nothing essentially.  We have Roku box and this was my main concern because my son and I only have local channels to watch on tv. We wanted to make sure we could use the Roku to have something to watch.  I distinctly remember the guy saying we could watch a movie a day/10-20 movies/month and be that was fine, and we could never use up the bonus bites between that 2am-8am window. We’ve had this problem since the 1st month. We discovered that 1 movie used up about half of our month's allowance of data.  I also found that I can only watch 1 show in the morning within the bonus bite window for about 2/3 of the month. Not only do we have these problems, but the internet is sooooo slow the majority of time, my son has a hard time doing his online homework for school and I have problems paying my bills online because of this.  I can't continue to pay this kind of money for such crappy service and such limited data, especially since what we were told was no where close to our experience. I had called since getting your service and they had instructed me to set the Roku settings to a lower definition so that we will not use up so much of our data, but this did still did not make much of a difference, till only have data for 2-4 days monthly. If I was told when I signed up that the use of using my Roju was going to be MINIMAL, I would’ve never signed up for your service.

45 REPLIES 45
BirdDog
Assistant Professor

rmilcoff, although there are ways to reduce the amount of data being used, the first thing I want to ask is do you have other internet providers available other than satellite? 
Gwalk900
Honorary Alumnus

Watching video is a very data intensive activity even at lower resolutions. That type of activity must be done very sparingly on any service that has data caps. There is only so much "fuel" in the tank.

 

Amanda
Moderator

Hi Rmilcoff
I was able to locate your sales call from June of this year in our system. Here is my transcription of your sales call, regarding the portion discussing data and streaming. 


Rep: How much streaming are you guys - like an estimation - of how much per week you're actually viewing

Caller: I mean he probably watches a couple hours - probably, um, maybe 3 hours a day when he's not working. So maybe like 4 days a week of a few hours a day.

Rep: Okay so like about 12 hours a week or so

Rep: Okay so basically as far as streaming goes with our service you will be able to enjoy about 15 hours of standard definition movies a month with our more popular plan. And with our free Status Meter you can even monitor your monthly data.. So video streaming definitely is possible with the service and you'll never have to worry about any overage fees, there's no such thing as overage fees here at HughesNet

Rep: Um okay so.. to be completely honest with you we're probably not the best solution for ya.. As far as speeds go we're definitely gonna be a lot more reliable than Frontier (previous provider) so you're definitely going to have an easier time watching Netflix and things like that but you're not gonna be able to watch much with us. 

Rep: Have you by any chance shopped around to see if theres a cable or fiber company in your area where you live?

Caller: Theres not, theres - like I said, we tried uh we tried to go with another service (inaudible) but couldn't get it 'cause there was a certain part of the sky that um I dunno they backup their internet at. It was hitting some trees around the area we werent able to uh.. (inaudible) upload and download speeds were really good.. but they said they might be adding more..some more..

Rep: Towers? 

Caller: Yeah towers or somethin

Rep: Yeah actually from the sound of it thats probably not the same kinda satellite like our satellite service

(more discussion about satellites and towers)

Rep: So we can definitely provide you service but you're not gonna be able to watch as much Netflix as you guys are wanting to do. Are we gonna alleviate some of the other headaches for you? Yes we are. 

Obviously the sale continues as here you are.. Our agent provided all proper disclaimers and read the terms and conditions which were agreed to by a verbal "yes" on the call. Have you considered looking into a satellite TV service to alleviate the local channel issue? As always, our community is great at assisting with data management.

~Amanda
rmilcoff
New Member

We DO NOT get anywhere near 15 hours of Data usage, that can be used for watching/streaming movies. We are lucky to be able to watch maybe 3-5 movies in the couple days when our Data rolls over, then when all of the Anytime Data is done-My son has to go to a friends house or a free wireless WiFi location to be able to do his homework that is online- which is TOTALLY RIDICULOUS that he has to do this, when we pay $70/month for having the internet, along with me having to pay my bills online-usually between 2:00 AM and 8:00 AM, other wise the transaction will not go thru. I actually had to try and send your payment about 10x earlier this month. As far as a Satellite TV service-we work/go to school various hours and want to  be able to watch programs/movies when we have time available. Plus with a Satellite  service we still will run into the problem of using up all our data within the 1st few days, as we are now. The service we have with you is actually worse then the service we had with Frontier. There is a BIG DIFFERENCE in being to stream maybe 3-5 hours(at the very most at the lower definition), when we were told we'd probably be able to get at least 15 hours a week and were you are not told that are internet would slower then Dial up when our data was used up. FYI- you said " the sale continues as here you are"-We have only have your service for 3 months and every month seems worse then the last. Also you sent out an installer that had some inappropriate actions, he took off his shirt while installing our internet and did not put his shirt back on when entering the house. We have never experienced this with your competitors Internet Installers before. He also asked to use our bathroom, as I said he  acted very inappropriate. 
rmilcoff
New Member

No, we can only get satellite in our area, it's in a Rural area. There is Comcast at the end of our block, but they will not run the cable down the block.
rmilcoff
New Member

We understand that. But were told we could watch at least 15 hours of streaming internet and we get probably 4 hours or less at the low definition download. 
BirdDog
Assistant Professor

Only 4 hours at low definition, something is definitely not right. What plan do you have and what other things are you doing online. Sounds like you have a data bleed from other things. You are sure you're doing low definition?
rmilcoff
New Member

Looks as though the problem I'm having is a VERY COMMON OCCURRENCE, with your service, getting only a fraction of the approximate download time that was promised. As I said WORSE THEN FRONTIER. I will make sure I let my neighbors and friends know what they can expect from your company.
BirdDog
Assistant Professor

It doesn't go by time, it goes by the amount of data used. Very different things. Which data plan do you have?
aculliton
New Member

I agree with the general sentiment here.  Also, I have a terribly hard time understanding data caps as the amount of data you download doesnt impact users the way download speed impacts users.  It would make more sense if we were only limited to bandwidth rather than download qty.  It costs the provider a negligible(cents per GB of DATA not several dollars) amount if I download more data if it is at the preset amount of bandwidth(speed) being provided.  Other users dont suffer because I am downloading more data, they only suffer if I am allowed a higher download speed thus clogging the artery.  DATA CAPS should not exist.
rmilcoff
New Member

I'm positive it's set at the LOWEST definition, I have it set at 0.3 GB per hour, which I've checked on several occasions and it's always at that setting. My son does what online homework he can-but even when we have anytime data, the download speeds are so slow, he often cannot do his homework/quizzes/tests because of this and I often have problems even paying bills online. No other online activities, we do not even have an Xbox or a Wii.
rmilcoff
New Member

HughesNet Gen4 Prime Plus
James E Besser
New Member

the truth always comes out, he was told my my  that was good showing this too him.
James E Besser
New Member

didn't you see on here the rep posted you use movies by by GB you get free tv. why not get the box etc its free, pay the fee say by too hughes no better with exede don't even go there. your stuck wish you well
James E Besser
New Member

I looked frontier internet there cost are cool why you go with hughes there plans you can watch movies 
C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

Actually, if all 1 million or more customers downloaded at one time, the satellite would end up crippled.

If my memory serves correct...

Jupiter One = 125Gbps of TOTAL PEAK bandwidth.  This is the amount of traffic that can pass over the entire system in either direction.

Jupiter One has at an absolute minimum, 700,000 customers on it.

125Gbps/700,000=0.18~Mbps.

Yeup, if ONLY 700,000 customers ALL downloaded something, and ONLY downloaded (no overhead, no upload to confirm the transfer was a success to the server and so on) you would see 0.1785Mbps, or about 170Kbps which is lower than FAP speeds.  The allowance exists to make users think twice about downloading something large that they may not NEED.  Satellite is a last-resort connection method.

BTW... that 125Gbps is split among approximately 60 some odd beams as well, and a dozen or so different gateways.
BirdDog
Assistant Professor

You're talking to the hand CORROSIVE. Math 101 and Physics 101 seems not to be taught in school anymore 
debbie.jean.bro
Advanced Tutor

I'm a bit confused here. Sometimes you say 15-20 movies and sometimes you say 15-20 hours. Sometimes you say per week, and sometimes per month. So just to clarify, which is it? How many movies do you want to watch per month?

The sales rep stated clearly you couldn't watch all the movies you wanted per month and that HughesNet wouldn't be the best choice for you. But you went ahead anyway and signed up with them.

There are a couple of things you can do so you have enough GBs per month to pay your bills and for your son to do his homework.

First, I highly recommend getting Dish Network or whatever you have in your area and running your tv through that, keeping it completely separate from HughesNet. That's what I do. There is no data limit on satellite tv.

Second, you can set your download manager to download movies or whatever during bonus byte time and then watch them the next day. I'm not sure if you can download Netflix movies though.

Third, you can get your Netflix movies the old fashioned way, on a dvd through the mail.

Fourth, if I were you I would FIRST pay bills and have son do homework. THEN, if you have data left over at the END of your cycle you can watch a couple of movies.

Last, you can adjust your and your son's expectations . Your son simply cannot watch 4-5 hours per DAY of high def tv and low def Netflix movies.

As regards your slow speeds, have you tested your download and upload speeds? If so, can you post the results? A good sote for testing is testmy.net. Also be aware that slow speeds do not necessarily mean more data is being used. A movie that uses 1GB to download will be 1 GB whether it takes 15 minutes or five hours.

What other devices are on your network besides your computer, router, tv, and Roku? Phones, tablets?

If you want us to, we can help you make some changes so you don't use as much data. I watch 90-120 minutes a week of documentaries on YouTube and PBS and always have plenty of data left over at the end of the month.

I hope this helps! 🙂
Old Labs
New Member

Mbps is a measure of capacity not speed - as noted above, satellite capacity at the time of launch is the issue and from Physics 101, I can say with some certainty that all of my bits are traveling at a speed of somewhere around 186000 miles per hour - they just don;t get here all at the same time based on current network utilization of that shared capacity 😉
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Maybe a bit or two is stopping off at McDonald's for a burger.