Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Wild Blue Internet Services

Living on a 52 acre farm, I needed high-speed internet access in an area that is normally off the grid. On the referral of my Satellite Television provider Direct TV, they recommended Wild Blue Internet Services.

I will preface all of my complaints by saying, when Wild Blue was working it was working very well. It very rarely let me down and the speed was refreshing. However, that was when it was working.

My first complaint with Wild Blue was the Fair Use Policy. This Fair Use Policy is in place to meter your downloads/uploads. I can actually see this as being needed in a limited bandwith system such as Satellite Broadband. However I was paying 75.99 a month to keep from having these problems. I was supposed to be on a higher tier. However two months in a row I had my service metered to basic dial up type speeds. Finally after training myself that I had to conserve certain activities I was used to, I had two full months of high speed uninterrupted service.

This is when my second complaint started and still has not ended. In July my Satellite modem died. After calling the third rate help desk, I was given an appt for an installer to come and check my equipment. Approximately 1 week later I had an installer tell me the equipment(modem) was on back order and would be here by Monday.

I will not bore you with every detail of what has happened over the last two and a half months. Suffice it to say that I still do not have my Wild Blue service back and have given up. The reason I do not have service is inpet ordering on someones part and defective equipment. As far as I have been told the Modems are still on back order now almost three months later.

Wild Blue employs a very confusing structure in dealing with customers. They have techs on staff that only know how to do a limited amount of troubleshooting. They use a company named DSI to act as a conduit to the Satellite installers. On top of all of this no-one can really tell you what is going on, they all just want to transfer you to someone else.

As a technical professional, I am perplexed and almost ashamed that their are companies at large that offer this poor service to customers. Once I have received proper refund, I will be ordering Hueghes Satellite Broadband internet.

1 comment:

tutmeister said...

Hey, could you let me know how you faired with Hughes Internet. I am having the fair usage policy issues with wildblue - I am a web developer living out in the sticks, so I have similar issues as yourself probably!