Saturday, April 8, 2017

Hughes Net

It took 3 hours today and many phone calls, but supposedly we were get our cancellation as of midnight tonight.  Not only did the representatives try to "sell" to us and keep us on the phone, but they were insulting and rude.  I was talked to like I was stupid, told to shut up, and then one of the reps told me his name was Dick and to call him Dick (aka Richard).  I called him Dick once during the phone call after he was rude to me (interrupted me, etc) and he said if I didn't watch my language he would be forced to terminate the call!  Are you kidding me?!  It was basically an excuse he lined up to be able to hang up on me later when I was not going to continue with their service.  When he got snippy with me for not "listening to him try to say something for the last 2 minutes", I asked him to repeat himself twice...and the bastard did twice.  I told him he needed to get me a supervisor, didn't even check for one and said none were available.  Hung up, called back and there were notes in there calling me a psycho.

These representatives were the worst!  I don't want their service in my new house!  I don't need to explain why or listen to why you think their service is amazing.  It's not.  We hated having their service.  This was internet for the kids to do their homework on, and guess what..they have zero homework due to being out of school for the past month.

We *think* we finally got our services cancelled.  We'll see by midnight tonight.  (Edit:  It's been cancelled and now we wait for the box in the mail!)

We were supposedly locked into a 24 month long contract still, somehow.  We knew in advance of signing up for this service that the max time we would be here is tops 1 year, as we are in the middle of purchasing our forever home (we recently sold the house we are in now). No way we agreed to 24 months (and it's already been 10 months of that - meaning 24 + 10 months means we were originally locked in on a 34 month contract that we didn't agree to!!!!).  So, because of this error on Hughes Net's part, we now have to pay $315 in cancellation fees.

So, after you cancel they send you out a box or two to your address to pack all of your things into that you had for your terrible service.  You need to get on top of your roof to get a piece from the satellite or pay a fee to have a technician remove it for you.  We were quoted at $100-$200 to remove it.  After you get everything packed up according to specifications, you then need to drive it down to a UPS store (make sure you take photos of the inside of the box and the outside packaging, so they can't say you never sent everything).

After that, it's hit or miss on whether you meet their deadline for returning it and them sending you to collections.  They quote you at roughly 40 days to return it, but that's not true.  You only get 21 days from the time you call to cancel your service.  The clock is ticking!  If you have an account attached to your current account, they automatically withdraw the money from it.  If you don't have an account attached, they send you to collections.

Getting refunds is basically impossible, as shown how difficult it was to cancel their service.  In the end, this error of a service could wind up costing up $700 total just for the equipment that we WILL be returning immediately.

Here's hoping our services were cancelled, the return box was actually sent out to us, and we get it returned with in their 21 day time frame and not charged for "not returning equipment" even though we will be returning it all.  So, now we pray that people actually did their jobs and aren't lying to us.    If we can't get this all done correctly, I am going to the A General, Better Business Bureau, and any other place I can find to report them.

PS.  Checked my usage today and over the past few months.  We haven't used their service much in at least 3 months as we are packing.  We've been using Verizon 4G hot spot wireless instead.  It's better quality and no issues with their phone reps.  Looks like somehow, someway, surrounded by cows...we used all of our imaginary data - even though we haven't even used it once!  Whatever they can do to nickle and dime us.

We also started our contract at $51.00 a month, and now at the end of cancelling it is $71.99.  Ridiculous.  This is on top of the $7.00 paper fee that the tried to charge us, which we did not do and stupidly allowed them to auto-remove our bill from our account.  Never again!

Oho!  I just found a link to the early service termination fee that we never signed.  It states on there we should be charged $400 within the first 90 days, and -$15 for every month after that.  We have had the service for 9 months, which means $400-($15x6)=$310.  Wow.  Just wow.

This service was cancelled at midnight, however we still needed to pay an enormous fee and now need to wait for the box.