WildBlue Sucks

The following post was written by a former tech support agent for WildBlue Satellite Internet service. This website takes no responsibility for the accuracy or content of the message and has not confirmed the validity of the post (not that WildBlue would confirm it) so please use at your own risk.

FORMER WILDBLUE TECHNICAL SUPPORT AGENT

I was just terminated today July 26, 2010 from Wildblue.

The reason for my termination was that I took a telephone call from an angry customer that was told that Wildblue was 10 times faster than Cable and DSL.

I told the customer that that statement was not true and we were slower than cable and dsl.

I also asked the customer if she had cable or dsl available in here area.

For telling the customer that wildblue was slower than DSL/cable and asking her if she had DSL/Cable in here area, I was terminated.

If a customer called with slow speeds, we were just instructed to have them fill out 2 forms called Information Gathering (http://help.wildblue.net/care/article/4113&n=1) and Slow Connectivity (http://help.wildblue.net/care/article/4117&n=4). We also had to open a ticket which we would close at the end of the call and give a ticket number to the customer. We would have the customer log on to toast.net to perform 3 speed tests. Once speed came back lower than the customer was paying for, we told the customer the following: Speeds are not guaranteed. Your rate plan has UP TO 1.5mbps (for pro), 1.0mbps (select), 512kbps (value). The actual Wildblue average for Value was 200kbps, Select 500kbps, Pro 900kbps. We would tell the customer everything was working fine as long as they were close to average. If they were not close to average, we would make up some story about how testing at toast.net is never 100% accurate, or it was the web hosts problem like hostrocket, yahoo, godaddy and not our problem. We would then get the customer off the telephone and move on to our next call.

Our Fair Access Policy was horrible as well. It was a rolling 30 day period which means it could go to 2 different billing cycles and never start over at the time your new bill is paid. It pretty much went back 30 days from each day. Example, if today is July 26, 2010, it took usage from June 27th, 2010 to today.
Hughes net gives you unlimited downloading between the hours of 1am to 6am. We never had any unlimited downloading.

Our system was horrible when it was cloudy, snowing, raining, pretty much horrible all together.

I assisted customers with technicians not showing up, modem being offline, customers calling after 3 months of install and into a contract and having to pay $95 to have a technician come out and fix a faulty install (I should say wind storm instead of faulty install since we never would blame our technicians for a bad install we always had to ask if they had storms lately, etc)

We would give you a free Discount Repair Program, Month of Service and Service call if you said the Magic Words, “I am going to cancel”. Pretty much “I am going to cancel” is the statement you need to use to get things free from Wildblue.

We had 3 different systems we would use. Infinys (name of our Billing Program), Support Portal (name of our system that can see if your service is up and running) and CIMS (the system to initially look up the customer). Link to Infinys is https://portal.servicecenter.wildblue.net:8772/go?to=UA_Signin&from=dummy&task=dummy&redirectFlag=true Support Portal https://portal.servicecenter.wildblue.net/ and CIMS https://cims.wildblue.cust-serv.com/WildBlueCims/login.aspx

Infinys was a program designed by Convergys. I am not sure who designed Support Portal and CIMS.

The customer knowledge base was help.wildblue.net/kb/ The employees knowledge base was help.wildblue.net/care/

The Wildblue default installer ID was 34853836. We would always have to use then when customers were suspended for the system not letting them sign the customer agreement. This happened all the time.

When a customer called to pay a bill we would process it in the Infinys program and we never had a confirmation number since I do not believe the charge was instant. So pretty much you could call with an invalid credit card or one with insufficient funds and we would turn you back on and not know about it for a day or so.

The simple fact of the matter is that Wildblue was not a very good service. People constantly called with problems and forget about getting online if it is Cloudy or raining. Also forget about getting decent speeds in some areas because they have way too many people on a circuit than they should have.

We were trained to always Apologize to the customer and try and talk nice to them under any circumstance. We always had to say at the end of the call “For your convenience, you can chat live with us at wildblue.net” This always seemed to make the customers get mad and they would say, “I would if I had internet service, etc”

So I guess if I were stuck living out in the Country I would probably choose HughesNet. #1 because they are a KU BAND service which works in the rain/clouds, #2 they have been around longer #3 Commerical businesses use them, #4 From talking to our customers they always talked about having hughesnet in the past and it sounded like a much better system from what they described. (I did use HughesNet back in the 90’s when it was one way receive only. It worked pretty good
actually)

Hope this helps clear up everything with WildBlue.

This was sent to me by Lisa in AR and wanted to spread the word about WildBlue so, being more “to the point”, here is her story:

I decided to go television/cable free and watch my programs on Netflix and Hulu.  Evidently I’m the only person in the world that doesn’t know that satellite internet doesn’t do live streaming video; the salesman assured me there would be no problem, sold me the high tier package, and then gave me a phone number to call back if there were a problem:  turns out the phone number he gave me is the number for United Healthcare Medical Insurance!

AFter a week of total frustration and many calls to Wildblue, Internet Explorer and Netflix, I cancelled, requesting my initial set-up fee and monthly charge to be refunded and the early termination fees to be waived.  The man I talked to in the cancellation department assured me that if the recorded call did indeed indicate that the salesman mis-represented what satellite internet was capable of, that I would get my money back.  He gave me a ticket number and told me to call back in two days.

I called back, and was told by a Supervisor (after requesting one) that no, I would not get my money back, that the recorded call could not be listened to as it was “corrupted somehow” and that they would waive the early termination fees and that’s all.  I am out 111.00 for the initial set-up, $165 for the pole mount, and 84.95 for the first months service—unbelievable.  More than $300 for one week of frustration and no service!  Wildblue is not an ethical company, does not stand behind their product or service, and should be boycotted—SPREAD THE WORD!

Wildblue customers,

We are ramping up our efforts here and looking to really push forward with a class-action against Wildblue and we need your help!

While I will be emailing everyone who has an account on this blog over the next couple of days, I KNOW there are a LOT of lurkers (people who are just waiting and watching). In order to push forward with the BEST plan of action, we need to know where everyone is from. Please post a comment here (no account required) or email me through my other website at DamionFlynn.com

I need to know your city, state, and county and have a way of contacting you. If you fill out the form here and leave a comment, I will be able to contact you through email but the best thing is probably just to fill out my contact form on my other website.

Thanks!

I received an email from a woman (Rhonda in TN) who told me that they have been repeatedly hit with the WildBlue FAP and had their speeds dropped down. When she contacted WildBlue about it, they refused to give her any proof, which she wanted because she said they hardly do anything but check their email and such. So you are not hearing a third party story, I have copied her email, word-for-word below:

Hi!

I can’t say that I am happy to write to you under these circumstances, but I, too, have had my barn load of Wildblue problems!  When we first hooked up with wildblue, our speed was great and we were downloading/uploading with no problems whatsoever.  After a few months, though, wildblue started saying that we were running over our “limit” of download bandwidth and started cutting our speed back drastically.  Then, even though we pay our bills, they cut us off completely!  Well…we called them and asked point blank to please PROVE to us this so called overused bandwidth so we could find out what the problem was.  Of course, you can very well imagine, they said, “we don’t have that information”.  Bull!!!  Even when I had sad speed dialup, I could look up on an hourly basis and see what bandwidth I was using.  They think we are all so stupid that we will just TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT that we are all using up loads of bandwidth without a shred of proof from wildblue to back their claims up for charging us, then slowing down our speeds or cutting us off.  We have called several times and can’t get any more information from them except that we need to watch our download gauge.

Well…now, here is a little something interesting for you.  I also have DishNet Television satellite service, which is also affiliated with wildblue.  My wildblue bill is on my dishnet bill, as a matter of fact.  I was having a bit of trouble with one of our receivers, so I called tech support for DishNet to ask what to to.  They were more than helpful and within a few days, we had a replacement receiver.  Here’s the interesting part.  I talked and asked questions with the tech lady for over an hour about several things, including upgrading my service for DishNet.  But, I told her I was very upset with wildblue service and wasn’t sure if I should invest any further money into their company.  Well…well….when women talk, sometimes things “come out” in the open, you see.  The tech lady I spoke to was very nice and when I told her of my problems with wildblue, she told me, and I quote, “you couldn’t PAY ME ENOUGH to work on the tech side of wildblue right now!!”.  She told me that several months back, wildblue hooked up with Google thinking that this would make things better for the customers and be a good way to out do Hughsnet, another complete waste of satellite internet service (we were with them before we got wildblue..they suck too!).  Well, when they got whatever service they got from Google, it had a lot of “back door applications” going on, which eats up bandwidth like crazy!  She said that DishNet and Wildblue customer service is in the same building in Virginia, I think she said.  She said that wildblue can’t keep tech reps in because so many people are so angry about the same problems.  What is happening is that wildblue hooking up with google has caused so many problems, their tech workers are working around the clock trying to fix it, but refuse to tell the public due to the huge amount of money they would not only loose having to compensate those customers already pissed, but would loose any incoming possible customers that might sign up with them.  I don’t know about you, but wildblue is NOT advertised around these parts, but Hughsnet is on the TV all the time!!   This representative of DishNet told  me that wildblue is trying to make the problems look like it is the fault of the customers and trying to prove it to the customers without any proof, when they KNOW all along it is their glitch and we are paying for it.  Where I live, I don’t have much choice….it is either horrible speed dialup (and I do mean horrible…we are at the butt end of everything here and the lines are so bad, even my phone service sucks!), I can opt to pay $900 a month for T-1 (NOT!! can’t afford that by any means!), no DSL even offered due to the age and horrible condition of the phone lines out here and cable isn’t an option either.  So, satellite is my only choice and I can hardly afford that!  And, I can’t afford it with bad service!!  We run a small business out of our home and if the internet goes out, we are out of business, if we aren’t making money, we can’t pay the bill, if we can’t pay wildblue’s bill, they cut us off….it’s a wildblue circle, I guess you could say!!

Anyway, I wanted to pass this tidbit on to you.  I have already contacted a local “That’s Messed Up” news piece on a local channel who handle this sort of thing.  He said he has had many complaints about them and is considering doing a piece on the problem.  If you guys do get a class action lawsuit going, please put me on the list. We have lost money due to their incompetence and I want my money back!  If we could just get this out to the media, I think it would break wide open.  I am going to keep trying to get this through in any way I can from my end, please keep me informed as to what you guys do…..I believe if enough of us gather together against them and get a good lawyer to represent us little folks, we could win this thing and make them pay!  Thanks for the great work you are doing, by the way.

Okay - I thought this one would be kind of funny and yet ironic all at the same time. On another post about WildBlue and related companies having poor service and bad attitudes, we had a WildBlue installer (tbagg) jump in on the conversation and telling us how we would not have a chance at going after a class action and how his dodge neon wouldn’t do 150 etc.

He raised some legitimate arguments which I appreciated and gladly posted as I think it is imperative that we allow others to post their opinions, regardless of what they are.

The funniest thing though is that he helped me to prove a point about how “helpful” WildBlue and their affiliates are. I have been unable to get anyone that could give me a straight answer about removing my satellite dish from my house. I want to make sure that there are no “dangers” (electrocution, etc) in removing it and if so, I want to know how. My local installers will not answer it for me, even though I have given them no indication of who I am - just asked a simple question and they give me the run around before finally hanging up. Well, since tbagg was so vocal on the blog, I thought I would shoot him an email, again, not leading on to who I was - below is a copy:

I got your email off a WildBlue-related website and hope you do not have a
problem answering a question for me.

I want to remove the satellite off my house but was curious as to power
source prior to moving. The installation company is a joke and I can’t
even get them to answer my calls so I will be removing this myself.

I can easily figure out how to removed it (unbolting, but need to know if
there is anything specifically that needs to be disconnected inside the
home prior to disconnecting outside.

Thanks.

I thought this was a relatively easy question for him since he stated that he installed many systems. Of course, rather than answering what would have been a very easy question, he shoots an email over to a friend to get him to look up my email domain and see who i am, then responds with my contact information and a note from his friend telling him to ignore me.

I have to assume that the general mentality of anyone employed or subcontracted by WildBlue must have  to be pre-qualified in the art of working harder to avoid service. This just went to prove a point that many of these guys would rather work harder to NOT give an answer than to just give the easy one.

While I realize it is not hard to do a domain lookup, this guy had to email it to a friend and wait for the response, ultimately responding two days later to let me know that he knew who I was and he was going to ignore me. Then, he had the audacity to come post about it on the other thread. I thought that was the FUNNIEST part, and kind of the icing on the cake.

I first installed Wild Blue in July 2007 - installation and equipment totaling $300. Wild Blue had asked for a credit card over the phone for the equipment charges and the first month’s bill. The installer arrived as promised and everything went smoothly – so far so good.

Problems arose the very next day when I went to log onto the internet and couldn’t. My MSN homepage took over 4 minutes to load and logging into e-mail was even longer. This is the beginning of a long and painful saga….

I am self-employed and work from home.  I need to have access to both my parent company’s intranet and a secured socket layer database site. NEITHER of these areas would load with any regularity or consistency. In fact the SSL site from which I send sales information to my clients, failed over 95% of the time! I found if I worked at 5 a.m. est. or after 12 midnight, I might be able to use this SSL site with some form of normalcy.

In September, I “upped” my service package from Wild Blue’s Select Pack ($69.95/mo) which promised 1.0Mbps download and 200Kbps upload to their top of the line ProPack ($79.95/mo) which was supposed to deliver 1.5Mbps download and 256Kbps upload. I saw no significant change in speed or reliability!

Over the next four months, numerous calls were made to Wild Blue’s technical service. – hours upon hours of my time wasted! Although polite, the representatives were not helpful. Their “ping” tests showed we had upload and download speeds in range of the program we had purchased. At one point, they suggested not using Norton Internet Security and not using Windows Explorer as they “did not work well with our system”.
Curious, these are industry standard softwares!

A Tier 2 technical service rep. explained one evening in October that the FCC imposes higher security steps on the satellite data exchange than on regular DSL or cable, which can cause the system to operate slower. This was the first I had heard of anything like this and the first of ANY of Wild Blue’s representatives to admit a speed reduction!! Interesting…. Certainly their salespeople and their website don’t mention this!!

During the first week of November 2007, we called Wild Blue once more and spent another extended evening on the phone with Tech Support. This time, I even went to far as to provide the tech rep with my security clearance and password for my SSL database site to see if he on their computers in Colorado could enter the site with any success. (Remember this is a site I need to work with everyday!!!) After 10 minutes on the first login, he admitted it wasn’t loading up. He tried again and the site although slow, did open but was missing critical search fields and wouldn’t exchange data on even simplified searches. (So it wasn’t just my connection in
Connecticut!!) He had no clue as to why and promised to dig into this and call us back.

The next week we called again – frustration level maxed out. Wild Blue’s response, after checking our complaint log, was to suggest a service call at our location. The service call would cost us $95.00 and was not guaranteed to correct the problem. There is also no refund if they come out and find nothing wrong. We did not authorize them to schedule this service call and opted to wait and reconsider our options.

Three weeks later, I receive a call from a subcontractor looking to schedule a service call at my house. I responded that I did not authorize any such call and I did not want a service call. Four days later I get a call from another provider wanting to schedule my service call. I tell them the same thing. Their rep. asked me to call the “dispatch center” where these calls originate and also alert them that I had never authorized a service call. I did as she asked and thought the problem was solved…
Until I received my next months credit card bill and saw that Wild Blue had charged me for a service call that was never made. (This charge is currently in dispute thru my credit card company)

On December 31, 2007 I called Wild Blue to cancel my service since they never once provided the service, reliability or speed they had sold to me under contract. I wasn’t asking for a refund for lack of service – just stop billing me for service you don’t provide. The woman was absolutely rude and argued with me for more than 35 minutes that without a service call so they could see if there was an equipment problem at my location there was absolutely nothing they could or would do for me. Willing at that point to work with them, I asked to have the service call at no charge – absolutely not!

I rang off the phone with this person with a warning I was going to pursue this through proper channels. Since then I have filed a complaint with:

Better Business Bureau of Colorado (where Wild Blue is headquartered)

 Wild Blue has responded, again claiming that without a service call they will do nothing. They did admit in this response I refused a service call (this information is sent to my credit card company - hope it helps!) Interestingly enough, the file was sent from their legal dept and tagged “escalating dispute”. I responded back thru the BBB with another 2 pages of rebuttal - we’ll see what happens!

AT&T Customer Service in Connecticut …since they are the local affiliate, and advertise Wild Blue in their bill packages, etc. I called them on 12/31/07 and the representative I spoke with asked me to wait on filing with the DCP and the Attorney General until AT&T had a chance to investigate this through their company. He promised someone would call be back. I waited 10 business days with no response, so my additional complaints were sent.
UPDATE: on 1/18/08  I received a call back from the AT&T rep who took my complaint originally. He stated that the response to AT&T’s investigation (from Wild Blue) was that a service call was initiated then declined by me so I am still liable for full payment of my contract.  (same tune different day….)

Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection …waiting ot hear back

Federal Communications Commission …waiting to hear back

Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal …waiting to hear back

…as my fight continues I will add to this post. At present I am not asking for anything more than to be released from the remainder of my Wild Blue contract: $479.70 and the refund of the erroneously charged service call: $95.00.

If I were to add in the install costs ($300) the months of unreliable service ($459.70)… then included the hours of lost productivity (remember I’m self employed!), hours of tech support time wasted, telephone calls, letters and the like, this figure would be substantially higher.

UPDATE - 1/29/2008 - “RESOLUTION”

I  received a final response back from Colorado Better Business Bureau. They have marked the case “Administratively Closed” on 1/24/2008. Although Wild Blue is sticking to their guns that their speed is satisfactory and performing within the range of my package. They are willing to terminate my contract and waive the early termination fees associated. I had to threaten legal action with charges of loss of business, hours of time w/ tech support, plus equipment, install etc. to get to this point.

In the end, I’m out the equipment and install fees, what I paid in monthly “service” charges, plus I still have this huge dish hanging on my house. My credit card company is still working to get the erroneous charges reversed from my December bill.
After all this, my advice to other consumers out there:
Use any other internet service instead of Wild Blue Communications!

Well, I have been working on a dial-up connection for some time now. Even though I still have all my equipment for WildBlue Satellite Internet, I have not had it hooked up since two weeks after I bought it. Instead, I have been using Dial-up because it was quicker for normal browsing (latency on WildBlue killed normal surfing).

Anyways, I recently got a letter from AT&T letting me know that DSL was available. I got my DSL service hooked up about a week ago so now I feel whole again

I had my neighbors go to the fastaccess.com site (previously operated by Bellsouth)  and constantly try to see if DSL is available and of course, check the little box to let me know when it was available. I am not sure if this is the reason for the addition of DSL service to my pretty rural area or if it was just by chance. I would like to think I had something to do with it, but regardless of the reason - I am connected again in a much faster way.

Now I can monitor my email, my blogs, etc in a much more efficient manner!!

Look out - we are getting ready to be on a roll here!

When I purchased my WildBlue Satellite Internet Service, I did so through The Wireless Center in Gautier, MS (near Ocean Springs, MS).

Of course, during the initial sales and setup - they were great to deal with but after talking with them about how poor the WildBlue service is - the owner got VERY offensive, raised his voice, and basically told me to go screw myself because he was not interested in helping me.

The funniest part about the whole ordeal, was my intent on calling The Wireless Center in Gautier, MS was to have them come get the satellite and modem. I WAS GOING TO GIVE IT TO THEM - FOR FREE! All they had to do was come pick it up, but as soon as I said the service was crap, he went off on me and would not let me get a word in edgewise.

I have filed a Better Business Bureau complaint against The Wireless Center in Gautier, MS, although I doubt it will do any good since they are not even a member.

Anyone living in the Mississippi Gulf Coast region and thinking about doing business with The Wireless Center - think twice. They are very friendly as long as you are handing over your money but as soon as an issue arises, they will not even listen to you before automatically going over the edge!

Caveat Emptor! (Buyer Beware)

As anyone who has ever filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) knows, the wheels of progress move slowly, if at all, with this organization.

Shortly after my original disappointment with WildBlue’s service, which was immediately after signing my contract, I contacted the Better Business Bureau to see if, by chance, they may be able to help resolve my issues with my WildBlue Communications Contract and equipment.

The BBB of course, does not “really” get involved. Instead, they allow you to complain and then allow WildBlue to respond, then allow you to complain some more because WildBlue’s response is of no help whatsoever.  After complain and response go back and forth a few times, the BBB will “Administratively Close” your complaint - as they did with mine this morning. This may piss you off, as it did me, but I started thinking about it and this is not a bad thing. What this basically says is that the company was unable to resolve the complaint and the Better Business Bureau, who gets paid by the company, was tired of seeing the complaint so they closed it. the up side to this is that the complaint remains on WildBlue’s service record.

The Better Business Bureau has 3 basic types of company reporting and include Resolved with Response, Resolved without Response, and Administratively Closed.  Resolved with Response means that WildBlue resolved the issue and the customer responded saying it was resolved. Resolved without Response says that WildBlue stated it was resolved but the customer never responded to confirm. Administratively closed means that WildBlue was unable (or more than likely, unwilling) to resolve the complaint.

Here is a breakdown of the WildBlue Communications Better Business Bureau file as of today:

WildBlue Advertising Issues:
Resolved with Response - 4
Resolved without response - 6
Administratively Closed - 3

WildBlue Contract Issue:
Resolved with Response - 22
Resolved without Response - 23
Administratively Closed - 18

WildBlue Billing or Collection Issues:
Resolved with Response - 36
Resolved without Response - 33
Administratively Closed - 8

WildBlue Sales Practice Issues:
Resolved with Response - 12
Resolved without Response - 8
Administratively Closed - 7

WildBlue Delivery Issues:
Resolved with Response - 2
Resolved without Response - 2
Administratively Closed - 1

WildBlue Repair Issues:
Resolved with Response - 16
Resolved without Response - 14
Administratively Closed - 4

WildBlue Service Issues:
Resolved with Response - 54
Resolved without Response - 75
Administratively Closed - 36

WildBlue Customer Service Issues:
Resolved with Response - 30
Resolved without Response - 43
Administratively Closed - 24

WildBlue Guarantee or Warranty Issues:
Resolved with Response - 4
Resolved without Response - 1
Administratively Closed - 1

WildBlue Product Issues:
Resolved with Response - 11
Resolved without Response - 5
Administratively Closed - 4

WildBlue Refund or Exchange Issues:
Resolved with Response - 22
Resolved without Response - 20
Administratively Closed - 5

WildBlue Issues not Defined: (Other)
Resolved with Response - 6
Resolved without Response - 7
Administratively Closed - 1

So, according to my calculations, WildBlue Communications (WildBlue Satellite Internet Service Provider) has 112 Unresolved Complaints with the Better Business Bureau. This number is high, but by many can be chalked up as “being a big company” so what can you do to make people more wary of the numbers?

If you have problems or unresolved issues with WildBlue Communications, go to the Denver Better Business Bureau (since WildBlue is headquartered in Englewood, CO) and file a complaint. You may be one of the lucky ones that gets a resolution, but at the very minimum by taking two minutes out of your day, you can help others become more aware of WildBlue’s track record of customer service.

Click Here to go to the Denver Better Business Bureau’s Complaint Section to file a complaint against WildBlue Communications.
(Link will open in New Window)

Ok. Here we go. This will be a very long post. I’ll let our capable blog host decide whether this post needs to be broken into smaller segments and which blog category it belongs in.

From a personal perspective, our initial goal was to apply pressure to Wildblue so they would come out and fix their system. This is no longer our goal. We now want a full refund of all money spent on Wildblue to date, full and complete release from contract and no further dealings with Wildblue for the remainder of our lives. We were not, and still are not, specifically seeking ways to punish Wildblue, but if that happens, Hey, Too Bad, they’ve brought it upon themselves.

It occurred to me last night that there may just be a way to apply a significant amount of pressure to Wildblue and force them to start dealing forthrightly and quickly with disaffected subscribers either without resorting to formal legal action, or by making formal Class Action filing the end of a process, not the start of one. In fact, the more I think about it, the better I like the concept. Try this on for size.

Those of us who are the proud owners of slow, intermittent or dead Wildblue systems, whatever our number may be, are trapped in Wildblue’s version of Catch-22. That being “We have no parts available to repair your system, and even if we did, the replacement parts would be no better than the parts you already have, and even if these replacement parts were of better quality, we still use installers who do substandard installations.” That’s the first half of Catch-22. The second half is that from what we’ve been able to gather, Wildblue is still installing new subscribers using whatever existing unreliable parts and substandard installers they have! Here’s why.

Large blocks of Wildblue stock are owned by several large corporations, I’ll tell you their names in a minute. These corporations expect, some would say demand, a robust return on their investments. New subscriber installs represent cash inflows, revenue, not just right now but in the future as well. Remember, we all had to sign up for a minimum of 12 months. Each new subscriber and the revenue they represent help Wildblue drive their stock price higher. Repairs to existing installs represent cash outflows, expenses, not in the future but right now. Every repair forces Wildblue to spend cash right now which obviously weakens the company’s stock. There’s less hardware for new installs and less money for the investors.

By installing new subscribers at as fast a rate as possible and locking them into 12 month contracts Wildblue can inform all the Wall Street analysts that subscriber growth rates and revenue forecasts are increasing. Result: Stock goes up, investors are happy. By repairing existing deficient subscriber systems at a low and slow pace, and by denying subscriber contract releases, Wildblue is under-representing; you could even say disguising, the true scope and costs of system deficiencies from those same Wall Street analysts. Result: stock continues to go up, investors still happy, but now a disaster is brewing. Wildblue can keep the Catch-22 going only until one of two things happen.

The first is the very reason our host created this blog, to gather disaffected subscribers into a unified group and file a Class Action in a court of law. But maybe there is an alternative, and as I said at the beginning of this post, the more I think about it the more I like it.

That same group of disaffected subscribers, acting individually, can still generate a great deal of pressure, as if they were banded together, and put Wildblue on trial in three different courts. First is the court of corporate governance. Second is the court of financial disclosure. Third is the court of public opinion. The media!

Here’s how we’re proceeding. If this approach appeals to you, feel free to replicate it.

There are two senior executives at the helm of Wildblue. They are:

David J. Leonard
Chief Executive Officer
Wildblue Communications, Inc.
Building One
5970 Greenwood Plaza Blvd
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
Fax: 720.554.7500
Fone: 720.554.7400

Kenneth G. Carroll
President and Chief Operating Officer
Wildblue Communications, Inc.
Building One
5970 Greenwood Plaza Blvd
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
Fax: 720.554.7500
Fone: 720.554.7400

We have sent via certified mail, and faxed, a letter to these two individuals outlining our dissatisfying and unacceptable 86 day experience with Wildblue noting their apparent inability to repair the system, their unwillingness to provide timely billing adjustment and their unresponsiveness to repeated requests for full refund and immediate contract termination. We also noted in the letter that copies have been sent to the Illinois Attorney General’s Office of Consumer Protection, to our credit card company instructing them to block any further charges from Wildblue and to the Denver Better Business Bureau. http://denver.bbb.org

We are now also going to send copies of, and fax the letter to the seven members of Wildblue’s Board of Directors. They are:

Mark D. Carleton
Wildblue Board Chairman &
Senior Vice President
Liberty Media Corp.
1200 Liberty Blvd.
Englewood, CO 80112
Fax: 720.875.5401
Fone: 720.875.5400

Gary S. Howard
Executive Vice President, COO &
Director (retired)
Liberty Media Corp.
1200 Liberty Blvd.
Englewood, CO 80112
Fax: 720.875.5401
Fone: 720.875.5400

Liberty Media Corporation owns 32% of Wildblue stock.
The next two Board Members are:

David McGlade
Chief Executive Officer
Intelsat
3400 International Drive, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Fax: 202.944.7898
Fone: 202.944.6800

Phillip L. Spector
Executive Vice President, General Counsel
Intelsat
3400 International Drive, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Fax: 202.944.7898
Fone: 202.944.6800

Intelsat owns a block of Wildblue stock as well. I don’t know how much…yet.
The next two Board Members are:

Walter S. Segaloff
Don’t have any info…yet!

B. R. Phillips III
President and Chief Executive Officer
National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative
2121 Cooperative Way
Herndon, VA 20171
Fax: 703.464.5300
Fone: 703.787.0874

Mr. Segaloff was a co-founder of KaStar Satellite Communications and was involved in the early development of Wildblue.

Mr. Phillips’ firm, the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative owns a block of Wildblue stock. I don’t know how much…yet. The NRTC partners with our local Rural Electric Cooperatives across the nation to provide rural citizens with modern, high quality telco, tv and internet services of all kinds, hardline, fixed wireless, mobile wireless and satcom systems like Wildblue.

Before I mention the name of the final member of Wildblue’s Board of Directors I’m going to mention three other names that we are sending and faxing our letter of dissatisfaction to. They are:

Dr. John C. Malone
Chairman
Liberty Media Holding Corp.
12300 Liberty Blvd.
Englewood, CO 80112
Fax: 720.875.5401
Fone: 720.875.5400

Gregory B. Maffei
President and Chief Executive Officer
Liberty Media Holding Corp
12300 Liberty Blvd
Englewood, CO 80112
Fax: 720.875.5401
Fone: 720.875.5400

As stated above Liberty Media controls 32% of Wildblue stock and holds two seats on Wildblue’s Board of Directors. The two individuals who are the primary recipients of our letter, Mr. Leonard and Mr. Carroll both have positions at Liberty Media in their backgrounds. We believe this is an indication that Liberty Media is the majority shareholder and has injected at least four of its people into Wildblue to watch over Liberty Media’s investment. So we figured, why not let the heads of Liberty Media know how we feel as well.

There is one other firm name that surfaced during our financial investigation, as owning a block of Wildblue stock. We’re sending and faxing a copy of our letter to them as well, why not. I don’t have the name of the specific Senior Partner that is in charge of their Wildblue holdings…yet. They are a Venture Capital firm named:

Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers
2750 Sand Hill Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Fax: 650.2330300
Fone: 650.233.2750

The final member of Wildblue’s Board of Directors and the last individual to receive a copy of our dissatisfaction letter, at least here in Round One, is:

Thomas E. Moore.
Principal
TimesArrow
4600 South Syracuse, Suite 900
Denver, CO 80237
Fax: 303.256.6205
Fone: 303.256.6655
www.timesarrow.net

Tom Moore had a dream. He wanted to be able to leverage the DOCSYS(tm) modem platform he helped create and patent to bring broadband to the millions of citizens in America that were disenfranchised from broadband access due solely to their rural location. Tom brought that dream to life as one of the original co-founders of Wildblue in 1998. He served as Wildblue’s President, CEO and Director from 1998 to 2005. He still holds a seat on Wildblue’s Board. If Wildblue has a father, it’s Tom Moore. If anyone has the right to grab current Wildblue Management by the ear, drag them out behind the woodshed and slam a hockey stick up side their heads, it’s Tom Moore.  It certainly appears that for a goodly number of Wildblue subscribers, Tom Moore’s dream has turned in to our nightmare.

The question devolves to this. For those of you old enough to remember Watergate, it will sound vaguely familiar.  How much do the members of Wildblue’s Board of Directors and its major Investors know, and when did they know it?   How informed are they about what certainly appears to be system-wide hardware failures in the form of water logged TRIA’s, system-wide hardware shortages, system-wide shoddy installations and a growing system-wide subscriber base that feel victimized and want out, and want out NOW! The rules of Corporate Governance have changed. Members of Boards of Directors can no longer just show up and collect their fees. Board members are now held to much higher degrees of accountability for the actions of the managements at companies on which they serve.

If enough of us send legitimate, well reasoned complaint letters to Wildblue Senior Management and include Board Members and major shareholders on our complaint letter distribution lists, something will get done. How many of us is “enough?” I don’t know, but if I were a Board member and received even 10 such letters, I’d sure as hell be firing some pointed questions at Wildblue Management during the next Board meeting.

The material above constitutes Round One. And just to complete my thoughts…

Round Two would consist of re-sending and re-faxing the original complaint letter, with a new short cover page, something like “We’re still waiting”, to all the same people mentioned above and in addition, now send and fax the letter to the various Wall Street analysts who cover Wildblue. And, you include the names of the analysts on everyone’s copy. I don’t have a list of analyst’s names…yet!

Round Three would consist of re-sending and re-faxing to everyone in Round One and Round Two and in addition, now send and fax the complaint letter to 60 Minutes, CNN, Drudge, Forbes Online, the FCC, the SEC…once again, you include these new names on everyone’s copy. You get the idea. We just keep widening the distribution and at some point the dam will break.

I’m fairly certain there are a number of competent and reputable investigative journalists and investigative news organizations all across the country who would be very interested in a situation such as ours. We have the necessary tools to accomplish this right here on our desk tops. The internet is many things, some good some bad. One thing the internet IS exceptionally good at is viral distribution. We’ve all received links from friends to video, audio and text that have exploded in the internet cloud and replicated rapidly. A viral Wildblue complaint targeted at the Wildblue subscriber base and delivered through a reputable online investigative source would almost certainly generate a great deal of interest and visibility and draw more dissatisfied subscribers out of the darkness.

Round Four is, of course, all of the above and a formal Class Action Filing.

I’ll apologize again for the length of this post but the subject matter dictated the length. I wanted to fully inform anyone who’s searching for a way, short of formal legal filings, to pressure Wildblue into addressing our collective concerns. I’m also comfortable posting all this information in the public internet cloud. All the information gathered is public anyway. And what if Wildblue management is monitoring this blog, what can they do? Tell all their Board members and major investors;

“Hey, you guys are gonna be getting a bunch of letters from some distraught and deranged subscribers. Don’t worry about them, just toss them.”

Any Board member or Investor with a brain and a pulse, hearing that type of comment from management, is going to read each of those letters very carefully, if for no other reason than to make sure they don’t have any personal liability or exposure. I honestly believe if even 10 or 20 disaffected subscribers engage Wildblue Senior Management, Wildblue Board members and major Wildblue Investors in a documented complaint chain, the company will have no choice but to start dealing with our issues, and quickly. Because if existing subscriber complaints start gaining media visibility, new subscriber install rates will begin to slow, possibly dramatically.

Result: Stock price drops, Investors get pissed, holes get dug in the desert and somebody gets whacked!

Oh, and we just might get our money back too! It’s worth a try.

Regards
Jake