If you're disgusted by the Mark is pissed at HughesNet satellite internet service for downgrading his bandwidth allowance from 350MB per 4 hour period, to 375 MB per 24 hour period.

Even though his contract says that if HNS modifies billing or pricing terms, customers may leave contract without penalty, Hughes is adamant that he pay a termination fee if he cancels.

We're looking forward to reading an article in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review called "Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them," centering on companies' "adversarial value-extracting strategies." We wonder if it talks about the proclivity of certain businesses to ignore the doctrine of contracts being void following material changes to them.

Mark's screed, inside...

(Photo: cogdogblog)

I have been using HughesNet satellite internet service -- you've probably seen the ads all over DirecTV (who is also owned by Hughes Networks). As you may know, satellite ISP's limit the subscribers' usage, generally based on x MB per hour during a period of x hours. DirecWay/HughesNet's policy before somewhere around 3:00AM April 18th was that the subscribers on the Professional plan could upload/download up to 350MB per 1-4 hour period.

After 3:01AM April 18th, their so-called "Fair Access Policy" changed to say that now the subscribers can download 375MB but in a TWENTY FOUR HOUR period! What's worse is, if you download more than 375MB in your 24 hour period (which by the way is a rolling period of time -- therefore you never get reset to zero unless you unplug your modem for 24 hours!), then you will be rated limited to sub-dialup speeds for TWENTY FOUR HOURS! The rate limit punishment time used to be 12 hours before this new policy came into effect!

I have been on the phone with both the Technical and Billing departments all the way up to Tier 4 support multiple times, who all claim that my service has been upgraded by 25MB and they cannot understand how I'm not happy about the new change! After I requested to be released from my contract, as this change constituted a change of service, each representative told me that it was impossible under any circumstances to be released from my contract without paying the cancellation fee, despite the fact that their Subscriber Agreement policy clearly states the opposite -- it is no different than a cell network agreement: if the provider changes the service, the subscriber reserves the right to cancel without penalty within 30 days of the change taking place.

My 5+ hours of phone conversation with them has been fruitless. After reading back Tier 3 billing support their own Subscriber Agreement policy regarding release from contract and explaining to the representative that it clearly stated that I could be released from my contract if Hughes changed the service, the representative told me that he didn't come to that conclusion after reading it, and that he wasn't a lawyer so he couldn't say for sure either way!

The bottom line here is that HughesNet has lied to their own employees, who are then lying to all the customers. HughesNet has taken on far too many subscribers onto their network, thus overloading it. My bandwidth is ridiculous. I'm on the 1MB/200kb Professional plan and I'm at best receiving 500k/80k. Most of the time my speeds are abysmal, to say the least. Tier 4 technical support has confirmed that both their equipment and my equipment are fully functional and will no longer receive any cases from my account!

Frustrated out of my mind, I sat down and typed up the following complaint letter and mailed it to the Customer Support complaint center as instructed by both Tier 3 technical support and Tier 4 billing support. PLEASE feature my story! I'm trapped by these weasels!

-------------------------------------------------------