HughesNet versus WildBlue
Not sure about which satellite internet provider to go with? Don’t let WildBlue steal you away from HughesNet. HughesNet offers a higher quality service, 24/7 technical support, professional installations, $100 mail-in-rebate, and a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. Call us at 1-866-430-8170 to learn more.
Tags: wildblue
December 4th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Hello! Good site!
Thank you!
January 16th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I have no personal experience with HughesNet customer service but WildBlue’s customer service stinks. I live in North Idaho and signed up with WildBlue for internet (neither Verizon or Suddenlink are available at my home address). WildBlue eagerly took my money then come to find out they had no “certified” techs in the area to install my system. I offered to install the system myself, nope can’t (WildBlue won’t let you perform a self install - no reason given). O.K. I’ll give them that one, so I googled “certified WildBlue techs North Idaho” two companies came up. Now I can understand WildBlue’s reluctance not to allow me to install the system myself but not to let certified techs from these two companies perform the install, this I can’t. The excuse WildBlue gave me, “since you ordered the system directly from WildBlue only “our” techs can install the system. My understanding is all WildBlue techs receive the same training from the same people. Does anyone know the difference between WildBlue certified techs? Unknown to them, I put together the system, mounted it on the outside of the house, went over to my neighbor (who has WildBlue) copied all the settings off of his dish, ran all cables into the house, connected the modem to my router and am now only waiting on a certified tech with a username and password to activate the dish. All this took me around an hour. Here I set waiting on WildBlue.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Jim, let me know how that works out for you by keeping me updated.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:03 pm
I’ve had the same experience as Jim Hayman in the past with Dish Network and I wonder if those 2 companies are owned by the same people as both are based out of Colorado and own satellites. Directv is my favorite for Satellite TV and I really like Hughesnet for my high speed internet. Even though cable is now available where I live, I’m happy and think the cable guys would be worse than Dish Network or Wild blue based on my experience at my previous home a few years back. Why can’t these companies just take care of the folks that ant to pay them every month for good service?
February 29th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I agree totally with the Wildblue analysis as many people have had problems with that installation network. We found HughesNet to be the fix for our needs.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:57 am
I had WildBlue installed… my sat. TV is mounted 8 feet up on a 20 foot pole to have a clear shot over trees on the south part of my property.
The installers did not bring a ladder so they installed the WildBlue dish about 2 feet up on the pole….which was okay but difficult to mow around…they also did not bring a laptop or signal strength meter to help them aim the dish so I used my laptop connected to the dish in the yard so they could do speed tests witout walking back and forth to the dish !
The service worked for three days (losing sync several times) and then went down altogether…the service techs came out and replaced the modem and router…the service worked again for a day and went down again…
The techs returned and said that my trees were the problem apparently they had grown too much over the previous three days!)…I asked that the dish be mounted higher on the pole…at about 8 feet like my TV dish…they said that this would make no difference…I called WildBlue tech support and they advised me to have the installers raise the dish and install and oval dish instead of the round one… the reseller said that none of this would help and was angry when I told them to make it work or take it out !!!
Will HughesNet be any better…I live in the country, I have many trees around…my sat. TV works fine all the time ….
CAN HUGHESNET HELP ???
Kevin
March 16th, 2008 at 9:19 am
If you are so desparate to get Wild Blue service, you need to reconsider. Please. After taking my money for hardware and installation, Wild Blue has avoided giving me service that they say I need and then after my warranty expired they want to charge me for the service. They puposefully slow down (in their words) my computer because I use it too much - must let other users have internet time also! I would have been better off to have gone with dial up - it is definitely faster than Wild Blue.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I placed my order for wild blue in the spring of 2005 and waited until September for them to have certified techs in my area. The download speed was good but my uplink was much slower then they stated. This past December 2007 DSL service became available in my area at a much cheaper rate plus much faster so I switched. I contacted Wild Blue on there toll free number notified them I was canceling service and stopped my monthly auto draft. Two and half months later I get a disconnect notice from the a local telephone company who installed the dish and was my local ISP for wild blue. The local ISP did some research and found out the WB will not notify the local ISP if you contact WB directly to cancel service. I have now emailed WB 4 times in the past two months hoping to get a reply as to why they failed to fulfill my cancellation request or why they didn’t at least tell me on the phone call that I needed to contact the local ISP for wild blue and cancel service with them. In the meantime I’m expected to pay 2 1/2 months service to the local ISP and WB won’t respond.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
I have had wild blue for several months, and i must say that the hole experiance keeps getting worse. begining with the instalation tech that apparantly was only qualified to connect wires, as i had to mount the dish myself. customer service is a joke, and when (inevitable) problems arrive, i am charged with a minimum of a hundred dollars, even if the problem results from thier faulty equipment. currently i am paying for the upgraded “faster” service, however the customer service tech is amazed at how slow it seems to be. this will hopefully be resolved after paying them to find the problem, as speed issues are not thier responsibility. i am anxiously awaiting the conclusion of our contract.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
When I first got Wildblue it was great - fast, efficient, good customer service. For several months I’ve had problems with Wildblue and am now going to give Hughesnet a try. Wildblue switched over to Gmail (Google mail) last February and completely botched up their email service, and even though i’ve called their tech support many times, they still can’t resolve the problem. One call I made they said I had to update to XP SP3, which wasn’t even out when they switched to Gmail. The also said (and I complied) that I had to do a virus scan (which I do regularly), that my copy of Outlook was obsolete (which I updated), that I had spyware (which I scan for and remove)…. on and on with the excuses of why it’s not their problem. Wildblue doesn’t recognize cause and effect - the day they switched over to Gmail, I and many other scan’t download email anymore and server delay is terrible. The last couple of times I called, they said that my dish was not pointed correctly (that my “up” signal strength was low) and I needed a service call, but when I called to make an appointment with service, they didn’t know what I was talking about. Geesh. Server delays with Wildblue (the time it takes their server to come around and respond to your request for a web page) are anywhere from 15 seconds to about a minute - which puts their overall speed in the dialup catagory, NOT high speed. When the server finally comes back around and sends some information, THEN, finally, the web page loads quickly. The last time I had a Wildblue service tech out to the house to repoint the dish (at Wildblue’s suggestion), he said it was OK and that their server delay was bad because they didn’t keep their network capacity up with their growth. I’m done with Wildblue. Goodbye, off you go then…..