Complaint Review: HughesNet - Nationwide

The Hughesnet agent that I spoke with over the phone told me that the speed that he was offering me was 5Mps and that I would have 20 gigs of data per month. I told him that is not nearly enough data and that I would definitely exceed that; I wanted a different plan. He told me that was the only plan available in my area but that their service is essentially unlimited, though they are not allowed to call it that. He said that when I exceed the cap that my speed would be cut to about 3Mps. He went on to tell me that I have 30 days to evaluate the service and that if I am not completely satisfied within the first 30 days that I could cancel for a full refund of the first month of service, installation, and activation fee and that I would not incur an early termination fee. I mentioned the throttle to the installer when he was installing the service and he said that the 3Mps is an estimate but that they usually cut it in half, which would be 2.5 Mps.

The first day I got the service I connected my computer to the modem directly via an ethernet cable to run a speed test at speedtest.net (Ookla) and my speed came in at 2.74 Mps. Then I logged into the system control center to check everything out. Everything was fine except that I noticed my data was broken up into two categories; "Anytime Bytes" and "Bonus Bytes" Also, the amount did not match what I purchased. There were 14GB "Anytime Bytes" and 10GB "Bonus Bytes". I later learned that the "Bonus Bytes" can only be used between the hours of 2 AM and 8 AM (the time that I am normally sleeping)... so my usable data was 6GB less than I was sold on. I wasn't overly concerned about the data though because I figured that even if they cut my speed in half (2.74/2 = 1.37) that I could get by on 1.37Mps. It's not nearly as fast as I am used to but it'd be like cable in the old days and that was fine with me.

I hit the "Anytime Bytes" data cap within the first two weeks and immediately my connection was hobbled. I could barely load a webpage. sometimes pages loaded after several minutes but never fully. Images were missing, the browser was constantly loading, some pages were missing their structure entirely, and some would not load at all. I checked the system control center again and saw that my status was "hard-throttled" I clinked the link for the popup to see what that meant. The description provided said that when hard throttled the connection would be less than 64 Kps (unusable)... I called Hughesnet to find out why I was hard throttled. They told me that it was because I exceeded my data cap and that is part of their Fair Access Policy... I explained the conversation I had with the sales agent to the customer service rep, who spoke very poor english, and she just kept repeating herself that it was part of the Fair Access Policy.

I called and attempted to cancel today, 28 days into the service. I got the run around and was transferred multiple times. After being on the phone for a very long time the line went dead while I was waiting for a transfer. I tried again and the same thing happened. I tried a third time and finally got through to a "Supervisor" who told me that they would not give me a full refund but would instead give me a prorated refund. I asked how much they would refund me. She said that she does not know and that the cancellation would have to go through first before she could tell me... She said it would be based on how much of the data I used, which was all of it, and implied that I may not get a refund at all. They would not refund the installation or activation fee either.

Absolutely nothing about this service matched what I was told by the sales agent; not the data limit, not the speed, not the cancellation/refund policy, Absolutely nothing.

I live in an extremely remote area and need internet for my work. I saw others on here mentioning that they would like to file a class action. I am willing to participate in a class action lawsuit against HughesNet.