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HN7000S Free Download Period not working.

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motobojo
Junior

HN7000S Free Download Period not working.

I am an HN7000S owner on the Pro Plan. NOT Gen4. For the past 3 nights the Free Download Period seems to have gone away.  That is, my bandwidth usage during the free download period has been 'charged' against my daily allowance.  I contacted technical support (100849341 & 100852747). I am waiting on an overdue call from engineering (3rd level technical support).

At roughly the same time the 'check my usage' tool (http://customercare.myhughesnet.com/frm_usage.cfm) stopped showing current information for my account.  Specifically, the last information provided is for 9/21/206 15:00-16:00.  I suspect the problems are related. 

Since the 3rd level support folks are delinquent in getting back to me I am reaching out to this forum for any help I can get. 

I am a longstanding hughesnet customer (> 12 years).  I am also a heavy user of the benefits of the free download period.   So, yes, I am absolutely CERTAIN that I am talking about the correct time period. 

Also, please don't hijack this conversation to try to convince me of the virtues of Gen4.  That is a totally DIFFERENT discussion, but it seems to be all I hear when I contact support these days.

This is the third night in a row I've experienced this problem.  Any help correcting the matter would be greatly appreciated.
25 REPLIES 25
Liz
Moderator
Moderator

Hi motobojo,

Welcome and thanks for posting. Let me look into this for you and see if I can find the right engineers here at corporate who can help. I was about to send you some tokens for the inconvenience, but I see our agents have already done so.

I'll post back once I have any further news or questions for you.

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Liz
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motobojo
Junior

Liz, thanks for your attention to the matter.  The silence on this forum and the lack of any call from the 3rd-level (engineering) support has been disappointing.  I still have not received a call.

You are correct that I have received some (6) tokens 'for the inconvenience', but to be honest that falls far short of the actual bandwidth I've been denied.  As I have mentioned, and as you would find in looking at my bandwidth usage history, I tend to use on the order of 400-500mB per hour during the free download period.  That amounts to the equivalent of 1 token per hour for my plan.  That means that to truly be reimbursed for the loss of service I would need to get 1 token per hour lost.  So far I've experienced this loss of service for 5 nights.  For a 5 hour free download period, that amounts to 25 tokens.  I've received 6 ... that's shy 19 tokens.  Sounds like a lot of tokens, but looking at it from my perspective it is quantitatively equivalent to the bandwidth I have not been able to utilize due to this service problem (so far). 

Regardless, my primary concern is speedy recovery of the free download period.  Anything you can do to facilitate that would be greatly appreciated.
Liz
Moderator
Moderator

Hi motobojo,

You're very welcome. Thank your for further detailing your token concerns. I do want to ensure you're taken care of since you've been with us for over a decade, so I've sent you 19 free tokens. You may receive three e-mailed order confirmations for the complimentary tokens. I'll post back once I have any news from engineering.

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Liz
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motobojo
Junior

Liz, thanks for the tokens. 

The problem persists through yet another night.  And I have still not heard from engineering.  I'm not quite sure why engineering needs to contact me since the problem is fairly well defined.  I'm not sure what additional insight a call to me would provide. I would think the problem could be diagnosed and fixed based on the information at hand.  The only call I'd like to receive is one that indicates the problem has been solved.
Liz
Moderator
Moderator

You're welcome. Once I hear back from my engineer here at corporate, I'll let you know.

Your patience and understanding are much appreciated.
If you have a tech or billing question and need help, please start a new thread in the appropriate board. Unsolicited Private Messages may not get replies.

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motobojo
Junior

I finally received a call from hughesnet.  Unfortunately it was NOT from engineering, it was a 4th level support person.  I had to describe the problem to them and answer questions that I'd already covered with the previous levels of support. Does your support not take notes and log them with the problem / incident report?  So after wasting time rehashing this support person offered two options: 1) upgrade to Gen4 or 2) escalate to engineering.  I find it utterly annoying that every problem I encounter is met with the "upgrade to Gen4" option. I opted for 'escalate to engineering', which I thought had occurred during my previous support call.  Now I'll probably need to wait another 2 - 4 days before that escalation request is handled.  This is ridiculous and unacceptable. 
BirdDog
Assistant Professor

Are you in Alaska? The day is most likely coming soon where only people in Alaska will be able to have 7000s service. Especially once the new satellite is up and running.

It is going the way of the original 4000 system.......history.
Liz
Moderator
Moderator

Hi motobojo,

Thank you for letting me know, I apologize for that. At this point I wouldn't worry about any promised calls from support. I've already escalated your peculiar case to an engineer here at corporate, which is as high as you can go.

-Liz
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motobojo
Junior

Nope, not in Alaska. Just not satisfied with the Gen4 options. I prefer total data quantity. For me current Gen4 options give me less total data.
motobojo
Junior

Thanks, Liz.
Liz
Moderator
Moderator

You're welcome.

The engineer confirmed that he was also unable to view any usage for your site since the 21st, as you mentioned. The engineer will get in touch with the team responsible for that part of system to help in his investigation.

-Liz
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GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

motobojo,

I understand your hesitance with going to Gen4 because of the increased data you can get with your current plan.  I had that in mind when I wasn't upgrading, as well.  Then I thought...do I stay up every night and use my computer for five hours?  The answer was no.  I could get more data with my current plan, but I never, EVER came close to using it. 

Twice during upgrading my computers to 8.1 it didn't work because it didn't finish in the five hour download zone and I didn't have enough free tokens to cover it afterward. 

motobojo
Junior

My assessment of the relative value of my current plan to that of the currently available Gen4 plans is based on my actual usage, not on hypothetical possibilities.  On average I use most of the daily plan allowance (425Mb).  So that would be ~12.75 Gb/month.  My current utilization of the free download period (when it is working -- which is usually 😉 ) is 400-500Mb / hour for 5 hours / night.  That's 2-2.5 Gb / day or 60-90Gb / month.  There is NO Gen4 plan that comes close to affording me 72-102Gb / month (total).  And, no, I do not stay up through the night to utilize the free download period.  Instead, I've made use of various programming techniques to fire up downloads of interest during that time.  When all goes well it works quite nicely. 

I understand that there will likely come a day when HughesNet finally removes all support for my HN7000S and my current plan.  Their constant insistence on offering Gen4 upgrades at every turn and their lack of enthusiasm on providing support now are a clear indication of the future.  I can only hope that before that time comes they come to their senses and offer a Gen4 plan option that includes the equivalent of my current free download period, rather than the crippled 'bonus' period (or whatever it is they call it).  Until then I'm mostly quite happy with the 'old' plan & hardware.

Yes, I know how much faster Gen4 is, but that just means I'd race faster into the wall of their meager data limits.  No thanks. 
BirdDog
Assistant Professor

Afraid to ask what you're downloading so much of, torrents would be my guess. Not that I care, or my business, but that is a lot of data. No wonder you like unlimited late night data.
debbie.jean.bro
Advanced Tutor

Hi motobojo,

I really don't have much to add to the conversation since I'm not an IT person, but I just wanted to say hi and let you know that, IMHO, Liz is really awesome and she will fix this! I'm a relatively new customer (four months) and if I could get the old plan you're on, I'd totally do it! 🙂 However, I'm very pleased with my service so far and really have no complaints.

Good luck and I hope your problem gets resolved very quickly!
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Interesting.  With your downloading habits I can understand sticking with a legacy plan. 
nightmaster
Freshman

Liz, I am having the SAME problem. Longtime customer of around 18 years.
Liz
Moderator
Moderator

Hi Louis,

Thanks for chiming in, I've replied to the thread you created, so please check there for updates.

-Liz
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sistasista
New Member

Long time customer of 10 years, but last two years have been hell.What is the free down load periods????? Anyone know??
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

sistasista,

Applying to the legacy plans, the free download period is the "Download Zone", where data used between the hours of 2AM and 7AM does not count against one's daily allowance.     

The Gen4 plans do not have a Download Zone.