Hi all,
I have had a host of problems since becoming a hughesnet customer 1 year ago. I live in an extremely remote area of the county in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California at a high altitude (7000 FT). Weather is suprisingly calm for that high of elevation -- very little precipitation. There is no gas station within 1 hour of the area. Infact, there is only about 200 private parcels within a 1 hour drive -- the rest of the area is national/federal land and raw wilderness. There is no cell phone service within 1 hour of the area.
Considering my remote place, I didn't exactly expect smooth sailing with internet. However, my dish alignment has been an issue 4 times now over the last year. This is a vacation home, so I can only visit on weekends and OVER half of the time that a tech is dispatched, the tech does not actually show up at all which has wasted 4 of my weekends in total over the last year. The tech that DOES come has been great -- driving 4 hours one way each time to fix my dish. Techs have even called me day of and stated "Oh you live up there? Oh, no. I can't come that's too far" after having a confirmed appointment. The last time the reliable tech visited, a couple months ago, he moved the dish to a new location and replaced the entire dish to see if that would fix the issue. It worked for 3 months until now and tech support is saying it appears to be another alignment issue so he needs to come back out.
I reached out to the CEO of hughesnet via linkedin a couple months back after a tech failed to show up for 2 consecutive weekends despite me having an appointment and was connected to a nice woman, Nancy who tried to help out and get a tech back out to me. I notified her of this new issue (4th issue) and she has basically told me that living in such an area may be prone to such issues and she wishes me luck. Great. This is not acceptable to me. There has to be SOME way to secure the satellite so that it works longer than 3 months.
So while I have an appointment set up the following weekend for the tech to come out (in which the tech MAY or MAY NOT actually show up), I have gone ahead and ordered Viasat Internet to complement the Hughesnet. I figure even if Viasat is spotty and alignment is an issue at least ONE of the dishes will be working at all times.. hopefully.
I figure Hughesnet will keep breaking every 2-3 months and then I can toggle between it and Viasat as needed. Sucks to have to order TWO satellite internet plans just to have reliable internet but I have no other options. DSL, even with multiple loop extenders, does not even make it out to my place which the phone company has been working to fix for over a year.
Just some thoughts on life.
Andy
