30th August 2007

First Post/Rant

posted in Welcome, Service Rants |

I would like to thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to view this blog posting. If you are actually utilizing WildBlue Satellite Internet, I know it is even more time out of your day so I will try to make this first post as short as possible while still getting my main points across as to why I built this site.

After moving a little further out of town, I realized that cable and DSL internet were not available. At first I considered getting a T1 line put in as I could get Internet and phone for about $300/month this way but after talking to DirecTV about my television service, they recommended WildBlue as an alternative that could give me the speeds of Cable or DSL without the the heavy pricetag of a T1 because I simply did not want to get on dial-up since I have not had a dial-up account in about 7 years.

I finally got hooked up on WildBlue on August 15th 2007. The installer was very nice, hooked up the lines I needed, ran speed tests, etc. and was on his way. After a few hours I went to get on the Internet and it was extremely slow. The ping times were extremely high (pinging google.com was giving me latency of as much as 2600 ms). I chalked this up to a small storm brewing and just figured I would try again the next day.

The next day came and it continued to be slow. Since I had no real major things to do, I simply checked my email and left the PC. After several days of slow times, I was really starting to get pissed off. I just paid over $400 for a huge satellite dish that is bolted into the side of my brand new house (I had it custom built) and am under contract for a year’s worth of crappy Internet.

At this point I did not have the time to deal with it because I was leaving out of town for a week. Immediately upon my return on Tuesday the 28th of August, I sent an email to my local WildBlue representative and legal@wildbluecorp.com asking to be let out of my contract and give me a refund on my dish. I received no response from WildBlue Legal and the local guy simply emailed me back telling me I needed to get in touch with Tech support before he could really do anything. I called tech support and was shocked by a 20+ minute wait time when the Auto Attendant (AA) said there were no issues with service. SHOCKER. I started doing more and more research and realized that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of unhappy WildBlue customers out there and decided if WildBlue is not going to let me out of my contract, the least I can do is use my expertise to create a site to inform others and have a medium in which others can communicate.

At this point I am seriously considering a class action lawsuit against WildBlue for misrepresentation of services and deceptive business practices. I will gauge interest in a potential class-action through this blog over the coming weeks.

It is late and I am not sure if I correctly set up the user rights on this blog but please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Welcome, Service Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There are currently 13 responses to “First Post/Rant”

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  1. 1 On September 19th, 2007, donnaw said:

    Yes I am definitely interested in joining in on your class action law suit. I am getting out of my contract as we speak, I will elaborate more on that when I do so. Wild Blue is a joke. I was wondering if you have brought this blog to the attention of all the annoyed people at the Wild Blue forum? I will be get back to you as soon as I can tell you more.
    http://www.wildblue.cc/wbforums/index.php?s=135215d7d407e2fbbf1d58a19397cd8a

  2. 2 On September 20th, 2007, Admin said:

    I have not brought it to the attention of the other forum. I actually created this site on August 30th and then had to switch servers. I had some issues with some of my other sites that I had to address immediately and was still working out the details on them but plan to move full steam ahead with this very soon. Please feel free to direct anyone this way..

  3. 3 On September 21st, 2007, LeeMac said:

    Well welcome to the world of Wildblue. I had it for 11 months. It took writing the denver BBB to get rid of it. The first two months were not to bad for Satellite. I had it May 2006 to Feb. 2007. but it went down hill faster than a snowball in.. I would love to get some money back on the cost of the equipment. If anyone wants a dish and modem it sitting in my barn. Sprint EVDO has my money now and I could not be happier. I network all my computers through my desktop iMac and never have to worry about weather or FAP. Pings in the 70ms to 100ms range. I feel bad for those that have to put up with WB. I still stop in at WBU web site, and still see the same problems from the new comers, and the same groupies defending WB, Its sad..

  4. 4 On September 21st, 2007, Admin said:

    I have seen a few people defending the service and I have noticed they all work for WildBlue as installers. I wonder how much they would defend them if they were using the services they installed, because you know they are al most likely on DSL :)

  5. 5 On September 22nd, 2007, LeeMac said:

    Looks like you’ll be getting your hand slapped over at WBU! Keep in mind the site is not operated by Wildblue. So Satellite installers and family will be all over you case.

  6. 6 On December 20th, 2007, babygirl said:

    I am currently in possession of a forged contract from Wild Blue. This is criminal fraud and a felony. But they didn’t stop there. They continue to charge John’s credit card each month under these false pretenses. This is 2 federal charges and (I’m fairly sure) will lead to others as we attract enough attention to support “the little guys”. We have been on FAP 2 months in a row with a short full speed burts for a few days before the FAP 30 day cycle thing kicked in again. The installers we’re ANYTHING BUT professional. The original installers were acually fired from DSI for there incompetence and outright brutal disrespect to the home Owners. I have seen people charged between $50 and $70 for a steel pole to mount the dish, they tried to sucker us for $150. Customer service makes it painfully obvious they are trained to behave the way they do. I am pretty much a trophy wife so I have nothing but time…lol I have been signing up for multiple forums (including Wild Blues own) and spreading the word.

    Any suggestions to where the best place to post is?

  7. 7 On December 20th, 2007, Admin said:

    As the owner of this site, of course I would say here is the best place to post :)

    As this site gains more attention we will steadily rank up higher in the search engines for key terms related to Wild Blue Internet Service and Wild Blue Satellite Service.

    Blogs (this is a blog) are typically more search engine friendly than forums are and will ultimately allow us to gain more members. As we gain more members/readers, we will be able to push forward with suit against WildBlue Satellite.

    As for your comments about the forged contract, this is not the first story I have heard about this. This is typically the installers. They forget to get it signed and then do it later themselves. Unfortunately, this is a legal issue against the installer and/or the installation company (all subcontractors of WildBlue).

  8. 8 On December 20th, 2007, bluecat said:

    I have to agree,they blow in a major way. I also signed with WB in Aug of ‘06. So far, I’ve racked up 3 trias, 2 service calls, the last of which only took them over a month and a half to perform.
    The last service call they charged me for and also billed me for the entire month of service.
    I spent half of my 9 lives on terminal ignore ( some people call it hold)waiting to speak with customer support ( Is that an oxymoron ?)
    It only too them 2 months to credit my account for what they debited my bank account for, after determining..that YES VIRGINIA.. this customer had NO internet access for 35 days.
    Right now, my speeds are so slow, I could swear I am sending smoke signals.
    I spent a bit over 1 1/2 hours on ignore today and never heard a human voice.
    If there was any option available out in my corner of the woods, I’d be gone so fast, Chuckie would look like a choir boy !
    I will avidly watch this site for further input.

    Happy Holidays to all!

  9. 9 On December 20th, 2007, Admin said:

    They don’t have phones where you are?
    My wife and I did a speed analysis of dial-up vs WildBlue for normal Internet browsing and dial-up came out on top.

    WildBlue may have a slightly better burst once it connects but even waiting for page loads on a dial-up is faster than normal browsing with WildBlue.

  10. 10 On March 16th, 2008, bertrag said:

    Wildblue internet “service” is one of the biggest scams I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised that a company of the magnitude of AT&T would stoop to this. Well - maybe I shouldn’t be surprised - as it seems that so many large corporations and financial institutions just s**t all over us consumer types. It’s par for the course.

    Please - I beg you - do not sign up for Wildblue if you have not already done so. It simply does not work for real internet use. Sure - they’ll tell you that the ping tests prove that their speed is as advertised. I’ve used Wildblue (or tried to use it) and that is true. The ping tests do show a decent speed. However - when you try to use Wildblue to access actual web sites - the system simply DOES NOT WORK!!

    Forget about online banking. With Wildblue - it took forever to do even a single transaction.

    After many frustrating hours on the phone with their so called customer service people - I finally found one who gave me a straight story. According to the rep - their system is required by the FCC to filter the heck out of every transmission - because basically anyone can tap into the satelite feeds. Her explanation made sense to me - and explained why the ping tests work - but actual website access is so damn slow.

    Wildblue has to be one of the most blatant consumer scams ever.

  11. 11 On March 28th, 2008, kladere1964 said:

    All I can say is Ive had Wildblue for close to 3 years and Its been a Fair access policy roller coaster ride. Their Bandwidth monitoring system has Huge Flaws and misrepresents the actual download usage for anyone out of Contract and Probably those in as well. (Goes up Uncontrollably and never drops accordinly).. I’m in the Laptop repair business have a vast electronics background as well as a general common sense ability to figure out Pandemic issues for the most part on anything related to the field’s.

    Biggest problem with Class litigation against WB is written within their FAP and it states the Part of “Arbitration” Or No Class suit will be filed? (Which is fine.. Dell Corp. had one and they agreed on a class settlment regarding the 5150/5160 model units.. (Not anything to do with me)… I Personally know a Class attorney. and weve been Legal consultants for his firm on other issues that, Well all I can say is went “our way”. Google the name “Scott Kamber”. This guys the real deal and I’d suggest it as a starting point. He’s probably one of the best People Ive met personally and he can steer this thing in the right direction. www.kamberedelson.com is the website, And you will find he’s More qualified than most in the states to tackle the problem.(After you see his cases and background.. IE: Sony BMG, Menu-Foods/IAMs, Ameri-trade, Microsofts WGA fiasco??

    Tell Him Ken told you to contact and he may refer you to Dana also. Which is a good thing as If She works with him? Its the real deal.

    Wishing all the best of luck! I’m unfortunatley going to be forced to go back to Hugesnet as FAP is based on a 24 hour cycle and hope all’s well after they got the New bird up. (any comments appreciated).. (Prior experience was bad on DW6000 and the old Satellite). :(

    Feel free to contact me also.

    Ken

  12. 12 On April 19th, 2008, CraigG said:

    Ok count me in. I can’t get technical support from wildblue. I’ve emailed, called, refuse to pay my bill and slam them when I get a notice and still no response. I am going to file a civil suit on them. I gave them 30 days from last wednesday to fix the email to work in outlook and increase the speed. Civil suits are great and it’s simple. I paid for a service that I do not receive. You can sue up to $7,500 in a civil court here in California, you don’t need an attorney and it is easy to win a case if there is any misrepresentation by whom you are filing against. In this case a service. Keep the civil suit in mind. I filed against Sears a few years ago and won. Wildblue is going to answer one way or another.

  13. 13 On September 18th, 2009, Rachel Miller said:

    My service is ok, but they are billing all sorts of erroneous charges to my credit card, then giving my account a “credit”. Meanwhile, I have hundreds of bogus dollars in fees on my credit card to deal with. Is this even legal to do this? Not credit my credit card back? They also have thus far refused to send me the account statements online even though I have given my email address two separate times. I am thinking of legal action, and I just got into the two year contract with them last month. I suspect this company is in financial trouble so they are trying to get a bunch of your cash up front to keep them going, then confuse you with a bunch of charges/credits so you don’t know what is really going on. In the end, they still have over $100 of mine that I can’t account for since they won’t send me the statement. Very scary.

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