Things I've Learned about Satellite Internet
Introduction:
When I graduated from college I was offered a very good deal by a family friend to rent a spare bedroom in their house. It was a little out in the middle of nowhere, but I needed somewhere to live and the price wasn't something I was going to find anywhere else. When I was in college the dormitories had free (paid for by my student fees) high-speed broadband internet, so let's just say I was spoiled.
After about 2 years of dial-up and searching for better alternatives I received a mailer from AT&T saying that satellite internet was available for my area. Little did I know that this would be one of the biggest mistakes of my consumer life.
At this time, the only options for internet in the area I was in were dial-up phone internet, or no internet, so you can see why the promise of something faster than 56kbps (which in practice equated to 33.6kbps) was enticing. Cable TV companies did not service my area so cable internet was not an option. We used satellite for our TV service (Dish Network), and although I had no personal dealings with them, I don't remember my housemate having any particular issues. Here are the lessons I've learned throughout this ordeal.
- Lesson 1: NEVER expect the installers to be on time
- Lesson 2: Sales people work 24/7, Tech service do not
- Lesson 3: READ the fine print before you agree to a plan
- Lesson 4: When to cut your losses if you got a bad deal
- Summing it all up
Lesson 1: NEVER expect the installers to be on time
At the time I decided to start this service (September of 2006), I was coming to the end of a long dating dry spell. I finally had someone in whom I was very interested and we were planning our second dinner date. This one was going to be at her house and she was going to cook for me. We scheduled it for a Friday, if I remember correctly.
You might wonder why this is relevant. Well, on that same Friday I had also scheduled to have WildBlue Communications, Inc. come and install my internet satellite dish and modem, which they had mailed to me the previous week. I say "mailed", when really they sent it UPS and because no one was home at noon on a weekday the UPS man took the thirty-pound satellite dish and separately-boxed modem back to my "nearest" UPS distribution center (which was roughly 45 minutes away and hidden down several winding streets) where I had to pick it up and haul it back.
"But wait!" you might ask, "Didn't you say your service was through AT&T?" I did. This should have been my first warning flag. AT&T does not provide satellite internet themselves; they farm it out to another company. The company in my case was WildBlue Communications, Inc., whose corporate office is located in Greenwood Village, Colorado. I will provide the link to their website at the end of this article because I don't want anyone to make the mistake in thinking that because I linked to them, I am in any way endorsing them. Quite the opposite.
WildBlue Communications in turn farmed out installation to another company (whose name I don't remember). I was transferred twice while scheduling my installation and the installation company told me their technicians would be there between the hours of 12pm and 6pm. I specifically asked that I be put at the end of their list for the day because I wasn't sure if I could make it home in time. They said no problem.
In order to have the privilege of satellite internet, I of course had to buy the equipment for it, which consisted of a large (2-3ft diameter) satellite dish and a modem that looks similar to cable/DSL modems and sits inside on a desk. The total price for these two items was $377.86USD.
Install Day:
The day of the install came, and I decided to take the latter half of the day off from work in order to be there when the installers came. I got home around 1:30pm and waited until about 5pm before I became worried. I called the number I had been given for the installation company and was told that the truck was out but that they had no way of directly contacting them until they checked in. I said fine, but that they said they would be here by 6pm and it was (by this time) 15 minutes till. The operator assured me they would be on time. She lied.
My dinner date for the evening was supposed to be around 8pm, and my date at the time lived on the other side of the metro area from me, so it was a solid hour and a half drive, 3 hour round trip. I paced my house for an hour and at 7pm I called the installation company once more to see if there was any word on my installers. No word. This time I filed a formal complaint with the company saying that some of us have lives and can't wait around for technicians to take their sweet time and not show up when they are scheduled.
7pm:
Not 15 minutes later (which made it around 7:15-7:30pm) I received a call from someone on the installation truck. They informed me that they had just finished their previous job and were on the way to mine. They asked for directions and showed up roughly 30 minutes later. At this point I was told they would show up between noon and 6pm and they showed up at 8pm. I was not happy.
Thankfully my date for the evening was very understanding and said she had no problem keeping dinner warm until I was able to get up there. This was a good thing because once the installers arrived, another circus ensued.
I expected one truck with maybe a couple of guys and a ladder on it. What I found pulling up into my yard were no less than three pickup trucks with two men a piece, one of which had a ladder and some equipment on it. I had no idea installing a satellite dish was such an involved process.
One man knocked on my door, greeted me and identified himself and asked for the box to the satellite dish. Two men were busy unloading their tools and ladder from the truck. The other three men were, apparently, a mute cheerleading squad because they stood around and watched the others work without really adding any input.
The process of finding a spot on my roof with a clear line of sight, bolting the dish to the roof, drilling a hole through the side of the house and running a cable from the dish to the hole took roughly an hour. At this point it's around 9pm, and I'm ready to get on with my date. Little did I know that was just the opening act. Once the actual hardware was installed, all six men came inside. One held a clipboard with some paperwork for me to sign, and the other five stood around looking over my housemate's living room.
They walked me through (as they were obligated to do) a process to get the modem connected and "verified" with the satellite dish, which on every attempt seemed to fail. I was using my housemate's Dell PC running Windows XP Home Edition in the hopes that it would speed things along, since the installation guys didn't seem to know much about computers other than how to turn them on and I didn't want to confuse them by throwing *my* computer (an Apple PowerMac G4 notebook) into the mix.
9:30pm
They tweaked a few settings on the dish, we reset the modem, nothing worked. By now it was 9:30pm. In desperation I brought out my Apple notebook and hooked it up to the modem. Bingo. I was connected. We finished all the activation tasks, minus one where the fellow with the clipboard told me to download an EXE file and I told him that it wouldn't run on a Mac. Apparently it wasn't important because he said that's fine, we're done and had me sign the final contract for service. This is where I sold my soul, and I regretted it for the next year.
As an aside, it's worth noting that throughout this entire process of trying to get my roommate's Dell to work with the modem, the man with the clipboard (who was also the man who greeted me at the door) was the only person who gave any indication he knew what he was doing. The others stood around and threw out genius suggestions like "Reboot the computer. It'll work then." I don't know if my house was chosen for some sort of mass training exercise or the installation company just has too many workers and not enough jobs, but I could have dealt completely with the man who had the clipboard and been just fine.
They left and I immediately locked up to go on my date, leaving my roommate's computer unable to connect for the time being. (The date went beautifully, by the way.) It turns out when I came back later to work on it that the problem was a disabled ethernet device. I have no idea how that happened, but as soon as I re-enabled it and reinstalled the drivers from the Dell CD it worked.
Lesson 2: Sales people work 24/7, Tech service do not
The internet service I paid for was $50USD a month for 512kbps download rates with a minimum 1 year contract. The service I got was (roughly) 200-400kpbs depending on the time of day and weather conditions. If it was stormy, the connection would go out randomly, much like our satellite television service. If it was between the hours of 7pm to 11pm in the evening, the service speed dipped below 100kpbs sometimes, or web pages would simply refuse to resolve at all, forever spinning and spinning away before my browser timed them out.
For the record, I noticed these problems within the first 30-day trial period where I could have canceled the contract outright, but the serious issues did not show up until a month later. I was just happy to have something other than dial-up, so my blinders were fastened securely as to how badly I was getting ripped off.
About 6 weeks to the day that I started using the service, I came home one afternoon to find that my internet was gone. The modem was blinking and said it was communicating just fine with the dish, but I had no connectivity to the outside world. I decided to call tech support.
When I called WildBlue Communications to set up my account and plans with them, the sales rep answered my call promptly (less than a minute on hold) and set up everything with a friendly attitude. This was by far the exception in my dealings with the company from that point on. When I called and hit "2" for the service department instead of sales, I was transferred to an automated message saying they were experiencing "a larger than normal call volume" and to stay on the line. The voice then went through some basic troubleshooting information such as unplugging and rebooting the cable modem and any routers or computers that are plugged into it. I did those to no avail.
After roughly fifteen minutes on hold, my call was picked up by a tech, who reiterated the steps the recording had already had me do. No dice. He then took my account information and did some sort of search on it. He informed me that there was an outage in my area and that they were investigating it. I was a bit confused and more than a little annoyed, but I thanked him and hung up. An outage? Did the satellite fall out of the sky? I wrote a comic to vent my frustration.
The service did eventually come back up later that evening. Other than the slowdowns from 7-11pm and weather issues, I didn't have another disconnection for a couple of weeks. When it happened again, I called, but this time after half an hour on hold I had still not reached a tech person. I called back and chose the "sales" option. Promptly someone answered and when I asked why no one was answering in service he transferred me back to the recording I'd just heard for 30 minutes. I gave up, and the service came back the next day. These outages happened randomly for the rest of my contract term.
Lesson 3: READ the fine print before you agree to a plan
Three months into my satellite service contract, I received another mailer from AT&T saying that finally they would be offering DSL in my area. The prices and speeds were very much better than what I was getting from WildBlue and I figured since both mailers had come from AT&T and our home phone was using the AT&T service, it would be a simple matter of cancelling one service and starting another. I figured wrong.
I called AT&T and was greeted by a very pleasant young lady who informed me that yes, DSL was indeed available in my area for the number I gave and that she'd be happy to set something up for me. Then I asked about my existing service. She said that AT&T had no direct connection with WildBlue so the cancellation of my service would need to be handled by them.
I was confused. I asked her why AT&T sent me an advertisement for this satellite service if they weren't the ones handling it in the first place. She apologized and said that in areas where DSL is not available, they contract out to satellite providers. In my case this was WildBlue Communications. I thanked her for her time and hung up.
My call to WildBlue started in sales because I wasn't sure who I needed to talk to. The sales rep transferred me to customer service, which like tech support had me on hold for at least 20 minutes. I was greeted by a fellow who spoke poor English and when he heard the words "cancel my account," he immediately transferred me to someone else. This fellow was apparently their closer, because he spoke very clear English and sounded very much like a used car salesman.
The "Closer":
He asked why I wanted to close my account, to which I said there was simply a better deal to be had somewhere else. He informed me that I had signed a 12-month contract and that I still had nine months left on it. I asked if there was any way out of this, and he said the only way to cancel it now since my 30-day grace period was over was to pay for the remaining nine months up front. This totaled to around $450USD. I told him I simply couldn't afford to do that and that if I was going to pay for the remaining time I might as well keep the service. This was apparently exactly what he wanted to hear.
I asked him again if there was any way I could get out of the contract. I didn't expect him to say yes, but I figured at this point it couldn't hurt and perhaps his superior would be more lenient in light of good customer feedback. "Closer" changed his tone quite sharply at that. He said quite sternly that I had signed a contract and that there was no getting out of it except by the terms he had stated before. I hung up.
I then immediately called back AT&T and asked to speak to someone who could take an official complaint. I explained my whole situation to the very nice AT&T lady and she assured me it was all noted and would be passed along to her supervisor. If nothing else I wanted to assure that the folks who decided to use WildBlue at AT&T will know that not everyone is happy with it, and perhaps consider contracting a different company in the future.
Before I start getting floods of emails about how I was an idiot and that contracts are binding, I'm fully aware of the fact that I made a mistake. I signed the contract without considering the ramifications and because of that I was stuck with a sub-par, much too expensive service for the duration of my contract term. I marked my calendar for August, which was the end of the term and my time of freedom.
Lesson 4: When to cut your losses if you got a bad deal
Fast forward to the middle of July 2007 (July 18th, to be specific). A lot has happened since my last unfortunate encounter. I no longer live in the house that has the satellite attached to it. My housemate got married at the beginning of June and I moved out a month before that. At this point I decided to cut my losses and pay for the last two months (July and August) and be done with the company completely.
I called their number and went to the "sales" department thinking that was who I needed to talk to. Surely, since they helped me set up the account in the first place, they could help me close it. Wrong. I was informed in a not very polite tone that I "should have called customer service" and was transferred to the dreaded hold music I had forgotten about except in my nightmares so many months ago.
The hold music used by WildBlue Communications is the same set of 3 or 4 synthesized easy listening pieces that might be attributed to the little known musician "Yanni's Stoned Younger Brother." The music itself wouldn't be so bad if it was clear, but for whatever reason every few seconds it would be entirely eclipsed by static. It's as if the company relies on a radio station to give its hold music and that station isn't broadcasting a very strong signal.
Call 2:
Twenty minutes into my hold, I gave up and tried a more direct route. I called again, this time choosing "service" and found that "If you want to cancel your service and close your account" was a menu option all to itself. Of course, the menu option might as well have been "If you want to sit on hold indefinitely and listen to more of our static noise, press 4" since that's exactly what happened. I sat again for twenty-one minutes this time.
Keep in mind that in order to even catch the phone people working at WildBlue one must call during regular business hours, so I was doing this at work on my personal cell phone, using my daytime minutes. I expected it to be a simple ten-minute affair: call, cancel, confirm, done. At this point I had called three times and collectively been on hold nearly an hour.
Call 3:
I then decided to call sales again, since they were the only ones picking up the phone. I asked the sales rep to call in his supervisor, which he did. The supervisor then informed me that the only way I can cancel my account is through the account cancellation service which is part of (you guessed it!) customer service, and that I would have to call them. I asked if there was anything at all she could do and she informed me that sales people did not have the authority to close accounts (only to collect my credit card information and open one apparently).
Call 4:
To say I was livid would have been an understatement. I hung up, gathered my wits, counted to fifty and called again, this time going to "service." I was determined now that I would not let their waiting game get the best of me. If they wanted to test my resolve and make me wait an unreasonable amount of time, fine. It was on.
Forty-one minutes into my hold I finally got a human being. I informed her of the wait and my 2 previous calls and she apologized. I then told her I wanted to cancel my account, which she said she could certainly take care of for me. My usual account information was exchanged and she politely asked me why I wanted to cancel. I prefaced my litany with an assurance that I did not mean any personal offense to her, and that my problem was with her company only. I then listed everything I've written out so far. I don't think she was expecting quite a detailed list of complaints, because afterward she paused for several seconds.
When she gathered her thoughts, she said very politely (and a little flustered), "I see you've had.... many problems with our company and I understand your frustration. I must ask, however, if there is anything at this point that I can do personally to keep you as a customer." I felt sorry for her at this point, since I'm sure I'm not the only person she's heard complain about her company before they cancel the service.
I politely said no, there was nothing that could be done. I would never use their service again. She gave me a confirmation number and informed me that I would be charged for the last month of my contract, after which I would receive no further communication from WildBlue. I thanked her, got a confirmation number and breathed a long sigh of relief.
I should also mention that the company did not pick up the satellite dish or modem and I was not refunded for the cost of the equipment. My ex-housemate now has a very expensive barbecue pit bolted to her roof.
Summing it all up
WildBlue Communications, Inc. is a poorly run satellite internet company. Their service is expensive and unreliable, they are inflexible with their contract terms, and their customer service department is grossly understaffed and sometimes outright rude. I made a mistake signing a 12-month contract with them and I will not make that mistake again. I hope that if you get nothing else out of this article, you will at least be spared the headaches I have had over the past year.
Official Website of WildBlue Communications, Inc. (I do *NOT* recommend using them.)Website for the Denver, Colorado branch of the Better Business Bureau