Prepaid cards and recurring payments

[Texaspapa1953]

First off, I have to say that I have no complaint about my service. In the years that I've been a customer, every problem has been resolved to my complete satisfaction.  Except for this one.

From the first I have used a prepaid card to pay for my service. At installation nothing was said about there being a problem and for a long time there wasn't. My card company issues  anew card every 5 years - new number and all. The last time they did this the technitian I spoke to was able to get the autopay to work. Took a few minutes, but the autopay worked flawlessly until now. This time no one seems to know how it was done, so I've been just calling in and making the payment on the due date (or before). It keeps being called an 'advanced' payment, but it works. It just seems to me that there must be a better way. It ties up my time and the time of the customer service rep who has to listen to the story all over again every month. 
Considering some of the services I've had in the past, this hardly qualifies as a complaint. Everyone I've spoken to, tech, customer service, billing, has been great. That's why I'm still a customer. I have other options, but I'm comfortable with HughesNet. I would like to see this issue resoved finally, though.

No one has ever told me the reason why prepaid cards are such anathema. It's what I have and I have no intention of changing that.  Honestly I'd rather mail you a check every month, but I understand that's not an option either.
Anyway, thanks for letting me vent.

[Liz]

Good morning Texaspapa1953,

I'm glad you found the community, thank you for posting. I'd like to address this concern for you, so I looked up our documentaion regarding pre-paid cards. In July we stopped accepting prepaid cards for autopay. "Since pre-paid cards must be loaded, tend to have small(er) available balances, and lack an associated line of credit, they tend to perform worse (successful payment processing) than conventional credit or debit cards."

I can see how this is an inconvenience for you. Please check your private messages (PM) in the top right corner of the community page, I'll send you a PM to further address your concerns.

[Liz]

Good morning Texaspapa1953,

We're closing this thread since we never got a reply from you. Please be sure to reply to my PM if you'd like me to assist with this concern. 

[GabeU]

@Texaspapa1953 

The following isn't in contradiction to, nor an addendum to, Liz's information, nor help.  I only mention it in case it might be more convenient for you at times.  

You should be able to use your card to make an online manual payment each month.  I don't know if you're like me, but I would much rather do this than give out CC information over the phone, which always makes me nervous to do.  You should be able to make payments using either the "View/Pay Bill Without Logging In" method, which you can see about halfway down the HughesNet MyAccount web page when you are not logged into it (if you're logged in the option's not there), or by signing into the same page and making a manual payment there.  

Again, I only mention these two payment options from a standpoint of convenience and not at all to negate or interfere with Liz's help.  I, too, cannot use my card for automatic payments, though I'm so used to making a manual payment each month it doesn't really bother me to do so, and I might still do so even if the option to sign up for automatic payments became available to me.