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Voice Service Seasonal Disconnect Nightmare

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missyjo0206
Freshman

Voice Service Seasonal Disconnect Nightmare

7 hours ago
I am reposting here because I was advised to. So that the people that can help resolve my issue will see my post. I can't imagine this will ever be fixed but I am willing to give it a try.
Voice service seasonal suspension nightmare
I normally do not post on community boards, I read them often and find them very useful. However the issue that I have had with HughesNet regarding my Voice phone service has been a nightmare to say the least. However the nightmare really goes back way before the phone issue. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone. I would like a resolution to the problem but have not received one yet. Mostly I just want to vent about my situation and maybe somehow my issue will help someone else by them not going through the same nightmare as me.
I contacted HughesNet to have my account placed on seasonal suspension in July of 2017, due to my family and I were moving out of state for my husbands job temporarily. This was even an issue and situation with HughesNet but thats another story in itself that was a nightmare. Let me make it clear that we live in a very rural area and HughesNet is literally our only option for internet/phone service and we have no cell service at our residence, which makes the issue with our phone service even worse. We have a microcell from ATT but it does not work with HughesNet so we can't even get service that way anymore.Otherwise if it was available in our area we would have cable, Which we had while away from home and it was wonderful. No data limits, no contract, speeds up to 60Mbps, customer service bent over backwards to help if there was the slightest issue. Plus the cost of internet,tv, and phone was less then what I am paying with HughesNet for internet that works half the time and a phone that I can't even use. Again sorry, thats why I warned this was more so a vent session for my benefit. Back to the issue at hand. After 6 months my family and I returned home. I contacted HughesNet on 1/22/18 from a friends house to request my services turned back on. While I was on hold for several minutes to just speak to someone to tell them what I was calling for, I was put on hold again. I pulled up our HughesNet account while I was waiting and it showed that I had an invoice for December and January for a monthly bill. They kindly took the credit that we had on our account and paid December's bill. (Which the credit on our account was again from their screwup that they had to refund us for)
Yes i know that fees and what not still have to be paid while on seasonal suspension that is not the issue, the amount of eachinvoice was the same amount as our regular monthly bill.January's invoice said due on 2/18/18. After the eternal hold I was on, the representitive came back and advised me my services were already turned on. Which is when I questioned the invoices and why services were turned on when I did not authorize them to be. After being put on hold again, I was advised that because of their initial screw up in July and again in November which was the reason we had a credit on my account, for them taking a payment from our checking account that I did not authorize for over 200.00. When they posted this payment to my account, and even though it was put on our HughesNet account as a credit, I was told that their system automatically reinstated my service beacuse a payment was made to my account and that this was out of their control the system just did this automatically. Really????
So after advising I would not be paying for the service I had not been using, they did remove the charges on my account. She advised she ran a test on our system and everything seemed to be working fine. Again I was not home so I could not check for myself but assumed everything was good. We had some things that needed done to our house before we could move back in after being gone for 6 months so we stayed at my inlaws for a few days. When we would go to our house the internet seemed to be working so again assumed everything was ok. We stayed in our house Wednesday night and Thursday morning we got up and my 11 month old was not feeling well and had been coughing so I decided to call his doctor to get an appointment. Yes this is where the nightmare started. I pick up the phone to call and I have no dial tone. So first thing i do is check the phone line to make sure it was connected and yes all 3 lights have to be on the phone box to be working properly, I know this and I only had 2. So at this point I put my son in the car and go to my inlaws to use her phone to call the doctor. From friday to Sunday I bought new phone line and new phones thinking we had been gone for so long maybe that was the problem, because in the back of my mind I her the woman at Hughesnet saying our system is working fine. However the new phones and phone line did not fix the problem,still no dial tone and only 2 green lights on the little box. So Sunday I go to my inlaws and I pull up a chat session with HughesNet beacuse I attempted to call and was advised that they were experiencing high call volumes and there was a long hold time. After giving all my information I am advised that I have to call the same number back that I just called and speak with the voice department by phone, you cannot speak to them via chat. So I called the number again and after all of the initial wait time and being put on hold and transferred I was advised by the last representitive that I was speaking with, that she spoke to the voice department ( but wait I thought that was who I was speaking with and waited on hold forever for???) and that they had the ok to turn my phone back on. Ok but no one ever said why it was not turned on in the first place and why I was told my system was working fine.
However, yes thats not the end, just the beginning, before they could turn it on I personally needed to hookup a computer or laptop to the internet via wireless or hardwire and I needed to login to an IP address they gave me with instructions on how to pull up a "state code". I advised again that I was not at home and have no cell service there. She advised I would have to go to my house get the code and call them back. Ok I have children to also take care of you just can't pack and unpack your kids in and out of a car in subzero weather. So i asked if I could advise them of the code via chat. She said this would be fine. So I did what I was told got the "state code" and opened a chat, with the reference number I was given so that I would not have to go through everything again they would know why i was contacting them again and I could give them them the code they needed. Well that wasn't the case. I was advised that I again would have to call the voice department. I told her that I already spoke with them or who I thought was them and was told that all they needed was this "state code". She then advises she ran another check on our system and it is working fine and that she could see my "state code". Are you kidding me then why did I have to go through all of this to get the code and contact them again. She advises that she has done all she can do and they are limited on the support they can give when it comes to the Voice phone service.
So I go to a friends house later in the day and I call them again and its the same song and dance all over again except this time I am told that they don't know why my phone is still on seasonal suspension and they have forwarded it to their specialty engineers the best engineers they have.Really they need their best engineer to take my phone off seasonal suspension??? ( Ok so you have to have an engineer reactivate your phone if its on seasonal suspension, If so I want that job)
I ask can someone please tell me why this is such an issue and why so difficult. I mean really I just want my phone turned back on.When I asked questions I get the run around and never a straight forward this is the issue and this is what happended and this is how we will fix it. I got none of that with anyone I spoke with. I would not be so irate and upset if somone would explain the situation to me. I wouldnt mind as much the time it has taken if someone could give a good reason. She then advises that sometimes it may take up to 48 hours for the voice service to be fully functional once HughesNet service is turned back on and they don't know why it didn't automatically come off seasonal suspension when everything else was turned on. So we are really the only people this has happended to in the history of HughesNet??
Well again if you remember, they turned my services on 2 months ago without my consent, so I think its had more then enough time to activate and be fully functional.
I was on the last phone call that the issue would be put at the highest priority and would be resolved within 2 buisness days from the start of the issue. Well which day are they going from beacuse if you go from my first call its been over a week if you go from my 2nd call and chat it's been 3 days, and if you go from the calls and chats i attempted on monday its been 2 days. I still have no phone service or answers.
I was told since I did not have cell service I could contact support anytime through chat and they would keep the notes updated and they could keep me informed. As of about 11:00 on Tuesday,I was told it has been sent to the engineers with high priority but they had no updates on the status. I advised that I would not be paying for Voice service that I have not had and would like the charges for this month taken off my bill, and I was told rest assured they will make a credit to my account once services have been reinstated. So why do I have to wait for it to be reinstated,they did not wait to charge me until they turned my service back on.
I have tried 3 or 4 times in the last 3 hours to open a chat and check the status and it will not let me, it sends me to an email page. I do not want to send an email. I want to speak with someone or chat with somene that can be accountable for the issue, not hide behind an email with an auto reply advising they have received your email and someone will contact you within 24 hours. Ok they can't contact me beacuse I don't have cell service at home and i don't know when they will call. I can't leave my house to get service for 24 hours waiting for their call that most likely won't come.I really do not know what else to do or who else to contact. I still don't have a resolution and no one can expalin to me the issue and everyone I speak with tells me something different. Again I know this is the size of a short novel and I am sorry. You don't have to read it but if you have and have had similar issues your not alone and I don't have an answer either. Sadly they know people in rural communities are stuck with them and have no other choice so why do they need to make things better for us, we have to have internet and phone, well at least one that works would be nice.
19 REPLIES 19
bare65
Advanced Tutor

@Amandaor @Liz

 

just want to make sure that your request for help doesn't get buried and that your experience here in the community is better than the phone support/chat you have previously experienced....Smiley Happy

Thank you again. I feel you have done more then anyone I have spoken with in the last week.

*bump*

@Liz

 

 

missyjo0206
Freshman

Update on my situation as of 2/1/18. I did finally get through to send a chat on Tuesday night, which got me nowhere again except she thought it would be ok to get a smart and rude tone with me during the conversation, this is not acceptable and I will be reporting her and the conversation to someone if I can get anyone to respond.Just because I want an answer and not something read from a script does not give her the right to be rude.

So yesterday was the 31st and I was advised there would be a solution within 2 business days by the 31st. Well guess what, nope and  After being on hold for 45 minutes last night, I was advised that the engineers are working on it and that my update was that they are reviewing it and someone would call me on the 31st, which If  they did I did not get the call, but she said I should  give them another 24 hours to follow up with me. Are you kidding me!!!!! I still have no phone or expanation.

@missyjo0206

Well, I'm hopeful that @Amanda or @Liz can touch base with you today and get the ball rolling of getting your service back up..

 

I know that the mods on here can review phone calls for content, but I'm not sure if they can review chat transcripts..

...but if they can, I would hope that they would review your chat session as well.

 

Hang in there...help is coming.

Thank you again for your help and doing what you can. I just cannot believe this has been a nightmare. We have been HughesNet customers for almost 2 years and I have never had any complaints or issues with them and now this. Plus now I noticed this morning that our internet had slowed way down so I went in and done a speed test and the numbers are much lower then normal. I checked our data usage and it says we have used all of our data. We have been in our home for 7 days and the only thing hooked up to the internet is my phone and iPad. My daughter has maybe watched 6 episodes of her cartoons on Netflix and that is it. We have never went over our data. I don't even want to begin to reach out to customer support for this.

@missyjo0206

I just replied back to you but for some reason it dissappeared..so will try this again.

 

So while we are waiting for Amanda or Liz to stop by, we can at least examine your data allowance problem and figure up which one of your devices is chewing through your data.

Some of the more easier ways to do this would be to first verify your HughesNet settings...

Double check your HughesNet Meter settings and verify that you have the Video Saver Mode turned on..

hn1.pngIf this is turned off, and your daughter was streaming her cartoons at full High Def resolution, this could easily account for some of the excessive data usage..

When you turn on the Video Saving Mode, this allows you to watch/stream content at a lower definition, DVD quality, while at the same time greatly reducing the amount of data being used.

 

The next thing I would suggest is to verify your settings on ALL of your devices, including your phones and iPad and any other deivces you may be connecting to your internet. Make sure that they can NOT automatically detect and/or connect to your internet.

These devices, especially the super smart ones, tend to be a little too smart for their own good and as such have a mind of their own.

Often times I will manually set up my phone to do one thing, only for my phone to turn around a few weeks later and override or reverse my manual settings.

If your phone's apps are not up to date, as soon as your phone detects and connects to your wifi, it will automatically begin downloading all kinds of updates...and all at once. This, in itself, will use a tremendous amount of data.

You also want to make sure that you disable those phone apps that you don't typically use to prevent them from using any unnecesary data. I would also recommend that you download some sort of adblocker/flash blocker/ and autoplay blocker on your browser.

A lot of websites have video content that will automatically start playing (you may have seen this via Facebook)..on some websites, even if you have autoplay disabled, the actual video file will continue to download in the background...so even though your not watching the video feed, it is still downloading. Theres more data right there that is being used that you may not even be aware off...

 

We can start here..and if need be, keep going until we find out what it is that is causing you to go through more data than you should be.

 

 

I know I went to reply and I couldn't find your post either. Yes we have video saver mode turned on. We have the Gen4 pro plus service plan. It's the 3rd one of the 4 we have available to us.We have all devices set to update manually. We check settings frequently becausecwith iPhone every time you do a software update it reverts back to automatic updates.If we need to download anything we usually do it during the period of time we can use bonus bytes or sadly go someplace like McDonald's were they have free wifi or my friends house who has cable and unlimited data. I have norton on my computer to block all those things. Other then the few episodes on Netflix and checking my email and weather app occasionally is all we have used it for. My husband was only here 2 of the days we have been home before he left for work.My phone is the only device connected to the internet all the time. I disconnect the iPads from the wifi when not in use. We would sometimes come close to using all our data but we did much more with the internet.We used to have our directv set up on the internet to watch on demand and listen to pandora in addition to Netflix and even during football season we would have people over and connected to our internet with their phones and still did not use up all data in 7 days and I haven't even had Directv turned back on yet because I have to be home when I call to turn it on and I need my phone service to do that.

Do you have a laptop and/or desktop computer?

If so, what Windows platform are you using, if any?

If your using Windows 10, the automatic updates being released are MASSIVE. (in excess of 1-2 Gb's)

If your computer attempts to download a Windows 10 update, and then fails half way through...it will attempt the download all over again, right from the very beginning. Believe me, several months ago my computer used in excess of 8 GB of data trying to download one of the Window 10 updates. For whatever reason, the initial download kept failing half way through...it did this 6 times before finally downloading all of the way.

You can go into your computer settings, under Update & Security and review what all updates have recently been installed..and also check and see how many of those initially failed.

 

Again..I'm just throwing some idea out there as to what could be causing you to go through so much data this past month especially as this is not something that you personally have experienced in past months...eventually, we will get to the bottom of it. We just gotta weed through all the possibilites is all..

 

Just noticed @Liz left you a reply YAH!

Help is on the way Dear! (said in my Mrs. Doubtfire voice) Smiley Tongue

Yes we have a laptop but refuse to update to Windows 10. I don't have it set to do auto updates. Thanks for your continued help.

Whoohooo! I'm doing my *happy dance* for you now that your phone is working again.

@Lizis pretty awesome that way...and I'm thrilled she was able to help you out.

 

As far as the data usage..I really don't know what else it could be off hand. It could just be a fluke especially as you have never experienced this type of excessive data usage in the past, or perhaps one of the devices you are using did in fact get a little crazy with some sort of update.

It might be good just to take the whole 'wait and see what happens next month' approach if this is indeed a fluke. (let's hope it is)

 

The good thing though is that with there not being any hard data limits, your phone, and basic internet needs should still continue to work even though your speeds have been throttled.

 

I do hope that you will continue to use the community if you have any further issues as you have seen first hand, the support you receive here is certainly a step well above any support you will recieve via phone or chat.

((HUGS))

Good morning missyjo0206,

 

I'm glad you found the community, thank you for posting. Let me look into getting your HughesNet Voice service up and running again. 

 

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.

Slow performance? Click me!

Missyjo

Feel my empathy.

I too, know a bit about being "out of cell coverage"

I gotta laugh when asked to make my profile more secure by entering my cell phone number..... then they want to send me a TEXT to confirm that number..... Right!!     Like That's really gonna work! Smiley Frustrated

 

I have been using HughesVoice without any serious issues for several months.

Only one,  On New Year's day this year there was a satellite outage. I could not access my weather app.

Went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, and the water slowed to a trickle, then quit. Frozen pipes.

Drank  my coffee next to the wood stove Smiley Happy I'll just call my neighbor for some help. Smiley Wink

Picked up the phone........ No dial tone..    Oh yea, HughesVoice Smiley Surprised

I survived. Had beer in the fridge, DirecTV satelite still worked.

Hang in there Misssy, help's on the way. Smiley Embarassed

 

Here's another story. HughesNet sent out three Data Tokens for compensation for the outage.

Maybe I shold ask for another one.....   No Phone service either.

https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/Products-and-Plans/Does-HughesNet-offer-any-RollOver-Data-plans/m...

 

Yes I agree unless they have lived in the middle of nowhere they have no idea what it's like to have limited cell and internet service. The six months we were just gone we had the luxury of having cable Internet and TV and phone and it was wonderful I didn't know such good service existed. The cost of all 3 with cable was less then what we pay for internet and phone with HughesNet. Then add directv on top of that and we pay triple the cost here at home. We are actually looking into the cost of having cable line ran to our home so that we can have the service here it is that much better. If we are able to do it HughesNet is going to lose about 15 customers in our little area because we are that fed up with the hassle. Good luck trying to get more tokens for compensation lol
I would not trade were I live for anything especially after being gone for 6 months and I know that service is limited and it will not work perfect all the time but when you have an issue it would be nice if they at least pretended to care and fix things.

Hi missyjo0206,

 

Thank you for your patience. In about half an hour from now, please check if your phone has a dial tone again and let me know.

 

Looking forward to hearing back.

 

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.

Slow performance? Click me!

Yes!!! I finally have a dial tone. I can't believe. Thank you so much. You have no idea how thankful and appreciative we are. Again thank you so much.
Do you have any idea what was wrong?


@missyjo0206 wrote:
Yes!!! I finally have a dial tone. I can't believe. Thank you so much.

 

 

Yippie!!!!  You came to the right place. Smiley Happy

Keep in touch.  Take care 

Good morning missyjo206,

 

Thank you for the confirmation. When you came out of the seasonal disconnect, that info did not automatically get passed onto the VOIP provider. This is a process we're currently working on so that situations like this don't happen. I'm sorry this happened to you, I'm glad we were able to get your HughesNet Voice service back online.

 

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.

Slow performance? Click me!

kitnbob
Tutor

Hi Missyjo,

after re-reading your "short novel" 

a part of it reminded me of returning home in February

after spending several months in "Sunny Dixie"

I had Public Utilities shut off my water before leaving, and I returned home (southwest MN) on a saturday afternoon.

Knowing I had to wait untill Monday to call for reconnection, I called up a plumber friend of mine to borrow his 6' long t-handle water meter tool. He came right over and twisted the valve and I had water. Smiley Wink

Monday I drove to the Utilities office, told em i was home and to read the meter.

When they found out I had already reconnected, they were kinda perturbed with me. "you Cant do That"

Times were simpler in 1998