HughesNet Internet Reviews by Residential Users

We had to move and hughesnet couldnot provide service at our new address so charged us for a early turmanation fee of over $300. WE DID NOT TERMANATE THEY DID BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT GET SIGNAL. UNFAIR

I have no complaints about the productivity and connection of Hughesnet. My beef is with the customer service and billing. Problems started before we even got hooked up. The contractor who was supposed to hook us up, changed our appt. day. They said they called us and left a message, but that was a lie. So re-scheduled, another day off work. Got it hooked up, no problems. Tried to set up the online account so we could get email, we are in month two, and that STILL does not work. Hughesnet keeps saying its a problem on their end with the set up, and they will call us back...they never do. This week my bill was due again. I finally figured out how to go to the site to do that, but then I discovered that instead of $65 a month as I was TOLD when I signed up, my bill is now $77. Everytime I call, and press 1 for "billing" i get a recording that says "experiencing high calling volume please call back later"....for two days I get this recording. finally, i just started hitting the zero until it finally connected me to a live body, they shoot me to billing. you guessed it, i got the recording. I called back, hitting the zero till i get a live person, they shoot me to billing, I got disconnected. After this happened 3 times I gave up for the day. Today, I tried again. Started hitting the zero until I got connected to a live person, and asked them why my bill is $12 more than what I was told. I was informed that the $12 is for equipment insurance, because if the equipment breaks down it could cost hundreds of dollars to fix. with the insurance it's $29.00. I said, "so let me get this straight...I'm paying Hughesnet $12 for insurance in case YOUR equipment breaks down, and YOU have to come to my house and work on YOUR equipment that I am renting by the way" and he said "thats pretty much it". *blank stare crickets chirping* So i told him that when i signed up for it, i was never told about that, it was never even eluded to. We are on a tight budget, $12 is 5 days worth of gas in my car. Had I known i would not have signed up. I told him that Hughesnet needs to let customers know that, and disclose all information, anything less is covert and under-handed. he agreed. but yet, i'm still locked in for a year, and really have no choice but to pay the $12 even though its not required. Even though we are very happy with the connection and speed and the overall performance, when my year agreement is up, I'm switching to something else.

This service is the worst internet service I have ever used. I strongly recommend that all new customers consider other services. There is no support with the service if something goes wrong. After one year I still do not have email service. I have contacted hughes net about the problem and they do not care to answer my concerns. If I operated by business in this fashion I would be out of business.

HughesNet has added so many users to their one satellite that the service has over the term of our 24 month contract become slower and slower and at this point it is very slow and also intermitent. For the last 3 months we have had to phone tech support because we caould not access the web. Each time we had to start with level 1 (in India) and after a very frustrating serveral sessions were given a phone number in the US for level 4 tech support. Several more phone calls to level 4 with promises to return phone calls and solve problems but no return calls. Now we have come to understand that Hughes has launched a new 2nd satellite and will offer an upgrade for $149. to their customers to transfer service to the new satellite. Unhappy customers like us, who have wasted many hours trying to understand why we cannot consistently access the internet and have been frustrated for months, now can either pay more money for the upgrade (good money after bad???) or wait until people are moved and supposedly our service will get better - we might actually be able to access the web again??

Was quoted $39 over phone. Ended up being $64 on first bill. "VERY" slow. I could eat lunch waiting for my home page to come up. "VERY" slow gaming. I finally gave up on that one. Called tech support,,,,not much help. When I cancelled afetr 25 days, they offered to up my speed to 10mbps at same price. NO!!! I did not bite at that one. Now have Time Warner, GREAT!!!! Wouls "NEVER" recommebd this provider (HughsNet)to anyone. BEWARE!!!!!

Unfortunately, we don't have any other ISP options (other than dial-up) available to us other than HughesNet. They're the worst. The Internet connection is unreliable - we loose it every time it rains and sometimes for no reason at all. In the evening it slows down so much it's like a dial-up. It take me 30 minutes to write a couple of ads for Craig's list and upload a couple of pictures. Talking to HughesNet tech support is painful. There are just a bunch of Indians with manuals that will tell you to unplug your modem for a minute. That's pretty much all they ever recommend for any kind of problem. When we get cable I think I'm going to cry.

I was told this would be faster than dsl and literally its as slow as dialup!

When their equipment fails like my modem, they charged me for shipping and handling. I'm renting their equipment and when it faiks I feel they should pay the shipping and handling not me. This is such a terrible internet service. Whenyou order it , you arenot given full details od fair access policy or termination fees until you want to terminate or go over your fair access policy. For the price it should be unlimted internet access and downloads like cheaper monthly internet services.

Do not under any circumstances use HughesNet. Indian support services are terrible. Over an hour on one call and 5 different supervisors. Service was never what we signed for. $250.00 cancellation fee. We will also contact the better business.

The worst, slowest service ever. I even got an upgrade and am paying about $100/month for a piece of crap. I will never recommend HughesNet to anyone - ever. It took 10 minutes to transmit a 15k file, and my work requires me to work with huge files. If you are considering Hughes Net, STOP right now and use anybody but.

This service SUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't get it. You mite as well have dial up. Thats all I have to say about this product. Wish I had another choice but, I live in the sticks and this is the only one available. IT SUCKS!!!

Hughesnet is the biggest joke of a company, first off they have the customer support located in India so I'm sitting at my desk banging my head on the table trying to communicate to them. Also when they tried to install the satellite they drilled three holes in my wall because the cord wasn't long enough for some certain parts so I have 2 holes in my home office. Hughesnet is definitely not reliable, if I have to do some research something I have to wait till 2:00am because that's when the Internet is barely usable, other times of the day it's works almost as bad as dial up. The way I see it Hughesnet is dial up spelled differently. My kid bought an Xbox so he can play online with his friends and he can't connect, I cought him awake at 3:30am because he even knew that's when the Internet was available. The people of Hughesnet tried to be sneaky hiding that darn fair access policy from us users but I found the ip website and the light would be green but the Internet was hardly usable. Today I sit here and I think my satellite may have broke because now the Internet isn't even budging and the light was green, I called customer support and I was able to somehow able to understand him given that I'm Hispanic so I'm used to a foreign accent, all he did was say restart the router, I did but nothing, I called again and it was a different person and he just repeated the same thing. Im disappointed that my only option is Hughesnet.

For those of you in the country that cannot get DSL or another internet service please do yourself a favor. Do not waste your time and money on HughesNet Satelite Internet. The quality of service is horrible, their equipment buyback that was offered when I signed up will not be honored by the company. On a rating of 1 to 5 I would give them a negative 5, they are that bad. I purchased the 1.5M plan at $69/month and for about a year now most of the time my speed was under 100k and the latency was terrible. Their technicians said the euipment and satelite positioning was OK. The system worked well for about the first six months to a year. I stayed with them because I purchased the equipment for over $425 then another $125 to install it because the technican said I did not want the basic installation that was free. I have in writing where they offered to buy back my equipment if I decided to terminate the service, for $200. When I cancelled they told me that offer was no longer valid. On my documents it had no expiration time, just the equipment had to be fuctional and in good condition which is reasonable. This company lacks ethics and cannot be trusted, beware!

So far, my service with Hughesnet has been very good. The only time my service is disrupted is when it is raining very hard. I live in rural Alabama. Satellite internet access is pretty much the only option because most of the land line phone lines have NOT been changed over to fiber optic which means you may be paying DSL price but not really getting it. What a waste of good money let alone false advertising from CenturyLink for this area. Our town doesn't even offer any cable. I got in on HughesNet when they were running the stimulus package at 39.99 a month. I get 250 allotment and that is fine with my online work. So far, so good.

I am very happy with my Hughesnet service I have high speed service each and evry day with expected outage when we get heavy snow and rain. I have only once maxed my mb allotment, but we don't play alot of online games. I use the download manager when I need to download big files. If you live out in the country this service is the best. I have had dial up and Skyway USA and Hughesnet has been the best so far. I just wish the monthly fees were lower.

This is the WORST Service I've ever had. The internet service is slower than slow I was unable to load Google or even Facebook on my computer most of the time. I contacted tech support on several occasions and the problem would be fixed for a short period of time only. In a few hours the service would slow to a crawl once again. After numerous calls to tech support I cancelled the service during the trial period. This company went ahead and literally stole $400.00 from me and said it was owed the cancellation fee. I cancelled during the trial period. It's been 3 weeks since I cancelled the service and I still have not received my $400.00 refund. DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER USING THIS COMPANY. The customer service and tech support staff are useless. I ended up tethering my cell phone AT&T to my laptop and found it to be 3-4 times faster than this lame service. DO NOT waste your money or your time with this company or its service.

As far as i'm concerned, hughesnet has false advertising. They say it's faster than dial up and it isn't. I've had dial up and it was much faster and cheaper than hughesnet. In all this internet service sucks and their fair access policy is bogus. I have direct tv and have no problems getting many channels, so why is this satalite sevice so horific and why do we have to pay too much money monthly for this horrible service. As soon as my contract runs out, I will be switching to verizon internet, much faster and cheaper.

Ok where to start . This company outsources 100 percent . Made in some foreign land where dictators are trying to keep control. Now on a more more serious note . I was never told by any of the people thy have working I'd pay 80 dllrs a month for service so poor. Fair rate act yeah right ,try fair rate trap. They trap u into thinking when u live in the boonies you have no other choice. I was told by Comcast I could pay to install a cable on my property which would not cost as much as you think. I did this rather than deal with the worst internet provider known . Please don't support out sourcing .this is what this company is known for. Dnt give in its a scam pure an simple . Call Comcast ask to install a wire on your property or simply move . There horrible an don't deserve to be affiliated with fine companies in the USA. Please pass the word on to others ..this is the only way to stop these people .

The first modem failed in one week. The speed is very poor at 300 Kilobytes per second, a wired DSL connection gives 10 MEGAbytes per second, thirty times faster. I cannot use a VOIP phone on the service because the uplink speed is far too slow and the voice becomes very choppy. The internet connection is bearable but not good. I don't recommend this service.

Hughes has the absolute worse e-mail service I have ever seen. Very little web surfing and then, you're subjected to their fair access policy and the speed is no better than dial up. In short, they are not worth the high cost. I have an ipad with AT&T 3G at less than a third of Hughes monthly cost. Dropping Hughes July 2011 and do not recommend them at all.

The first,and very fundamental problem, is that you can't get an answer (let alone a person) when you call them. Definitely not recommended.

they tell you same old thing over and over. wont work with goverment act. false advertising post to free installation. any thing they do will cost you money.

HughesNet in out-dated and slow. you can't down load anything with out going over there allowed time and then they charge you. you pay top dollar and get nothing. The network is so slow that you can walk you info to your client. they use the excuse that its Satellite but I get great Direct TV form Satellite but I cant even download a youtube video. DONT USE THEM THEY DO NOT DELIVER!

I was supposed to be the 2nd subscriber to what was then named DIRECTWAY. To say the least, I believe I can speak with more experience than most subscribers, so please pay heed to what I say! First off, in order to save money, the Company makes the customer sort out issues with a people that English is a SECOND language! As they are Indian they naturally speak slightly faster in a higher pitch voice. There has been some improvement in speech as compared to the early days of Directway when I felt happy to understand two words in a single sentence. As the tension rose the speed of voice and pitch esculated until I had to just finally had to hang up. Simply put, I choose to live in the country and if I want to use a computer I have NO REAL CHOICE. I have jokenly told my doctor that a Valium and a glass of wiskey is mandatory in order to prevent a stroke or heart attack resolving the simplist od problems. You have to wonder why I did not give all zeros to the questions. The reason is due to the effort that the employees try to please. They really try hard but when English is the second language the employees have a hopless situation to deal with. I would gladly pay a few pennys more per month to talk to aomeone that could answer my question in just a frction of the time it now takes. Sadly, Hughes would accually save money by simply eliminating the time difference. I recently switched to an HL9000 modem. I was getting more "drop offs" on the other moden as to nearly make it usless! I pity those with the lesser modems. This my own opion but I believe this is a result of overselling. But, as I said it is only an opinion. Now I have a top of the line HP running Windows 7. I am keeping score and I an losing 1out of 10 entries. After arguring with Microsoft, they have told me that my problems stem from my carrier. NOW WHERE DID i PUT THAT DOCTOR'S NUMBER? Pardon my spelling

Since June 2010 signal has been unreliable. The day I had the time and patience to speak with someone, I had a signal so the person on the phone said she couldn't tell me what was wrong. How can they help me if I don't have a signal when I call? If I had a strong signal I wouldn't need to call. Frustrating and POOR VALUE

8 Year customer. I became a customer of DirecWay, which was the name Hughes used before it sold its DirecTV satellite division, because it was the only alternative to dialup at my residence in November 2002. Other than the failure of the transponder carrying my account on the Hughes PanaMex satellite in early January, 2002, the Hughes residential service was pretty good, with average download speeds in excess of 700 Kbps (I once clocked it at 1.5 Mbps in 2003) up until about late 2005, when the service started to slow down. I daresay that their 1998-launched SatMex 5 is technologically obsolete, and given that this key part of their infrastructure is kind of out of their reach at 22,300 miles up, they've oversold their available bandwidth. Today, I ran their satellite speed test 20 times and averaged right about 250 kbps. Just a few days ago, our phone company started to offer a 6 Mbps DSL line for 42% of Hughes' monthly fee for residential service. That's 24x the speed of Hughes for 42% of the cost. Unless you live so far out in the boonies that you can't avoid using this excruciatingly slow excuse for broadband service, don't go Hughesnet.

HughesNet Fair Access thresholds are a joke. You basically can't do anything without going over, and then they want you to pay a fee for the speed to be restored for the next 24 hours. It's a scam. My dial up was better. Can't wait until we are past the 24 month agreement to get rid of this service. Customer service is horrible. Can't understand their foreign techs and one called me stupid because I said that their Fair Access policies were not reasonable. My wife was home when they installed the service and they damaged my roof in the installation process.

DO NOT SIGN UP FOR HUGHES. I pay for "up to 1500 kbps" and I get about 200-300 and have spent hours and hours with incomprehensible customer non service. Of course they are covered by the "up to" clause. DO NOT sign up with Hughes. You are locked into a contract with poor service. Even if you live in a rural area like me, rather go to the nearest internet cafe than bother with Hughes.

I started this when it was DIRECWAY. I live in a rural area so I had no choice. Phone line are old and no cble or DSL available. I have talked to customer support till I am blue in the face. At one point I was told that there was no guarranty it would be faster than Dialup. Tech support is hard to understand with them sopeaking broken english. The only time the speed ifs even close to advertised is at 5:00 AM. It starts to slow donabout 8:00 AM and only gets worse as the day wears on.

Very slow esp. after noon. Email help not. Phone help not. I really think their problems are their system is overloaded so they try to keep you busy doing test. After you do the test they then tell you, you need to do a different test. Very poor service if only they lived up to their adds or even close. Only have a few months left on my contract and will be doing something different.

The absolute worst! We have had problems with this provider from day 1: slow to no connections; poor e-mail service with huge amount of hang-ups, disconnects and error messages at the bottom of the page saying "done but with errors;" tons of TCP/DNS errors that can never be resolved, and always internet explorer problems. Their technical staff are usually in India and cannot resolve issues, so they ALWAYS tell you that they must send a technician to your home because the problem is with equipment and not with their service. They also adamently refuse to connect you to a higher level of tech assistance, when I do know for a fact that there is at least 4 levels of technical assistance that are available. The only thing positive I can say about Hughes Net is that compared to my previous dial-up service, it was an improvement in performance options. NEVER, NEVER USE HUGHES NET. If we weren't under a 2-year contract with them, they would have been cancelled a long time ago.

I had no trouble ordering because they gladly took my $500 to start up service. Installation was fine but we used our own personal electrician who is very knowledgeable. I have many issues with my service. It is very slow. I am currently experiencing an issue and have been for the past week. I have gotten a different "solution" from every person I have talked to. It is VERY hard to understand their customer service because all calls are routed to India. They try their best to help, but it isn't like talking to an American - they continually repeat what you are saying to make sure they understand you correctly. I would not recommend Hughesnet to my worst enemy! It leaves much to be desired.

DO NOT buy from this company! I ordered the service believing it was faster than DSL. I still had my normal service attached and Hughes Net was considerable slower. On top of that the connection when everyone is on is extremely slow; less than dial up. I cancelled my service and it is getting worse. Even though I was well within my trial period they are trying to charge me $350.00 for "charges" associated with your account. Good luck with trying to get your money back with the multiple layers of "customer support" where none of them can do anything and they refuse to let you talk to someone who can refund your money. Go straight to your credit card company and file a fraudulent case against them. It will take awhile but you will get your money back. Again. STAY AWAY from this company and their product. You will NOT get what you expect and they will definitely take your money, with or without permission!

I have had Hughesnet for 9 months now and if I have had good service for 2 months might be stretching it some..I either have slower than dial up most of the time or lately for 6 days haven't had any internet service to speak of at all cause it can't connect to TCP..Haven't had any luck with their tech support either..I would rather have dial up then Hughesnet cheaper and better internet service.I have had trouble with them since I ordered service from them..

Hughes Net satellite internet is a terrible rip off. They should be put out of business. Their service is horrible, their repair technicians don't know what they are doing. I'm out as soon as my contract is up!!! DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THEM.

This is the way to go if you can not get anything else except dial-up. Biggest problem is the amount of data allowed per day. Forget lengthy "You Tube" or any other video down loads. About fifteen minutes is all you can have before being cut off to a much lower speed. Most users seem to be dissatisfied with Hughesnet but I found some of the problems are beyond their control, like web problems or even your own computer system.

Have had problems configuring the Hughes.net email system to the Outlook Express. Once I log off my computer, I actually have to power down to make the Hughes/Outlook system come back. Customer service involves a person in another country miles away who speaks heavily accented English. Go with cable.....