17th January 2008

Wild Blue= poor service, slow speeds, no refunds, bad attitude

posted in Better Business Bureau, WildBlue Complaints, WildBlue Lawsuit, Service Rants, Uncategorized |

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!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Better Business Bureau, WildBlue Complaints, WildBlue Lawsuit, Service Rants, Uncategorized. 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 25 responses to “Wild Blue= poor service, slow speeds, no refunds, bad attitude”

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  1. 1 On March 10th, 2008, tbagg said:

    Hey guys
    I realize you are on a roll here and you will probly delete this entry. 1st most people don’t realize that explorer 7 causes issues with the phishing filter and slows every service down with website checking. the problem is in the comparison, wildblue dosent offer as high of speeds a cable or dsl. so when you interfere with the speed a by just 100kbps, it hurts. Wildblue is for people who can only get dialup and isnt a dsl or cable replacment. Also If you have vista, windows defender slows your speed. Another problem most don’t know that your system is dependant on 24 volts to work correctly and if you use a battery backup or even some power strips it lowers voltage and causes slowed speeds. I know some of you are saying “oh yeah right” well its true. That little satellite on your roof is sending information 24,000 miles into space and back. That takes a couple volts and every one counts. If you have a problem with your car, do you refuse to take it to the shop? no, you let someone fix it so it works correctly. Why didnt you? Wildblue offer a 90 day free service call no matter what is wrong. That goes far beyond the 2 weeks you claim takes to become upset. Now I am not completly defending Wildblue. many service issues are because of a bad installation. Now a perfectly good looking install caould still be wrong and a crappy looking one may be perfect to get service so you cant judge it by the way it looks. Wild bue is so sensitive that being 1/16″ of an inch off can cause service issues and burned up trias. 1/16″ off on the ground may very well be pointing 10 miles off by the time you get to space. another issue with installations is when the customer has it installed on the roof. with the change of weather the wood on your roof can move 1/4″ other problems include rotten roofs mounting to a deck of using a pole that is less than a 40 gauge pole 8 feet long and buried 3 ft. It must be 3 ghz coax cable and high frequency ground block and barrels ( the center of these are blue) a white center is a low frequency wont work. other problems that are customer related are trying to use a router without understanding how it works or moving the modem and getting the 2 coax wire mixed up on the back of the modem. I have installed and service over 1000 wildblue systems over the past 2 1/2 years. not one had a problem that couldnt be fixed by proper installation ot customer education. That is the honest fact not fiction not speculation this is the facts. so if you are having problems with your wildblue get a service call, if its installation error they wont make you pay, if its customer error kiss your $75 goodbye. all in all its a pretty fair deal, you could go back to dialup. sorry for any spelling of punctuation problems, I have a couple kids who need my attention more than this.

  2. 2 On March 10th, 2008, tbagg said:

    Oh one more thing,
    the thing about these websites is the only people who speak up are the one who are mad. wildblue has about 300,000 customers. so if you wanted just 5% of their customers to complain in order to make an effort to prove your point, you will need 30,000 different wild bue customers to complain. good luck with that. the retention ratio of wildblue customer into the second year is 94% with a 1 1/2 % margin of those who now have DSL or cable as an option now 1/2 % move to an area where they have other choices 1/2 % goto hugesnet . so you only have 3 1/2 % of the customer not renew for unknown reasons. So to make your point valid enough for a class action you are going to have to get every single wildblue customer that didnt renew for unknown reasons to join your fight and then get another 4500 people out of the wildblue yonder to cancel/complain and join you. long story short………… you will never get back the time you have spent being mad about this and thats worth more than than you paid for your wildblue to begin with. I can understand being mad but a better way to handle it would have been to cancel the account you had the monthly draft taken from then cancel the service. then they would have to try and take you to court for the cancelation fee and if your case were documented properly you would getout of it. best part is you would have only spent about 1 hour on it and gotten everything you wanted. work smarter not harder. but most like to dwell on getting mad and saying how tough they talked on the phone. Move on and realize what your time is worth. or maybe its not worth anything at all.

  3. 3 On March 10th, 2008, Admin said:

    tbagg:
    I value your opinion and see no reason to delete your posts :)

    However, to rebut your point:
    1. The 90 day “free service call” is something I have never seen. I called and was told (after waiting for almost three hours for an answer - put the phone on speaker and got some work done) that it was going to cost me $75 - this was about two weeks after install.
    2. I doubt that most of us had that many problems with mounting since mine, and several others I talked to had holes drilled into the side of a brick home. I’m sorry, but I seriously doubt that my home moved out of the way :)
    3. When the technician initially installed my system, he made the comment that it was one of the best signals he has gotten - and the service still sucked.
    4. Wildblue versus dial-up… I do not doubt that for large downloads that Wildblue is faster than dial-up. I was pitched as being comparable speeds to cable and dsl - this was a blatant lie. Dial-up is MUCH more suited for every day browsing because the latency is so much lower. I was pinging out at anywhere between 1300ms and 2500ms depending on the time of day on WildBlue. My dial-up connection pinged in the 200-300ms range and often downloaded major sites like hotmail, google, yahoo, ebay, etc before WildBlue even made the connection - and we will not even discuss the speeds on secure sites.

    I debated on even replying to your second post because it really did not make a valid point, but I will:
    1. This website received over 1500 unique visitors last month, with close to 15,000 pageviews. Hardly anyone posted. Most people to not voice their opinions on public websites - they watch and wait to see what happens. I also receive emails from roughly 20 people a month interested in joining suit but do not want their information made public due to fear of retaliation. There are a LOT of people out there that are not satisfied with WB but continue to do business with them for fear of ruining their credit or being taken to court over contract issues - or simply because they think they have no other options.
    2. Once we get the class action suit going against WildBlue, you will notice that many of those “happy customers” will come out of the woodwork with similar problems who were either afraid to speak up or who did not know how. Often times, in a class action, the company can be made to send out notices to ALL its customers. Many times, it is also beneficial to the company to do so rather than chance multiple lawsuits. When this happens, you will also get many people that will jump on the bandwagon in hopes of getting something out of the deal.
    3. At this point I could care less about WildBlue as a company and I could also care less if I ever see my wasted money again. The class action is not about getting something from them, it is about having them change their ways so others are not distraught by the same issues and blatant lies that WB sales team feeds potential customers to get that contract signed.

    I appreciate your comments and welcome you to post, however, we will proceed with this case, and you will see a change. Keep an eye on this website for details of the upcoming lawsuit - you may want to sell out any shares in stock you may own when we announce…

  4. 4 On March 14th, 2008, tbagg said:

    by the way,
    If your tech mounted to brick that is also not proper mounting. I know it seems like a rock solid mount and at first it may well be.
    #1 Those are pretty large dishes, they catch alot of wind and will without a doubt vibrate. what happens when you vibrate a piece of metal with a rock? the rock wears down and causes the mount to become lose over time.
    #2 if the customer insists on a brick mount you cannot put the mounting into the morter, it must be the brick itself. If you use the morter it only loosens faster.
    #3 no one will have wildbue forever so it is safe to say that the brick will outlast your internet provider. now you have 8 holes in the side of your house that cannot be repaired.

    Im sorry to say, but your tech that said that he has never gotten such good signal could have and probly did lie to you. But its nice you gave him the benifit of the doubt. If he failed to mention the problems with mounting to brick then who knows.

    bottom line is sales people lie. they tell you what you want to hear to get you to buy. you wanted to hear it was as good as cable, sounds like thats what they told you and you bought it. if you call the cable companies only tiny towns that barely have cable offer speeds as slow as wildblue. I have cable intenet at my home and I install wildblue. I get 20,000 kbps download according to my package. I actually only get about 6,000 to 12,000 kbps thats half what they told me. But if you look at the internet contract ( everyones) no one promises the speed as it was refered to in an earlier blog entry I saw. they actaully say they don’t promise you will get anything faster than the number on your package. so if you bought 512 kbps and you get 300 kbps than you should be happer than me because i barely get half of what I pay for.

    Ping times are irrelivant with satellite internet. no one measures it by ping times only those interested in gaming or voip care of ping times. As I said earlier your signal travels from the ground to the satellite to your house then from your house to the satellite to the gound again. so for you to send out an email that email travels 48,000 miles and your mad because it takes a couple seconds. we cant send information any faster we arent that advanced to have anything more economical.

    wildblue has no sales team. If you call in they will sell it to you but they take no action to get a sale. they have sales partners and vars. your barking up the wrong tree if your going for the he said she said thing because wildblue takes no resposiblity of what was said only what was written. so read your contract carfully because those are the rules you will have to subside too, as do we all. Wildblue also offers no stock.

    Hope your case goes well, for your sake but it won’t. if you look into what happened with hughesnet in the past the same thing happened nearly word for word but it was under the name directway. nothing came of it, everyone just got worked up over nothing because they didnt read the contract they signed. when it came to go time the customers that were unhappy were left looking like a fool because they followed the lead of one outspoken undereducated person. the only one who laughed all the way to the bank was the lawyer who said ” we can win this and I can handle it”. All who reads this please read your contract and if you don’t understand it don’t take anyones word for it. spend $100 to $200 and have an attorney look it and translate it for you as you should do with anything you sign that you don’t understand. Post your complaints and do as you will but don’t put yourself out too much. life is worth more than complaining about somthing like this. Maybe you think you lost $300 over this. maybe you can spend upwards of 250 hours dedicating yourself to building a webpage and checking it everyday and writing emails and letters ect. that means because you are unhappy with a $300 investment you invested another 250 hours of your life( even at minimum wage thats over $1500. you could be enjoying your family of catching up with an old friend. maybe even spending more time with your kids. but instead you would rather be mad because a salesman got you and you feel you need to punish someone. when it all could have been fixed with a service call that you were too proud to get. electronics break they always will. if you bought a new tv and it broke 2 weeks later you would take it back and get it fixed or replaced. why wouldnt you let someone come out to your house and fix it? Im not responding to this page again nor am I going to look at it. I have already wasted time out of my own life trying to talk sense into someone that won’t have it. So im sure this blog will either disappear or I will be bashed due to the fact im not around to defend myself. gotta go I have acouple little girls who miss their daddy.

    Please people work smarter not harder. your wasting your time, read the contract.

  5. 5 On March 14th, 2008, tbagg said:

    seriously man, I read over everything you said, all I can do is shake my head and think “poor guy”. You made this hard on yourself.

  6. 6 On March 14th, 2008, sm-in-ct said:

    Dear tbagg:
    As the original poster in this string I’d like to thank you for many of the points you brought up. Specifically the ping testing and the sales staff. However I feel compelled to reply to your comments regarding pre-reading the contract.

    Here’s how my particular situation went down:
    I had asked to read a contract in advance of installation. I was sent a bunch of booklets (marketing material) none of which looked like the actual contract I signed.
    The installation technician needed my internet hooked up and running in order to download WildBlue’s contract for me to sign - so you see? I couldn’t read the actual contract until I had the service up and running in my home. I certainly didn’t have the time (while the installer is shifting foot-to-foot waiting) to send it to my lawyer. My fault is in trusting WildBlue to be a marginally honest company. I was wrong.

    So much time was wasted in the ensuing weeks with their Tech Service trying to “correct” our speed problems by phone the 30 day rejection period past, and before I knew it, Wild Blue started in with their $95 service call.

    BTW, we were never offered a no charge call at our home under any circumstance. Cable, DSL and the other provider services definately do and if it is found to be human error THEN they bill for their time.

    I’m not an overly technical person (as many of us out here aren’t)but it is pretty plain to see this is Wild Blue’s business model to promise the world then not deliver. I’ll not get into the unprofessional “customer service” attitude nor their unscrupulous billing practices which I was also treated to in this post.

    One needs only to look at the hundreds of Colorado BBB complaints against them or review other consumer blog websites like Epinions to see there are many more consumers around the country who have had very similar experiences with htis company.

    Thank you for your opinions and technical information you provided, now go enjoy those wonderful children!
    Sincerely,
    sm-in-ct

    PS I have clapboard siding on my house :o) no bricks…

  7. 7 On March 15th, 2008, tbagg said:

    Denver, Colorado - WildBlue Communications, Inc. announced that it received a “BBR Gold Award” from BroadbandReports.com.

    wildblue makes all documentation publicly accessable including the customer agreement, privacy policy, fair access policy, warrenty and terms and conditions. you can navigate threw the website at wildblue.com or you can go straight to the link here
    http://www.wildblue.com/legal/customer_agreement.jsp

    never sign anything withour reading. you don’t have to sign it right then and there. you can explain it to the tech and ask him to come back or if you can mail it. If you do sign somthing without reading it…. well you really don’t have a leg to stand on. truth of it is, you don’t read it because you want it and if you disagree with the contract then you can’t have it. so realizing that people sign without reading, Who’s fault is that?

    Look at any company that has 300k customers. yes you will find BBB reports. thats called the law of numbers. If I got infront of 300k people I could sell 1000 of them poop on a stick. Statistics man, statistics.

    Alot of people are filing for bankruptcy right now and its because when the market was good for housing alot of people refinanced their houses. they got a great deal untill the market went south. Their morgages went through the roof and they lost their homes. All because they didnt read the contract. Did they get their homes back because of this? No, they didnt. Did they try and sue the morgage companies? yes, they did. Did they win? No, they didnt. Because thats what makes a contract a contract. Some verbal contracts do hold up but not if they are countered by somthing in writing. I couldnt help myself but to look and see how my last post was responed to. Wildblue is satellite internet, Satellite service is not as stable as wired services, everyone knows this. The actual transfer rate on wildblue after its inital latency is 100 kbps on the bottom package. this is transfer rate not download so before you get worked up look that term up. Actual transfer rate of a dial up connection even though it is discribed at 56 kbps max transfer rate is only about 20 kbps. and on dialup that is the best you can get unless you get an accelorator program that dumbs down the pages and dosent load pictures. still then your transfer rate is the same, it just loads faster due to the fact there is less to load.

    And to the last guy that posted…. what does clapboard siding have to do with anything? :P)

  8. 8 On March 15th, 2008, tbagg said:

    I cant get my dodge neon to do 150 mph either. that doesnt mean it sucks. just means I got what I paid for and what was made available to me. Be realistic, if you have cable or dsl get it, dont get wildblue. wildblue was never designed to compete with those services. it was meant to be better than dial up, and it is and you all know it. 512 kbps is not much but its better than 24 to 56. after you turn off your phishing filters goto www.speakeasy.net/speedtest . then pick the closest location to you. If you get 300 or better on the download and better than 70 on upload then your doing ok. anything better than that then you should be even more happy. now plug in the old dial up and do the same thing. there is a huge difference. And if there isnt then get a service call, duh.

  9. 9 On March 15th, 2008, Admin said:

    tbagg;
    While I appreciate your comments, you are obviously oblivious to the ways of business and the purpose of the suit that is being brought forward.

    I have screenshots of the WildBlue website that state that the service is “comparable to Cable/DSL” and is a “much better solution that dial-up”.
    The problem is that both are blatant lies. The service, while faster for downloads of large files, is actually slower than dial-up for what 90% of people use the Internet for - checking email and browsing websites. You should read my post here about how my wife and I surfed the same websites, me on Wildblue and her on a dial-up account. Keeping in mind that I am much more “web-experienced” than her, she still was able to get complete page loads and move to the next site before I was. It has to do with the latency.

    The problem is that the only people that would really benefit are those that are downloading large files and need the speed after the initial connection. Then what happens - they get hit with the FAP.

    You make references to the housing market. While I do not see your point in this, because you are way off base (I am a real estate broker in southern Mississippi). The loans you are referring to were adjustable rate mortgages. The reason there were issues is because the rates went much higher than most mortgage originators expected, and higher than most buyers were originally quoted. This is why many of these companies were sued. Did they win? YES - they did. At last check, there were over 200 lenders/banks out of business because of this practice. American Home Mortgage went out of business, Countrywide’s stock has plummeted and there is not a mortgage house in the US that has had decent stock prices in over 2 years.

    The purpose of the lawsuit is not to debate the contract - it is about unfair business practices and the difference between their advertising and the actual service you get. Based on the information we have collected on this company, our legal analyst is giving us a better than 80% chance of success on this suit - much better than the majority of suits filed in court today. I think I will take their word over yours.

    Thanks for sharing your opinions though.

  10. 10 On March 20th, 2008, tbagg said:

    You forgot to comment on every valid point I made and focused on the morgage stuff. and thanks for emailing me posed like a wildblue customer that needs help moving their dish ( saved that one ). You have nothing of wildblue saying anything false. To quote you directly “comparable to Cable/DSL” and is a “much better solution that dial-up”. It is compareable and is better than dial up. the dial up providers will even tell you that. And it dosent matter if its email or video faster is faster, plain and simple. you cant give me one instance wildblue lead you on or lied. 512kbps to 1500kbps is better than dial up. It states very clearly your speeds are up to not at or exactly. Ive seen some accounts run faster than they said at times. Go hang out with your “legal analyst” and plan your attack. I bet you don’t even get a refund because you handled the situation wrong from the begining. but if your lawyer fails to get you any money are you going to sue him. after all he promised you have an 80% chance and thats better than the majority of the suits filed today. good luck man, dont email me.

  11. 11 On March 20th, 2008, Admin said:

    Yeah,
    I emailed you asking a question about removing a dish because you said you have installed so many.

    You just made another point for me.
    Rather than answering a real question for help, what should be a rather simple one for you, you elected to respond with my domain information and come post here.

    While I realize you do not owe me any favors, a simple response on whether there are any inherent dangers posed by removing a dish yourself. Just goes to show, that much like the rest of the “WildBlue World”, you would rather spend more time trying to tell me how good the service is rather than answering a relatively simple question.

  12. 12 On March 20th, 2008, Admin said:

    This issue has been moved to:
    This new post about the email I sent and the poor response

  13. 13 On March 20th, 2008, tbagg said:

    you proved my point perfectly that your nothing but sneaky and looking for away to twist peoples words around. I was not going to let you do so unless publicly posted. thank you for admitting who you are.

    Now I will answer your question
    Please make sure you are not under any contract that you care of before you move the dish. They will not relocate it for free once you have taken it down. If you got it through a third party make sure you arent leasing it because you need to have the leasing party remove it and take it with them.
    Never do anything without unpluging the power. The safest way to remove the dish is to remove the dish from the mount first( this makes it easier to handle), then remove the mount. depending on the location of the mount make sure you do it safley and with your homes best interest in mind. If its on the roof you may be better off leaving the foot to prevent leaks. Also many ustallers use a very stick/gooey rubber pad between the mount and the roof to prevent leaks. Sometimes removing the foot can rip shingles ( another reason to leave it). You can still remove the tube the dish mounts to and will prevent an eye sore yet not create any more problems. If its on the side of the house then make sure you seal the holes or bugs will make their way in. If you remove the cable make sure you seal any penetrations. if you intent on going to huges net they arent any better or worse than WB and you may as well leave the cable because its better than the cable the huges net guy will use anyways. The dishes are awkward and may be hard to handle so make sure you have a helper to at least hold the ladder. Just be safe and use good sense. if you unplug the power you shouldnt have any issues. I don’t have a problem helping anyone wheather they like me or not. But you were being dishonest and sneaky about the whole thing thats why I treated you that way. once again your making your own life hard. Why didnt you just ask me here? whay didnt you admit to who you were? never mind, be carefull taking it off your house your accepting any risk by doing it. I accept no responsiblity for your actions. so if you decide to remove it I suggest you just unplug it and remove the coax first. Stop trying to turn things around on me. you just keep making yourself look worse.

  14. 14 On March 21st, 2008, Admin said:

    I did not “twist your words around”
    I stated exactly what happened and posted a dedicated page about it here so everyone could see.

    I will also take your post on removing the dish and do the same for others to see.

  15. 15 On April 2nd, 2008, tubnlittlekitty said:

    I got my WB service in April of 2006. I researched several high speed providers and determined that satellite was the only option in my area, and Wildblue seemed to have the least expensive equipment and installation charges. It took them about 2 weeks to get an installer to even call me back. The guy came out and had some trouble installing the equipment, it took him all afternoon to get it up and running. The speeds were not great either, and when I called Wildblue they talked me into upgrading to a more expensive package, which still didn’t solve my speed problems but at least all 3 computers in the home were able to get online without being booted. I called Wildblue several times about the speed, and each time they would send me to some page to test my speed, which of course showed it was right where it belonged. Stay with me, this gets much, much worse.

    The bank account that I gave them for the payment was what I call the “billing” account. All automatic deductions are taken out of this account and I keep just enough money in it to cover them. I need to mention here that the email address I gave Wildblue was my aol address, and they repeatedly got it wrong. Each time I called to ask why I wasn’t getting a statement from them each month, they would read me the email address they had on file, it would be wrong, and I’d tell them to change it. Even went so far as to spell it out for them very slowly…”T as in Tom, U as in Umbrella, B as in Boy…” etc. They never did get this right, I was noticing on my bank statement that there was no deduction from Wildblue, and kept calling them to find out why they weren’t taking my money (stupid, I know). They kept insisting that they were getting the payments or else the service would have been disconnected. So I finally just dropped it. Figured it must be an automatic expense or something that didn’t show up and I didn’t need that monthly statement anyway. Apparently, I was wrong.

    Four months later, my satellite stops working. When I had Wildblue installed, I had my land lines disconnected since everyone in my household has a cell phone…it was a needless expense. So I called Wildblue repeatedly about my issue from my cell phone. At the time I was selling things on eBay and making digital scraps that I sold at other places online. I desperately needed to connect and was being given the runaround by Wildblue. No one there seemed to know what the issue was, said everything looked like it was working on their end but I couldn’t get signed on. Ocassionally my service would come on for about 10 minutes, usually around midnight or so, but went back off again before I could actually accomplish anything. I was running up my cell phone bill from calling them over and over about this issue. Finally on a Saturday morning I was lucky enough to get a tech support person who actually knew how to look at my account. It seems I had been disconnected for non-payment. I owed almost $400 because they had never deducted the first payment since my service was installed. Go figure.

    Well I had him deduct this amount immediately and he told me my service would be back on within 24 hours. I knew the money would be in the account because they hadn’t been taking it out, and it wasn’t used for anything else. I waited until Sunday morning, it still wasn’t back on, so I called them back. Got another moron in billing who said the payment was never deducted because of insufficient funds. Keep in mind that I only keep enough money in this account to pay automatically deducted bills, so I thought, well, maybe I had miscalculated. So I gave him the debit card info on an entirely different account so he could deduct the payment and get my service back online. During this exchange, he found out that they had the WRONG ACCOUNT NUMBER on the first account, which was why it was never deducted to start with. You’d think someone there could have verified this matter from the very beginning of my service when I was calling about my statements. Nope, that would mean they’d have to actually DO something. So I got the account number corrected, had him verify it, and then sat down for the wait on my internet to come back up.

    Well, Monday rolls around and my service STILL is not back up. I called again, to find out why, and decided to make them verify this time around that the payment HAD been made, and wanted the account number. Strange, apparently the payment had been made not once, but TWICE and for once they had BOTH account numbers listed accurately. They had deducted the ENTIRE payment through BOTH accounts, causing me to have paid them almost $800 for 4 freaking months of service. I insisted they put the money back. Now. Immediately. Oh no, they aren’t authorized to do that. The double payment will just be a credit on my account. Well you can imagine at this point I was pissed. They had gotten $800 from me, caused me to run up my cell phone bill to an ungodly amount, and I STILL did not have service. I “escalated” this issue, threatened lawsuits, and finally, about 2 weeks later, they refunded one of the payments to my account. However, I still did not have service and they didn’t know why.

    So during all of this I’m still calling them several times a day, having one tech after another apologize to me because they had “a lot of new employees they were training” (a couple of times I called I would ask a question and it would take them about 4 minutes to respond, when I questioned them I found out that they were in training and were having to repeat every question to the person beside them, who answered, and then the person on the phone repeated the answer back to me), the best they could tell me was that my account was “broken”. Their words, not mine. WTF?? They said that the account had to be completely rebuilt, and that apparently there was only one person in the entire corporation who could open a beam to put me back on. And it would take them approximately 2 weeks to have this accomplished. I don’t know how many times I got so mad on the phone that I would have tears streaming by the end of the conversation. The one person, I can’t remember his name and wish I’d made a note of it, called me a few times to check my service. Nope, still nothing. Nope, still nothing. This went on for another week before he finally decided to send the installer back out to my home to see if the issue was on MY end. Grrrrrrrrrrr

    The installer takes his time about coming out, and when he gets here he’s bitching the entire time about wildblue. Says he can never get his money from them and that he won’t be working for them much longer. Filled me in on the fact that he had even been having problems from them when he’s tried to install new systems, he apparently was having a hard time getting a real person on the phone while he was in someone’s home installing faulty equipment. Which I can imagine was probably embarrassing on his part. So he replaced both my dish and my modem, oh not all at once, just one at a time. Tried the dish first, nope, that wasn’t it. Put my dish back on and tried to replace the modem. That wasn’t it. So in final desperation he put both a new dish AND a new modem, and it started working. I was so relieved I tossed the guy a beer. He deserved it. He wouldn’t drink it, but he deserved it.

    Since then, I have had many, many issues with the service. It goes down because it’s raining in New York. I’m in freaking ALABAMA. Twice they have cut me back to dial-up speed because I’ve reached 80% of my 17000 MBs per 30 days. I’m paying to use 17000 MBs, I WANT 17000 MBS! Not 80% of it! Do they cut my payments back when this happens? Nope, I still have to pay for high speed, and they don’t have to give it to me. Apparently, they don’t have to give me anything. Matter of fact, they suggest I have a backup way to connect to the internet if I need to use my computer for work, school, email, or any other reason. And they STILL don’t have a correct email address on my account, no matter how many times I’ve given it to them. So I don’t get those notices when my usage reaches the 80% mark.

    So yes, count me in on class action. We will be moving in a few months and I will FINALLY be able to get cable. At this point I don’t expect any recuperation from my losses with Wildblue. It’s my own fault for continuing my service with them after my contract ended. But I would LOVE to see them go down. They should have their business license pulled, and from the looks of things here, they are well on their way. PLEASE let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Sorry to be the hurricane that never ends but I could go on about wildblue for hours. When we finally get to move and get another ISP I think I’ll smash this system into tiny pieces and mail it back to them.

  16. 16 On April 4th, 2008, tubnlittlekitty said:

    System hasn’t worked in 2 days so I FINALLY had the damn thing disconnected today. We’ll see how long it takes them to stop the monthly deductions from my bank account. I did get a reference number and the technician’s name. I bought a wireless internet card from Verizon and was told it probably wouldn’t get great service where I live since it’s right on the edge of the area. However, this thing is much MUCH faster than WB! Wooohooo I’m finally free!!

  17. 17 On June 17th, 2008, sundancer said:

    tbagg Works for Wildblue. His name is John Fedro.
    He is in quality control. I can tell it is him by his insane rants. He and the wildblue sales management have worked for every satellite provider around.They are like a bunch of Gypsies. Wildblue has their employee’s watching these kinds of websites. That tells you what kind of company Wildblue is.

  18. 18 On July 10th, 2008, H20skibum said:

    The post “Wild Blue = poor service, slow speeds, no refunds, bad attitude” is a perfect summary of my experience. I’ll try to keep it short, but there’s a lot.

    We moved out to the sticks about two years ago. We absolutely love it, but one drawback was giving up DSL. We could do no better than dial-up. As if dial-up weren’t lousy enough based solely on speed, the fact that almost everyone has a high speed connection means that very few web pages, let alone email with photos or attachments, will even load through dial-up. It just sucks.

    So we get an ad in the mail from AT&T, offering satellite internet through Wild Blue. The cost was high, but the speeds they promised were comparable to the DSL we had when we lived in the city. So we take the plunge and spend the $300 or so to get it installed, and sign up for the $70 a month deal, the mid-range price. From the moment it was installed, it became clear that this would be a complete waste of money.

    First, the knuckleheads sent to install the thing asked me where I wanted the dish. I told them to put it on the back of the house, next to the TV dish, so it didn’t show at the front of the house. After they banged around on the roof for a while, I went outside to find the dish on the front of the house. Already attached to the roof. A total eyesore. Morons. So they monkey around with the computer, tell me they are done, and show me how to use it. The smarter of the two idiots tells me that the web page he went to as a test only took a minute or two to load. Sounds like dial-up to me. Then he tells me that his brother has Wild Blue and doesn’t really like it and that, honestly, he doesn’t think it’s any good either. Of course, my credit card has already been charged and the papers have already been signed long before all of this.

    So dumb and dumber leave my house and I go back to the room where the computer is and see that, where they drilled a hole in the wall to run the wires, they left a huge pile of drywall dust on floor. This was a big pile, as they took a hammer drill to the wall to make two holes all the way to the outside. Then I take my dogs out back and notice a strange stain on the roof. I realized it was a huge wet spot at the top of the roof, with stains from where the liquid trickled down to the gutter. Now, it didn’t rain that day, and idiot #2 wasn’t carrying a cup of coffee or bottle of coke when he climbed the ladder, so I’m pretty sure he took a leak on my roof. Unbelievable. The thing I regret is that I took pictures of the mess in the house and the apparent urine stain on my roof (which didn’t go away until it rained 3 or 4 times), intending to complain about it. But as we often do, I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and never got around to it.

    The first few weeks were hit or miss, but we were mostly okay with what we had, at least compared to dial-up. Still, it was nowhere near our expectations. After that first few weeks, it became almost impossible to connect. Nothing would load. I called tech support and always got a recording that there were high call volumes and I should expect long waits, so I should really just call back another time. I gave up on tech support. At least with dial up we could get a connection. On the clearest day imaginable, we were lucky to even connect, let alone get a decent speed. This service just completely sucks.

    Of course, they know it sucks. That’s why you can only buy it by signing a one year contract before you even get to see how well it works. But if you’re resorting to Wild Blue, at their price, that means you have no other choice but dial-up. So people buy it. And it totally sucks.

    Eventually, we down-graded to the cheapest package to try to control the bleeding. When I told the lady on the phone that I wanted to change my service, she asked why. I told her that the thing sucks. She was not concerned, just changed my service and told me to have a nice day.

    Finally, we upgraded to a laptop and got a mobile broadband card through AT&T. It rocks. We basically have DSL speeds anywhere we can get a cell signal. So I check my Wild Blue contract and confirm that, after the initial year, I am off the hook. But it will automatically renew on a month-to-month basis if I don’t cancel. So two weeks before it is up, I call and talk to a girl in customer service. I tell her I don’t want it to automatically renew. She says, no problem, you don’t have to do anything. Your contract expires at the end of the month (June 29) and it won’t renew. I tell her that I have the contract in front of me, and it says “automatically renew,” so I want to make sure that won’t happen. She says, definitely, that won’t happen.

    Fast forward two weeks (this July 3rd), and WildBlue has charged me for another month of service. I call and tell them I am not happy, that I called before and was assured that this would not happen. And I want the damn thing cancelled now. The first moron cancels the service and asks me why I don’t want it anymore. That was fun to answer. After I was done with that, she tells me that the charge for this month, which has already posted to my bank account, will be pro-rated and refunded. She also tells me that there is no “ticket number” for my call two weeks ago, so that’s why the month was renewed. I told her that this is crap, I did what they told me, and I want the whole thing refunded, not a pro-rated amount. I know it’s only a few days, but I wasted enough money on this worthless service.

    So she transfers me to another department. The idiot there tells me that there is no “ticket number” for my last call, so they won’t refund the whole amount. I ask her if she’s calling me a liar, if she believes that I never called. She says, of course not, and even apologized for someone giving me bad information, but says that since there is no ticket number, so she can’t do anything. So I ask for a supervisor. After holding for a long time, while they no doubt hoped I would just hang up, the supervisor comes on and tells me the same thing. No ticky, no laundry. It was like talking to a robot. “I’m sorry the person gave you the wrong information.” “But you won’t refund my money?” “Well, no, because there is no ticket number showing that you made the call.” “Well, she did a lousy job once by giving me bad information, and then twice when she failed to make a ‘ticket number’ out of it, but you won’t fix that?” “No, because there is no ticket number.” Amazing.

    Wild Blue sucks. Don’t even think about buying it. Go get a mobile broadband card instead. And if this ever turns into a class action, sign up.

  19. 19 On July 10th, 2008, Admin said:

    I thought I had heard it all - I can’t believe the guy urinated on your roof!
    I know it isn’t funny, but I still chuckled at the idea that he would have the audacity to do something like that.

  20. 20 On July 29th, 2008, tubnlittlekitty said:

    So here I am, more than 3 months later, STILL calling Wildblue to have service disconnected. They are still billing my account, telling me the service is still connected. The damn thing hasn’t worked since I had it disconnected on April 4th. I’ve even offered to let them come out and try it themselves. But of course I’m an idiot and don’t know when my service works and when it doesn’t. So they send out an installer to fix the service so they could disconnect it (wtf?). The installer said the original installation was wrong, and they had to mount the dish on a special-made pole that would cost me a lot of money. To disconnect my service. And then when I said no way in hell am I paying you more money to have service turned off that supposedly never worked right, he said then they’d have to charge my $96 for the service call. This is BULL! Please, count me in for the class action. Any more info on this?

  21. 21 On September 19th, 2008, maxamillion said:

    1st I would just like to say if someone gets a class action lawsuit against wildblue, Sign Me Up! I signed up with Wildblue 10/2007 because we had dial up and the wildblue posters all over our area and wildblue’s site says they are so much better & faster than dial up, what a crock. That is a fat, blatant lie. Sounds like most of you know what wildblue is like so I won’t go into that as it raises my blood pressure every time I talk about it. I’ll just start by saying when the installer came to my house to install the dish that was delivered by UPS, I noticed that after the install there was a big ding in the side of my dish. Of course the installer was gone by then and never said anything about it. Well, right away I noticed my service was really slow so I called and I called and I called and I called and they’ve got record of everytime I have called. To make a long story short, after 11 mths I finally got a new satellite dish, hoping that would solve the problem. It didn’t so 2 or 3 more calls and then my 1yr was up so I called them and said, “This is ridiculous, I sell on e-bay and can’t even load a page faster than about 5 minutes, if I’m lucky”. So they suggested the next speed up, More Money of course, and I swear it’s even slower than it was before. Well, after being on the phone all day today with a knuckelhead, I went through all the motions again and again, “Sorry but I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be faster”. So needless to say as of Monday morning I plan to cancel wildblue and plan to check out a mobil brandband card as many of these blogs suggest or even for sound mind, I’ll go back to dial up. It was faster anyway. If anyone can suggest a dial service faster than MSN, they were better than wildblue, then please do. Meanwhile, If anyone has any suggestions on a class action suit or how we can get one started, I’m all ears. I’ll even sign my name, I’m not afraid of them.

  22. 22 On September 29th, 2008, JohnNMiami said:

    OK, well, one more Horror Story!
    So, we get WildBlue as a back-up service for post-hurricane times, with a secure plan for the dish after the storm passes, so we will not be dead in the water.
    We order the system after a few screwed up days trying to get it installed, we get the system up and running.
    It lasts about two weeks. The modem dies.
    We order a new one on Tuesday. They say it will ship that afternoon, and will send me a tracking number.
    On the following Friday, I call back, as I have not gotten a modem OR a tracking number.
    I get an assurance it went out that morning.
    I get a call from WB (Mark?) on Monday afternoon, saying he is sorry for the mix up, but it had not gone out that Tuesday as one rep said, or Friday as the other rep said, but he was shipping it, and would send me a tracking number.
    So, I called Thursday, after no modem or tracking number.
    Well, I had the great fortune to get a rep on the lone who emailed me a tracking number from her personal email account (they do not have company email accounts). I check, and now UPS has delayed the delivery until Friday. Now it has been 11 days since we have tried to get a replacement.
    Finally, we get it, and the boss takes it home and hooks it up.
    He works on it, but gets a page that says “Your account has been activated. Reboot your computer and try again. If you still cannot connect, call TechSupport”
    He calls TechSupport to get it done.
    After an hour and a half, changing ports etc, no luck. He hangs up in frustration.
    Monday, I go over to get it working (Or so I thought).
    Now, I am not new to computers, having worked as Network and/or Exchange Admin for 20+ years.
    After an hour with a level 1 tech, I complain, she puts a supervisor on.
    The level 2 tech, after another 15 minutes or so says she will “escalate” the call to a level 2 tech. Now she puts me on hold as she goes back and forth, talking to the tech, then coming back to me.
    I was never allowed to speak to the tech. Rather I was asked for a number, and IF the tech needed to call me, he would. asked, am I suppossed to just sit here, wondering if someone was going to call me? I mean, she did not say he WOULD call me, just that if he needed to he would.
    So, is my WB fixed? I don’t know, do you? I mean, no one has called me. I cannot get on line, so I assume it is not.
    Next chapter, I begin the process of disconnecting the service.
    No luck doing anything by email.
    OK, I call in.
    I listen to a really nice lady tell me SHE would really like to help fix my problem. I did not say that is SHE could, she would be working in the industry, nit listening to abusive (Not me) customers wanting to cut service.
    So, she puts me on hold. TEN minutes. Then they hang up!!
    Nice.
    I do an email to customer service telling them WHY people are not wanting to hang out and “try again”.
    I get a response from “Aaron_B
    WildBlue Representative” that I have to call in. LOL, Been There, Done That!
    He also informs me I will be billed $15 for each month for Early Termination.
    Yeah, well, let’s see how well THAT one goes. We have a great lawyer and that is not even an issue for us now, we will fight them for the money.
    So, tell your friends, BEFORE they sign, consider all the options, including Verizon or Sprint or ATT wireless cards, thay are pretty fast, and unlike Wild Blue, they do have customer service AND tech support agents who will work to make it work.

  23. 23 On May 21st, 2009, Belinda said:

    Here’s how I feel toward tbagg. WildBlue should NOT be telling customers that they need to change the system on the PCs. Instead, WildBlue should do the right thing as a business, and put customer service FIRST and FOREMOST. They should work around what their customers have to provide the best Internet service possible.

    WildBlue’s “customer service” is a horrible joke. The kind that isn’t even worth a smile. EVERY SINGLE TIME we call them about the horrible connect they tell us to “reset the modem”. That does NOT fix the problem!!

    By the way, I’m looking forward to getting a law suit together with other unsatisfied customers under the basis of FALSE ADVERTISING and bogus, made up charges. The only satisfied “customers” of WildBlue, work for them in some way and are probably paid to sit on their ass, writing wonderful, glowing reviews for WildBlue.

  24. 24 On May 29th, 2009, jrhill said:

    I am compelled to add to this thread. Yes, the speed lacks, even sucks, comparison with cable/DSL. But I don’t have access to cable/DSL and my option is a T1 (hah, right), cell data or dialup. So Wildblue is the fastest option within reason at any service level. I have the ProPack. It has been in use for a year and 1/2. And I’m in the rain shadow and mountains near Portland. Weather outage is very rare.

    There are two laptops (one VPN, one not) for work and the entire network comprises of at least 5 wireless or cable connected machines. The hub is set to prioritize the work machines over the others and that solves traffic congestion. Frankly, it works pretty good. Thank God that I don’t have to often deal with their reps. And I’m not a techy magician, just a lowly sales guy.

    Sorry that there are so many problems expressed here. In my humble opinion, I’d bet there are some simple solutions that have been overlooked.

  25. 25 On July 10th, 2010, Mary Bernha said:

    The problems started right from the start, the sales lady insisted that this was a high speed service, not true. My dial up was faster. I called and asked three different times and they insisted that it was fast ( high speed). After two weeks I did not enter through wild blue I just use it as an expensive router.

    The problems continued when the installers arrived. I asked them to put the dish on the cement fence as the owner of the complex did not want it on the home. When I checked outside they had pushed all the rocks in the rock garden out of the way and erected an 8 foot pole and this huge dish was smack in the middle of my tiny yard. The workers ( I can not call them technicians) threaded the power cord through the back window to the plug in the home and left the modem on the back porch. They left all of their trash, wire trimmings. boxes and all of the rocks they threw out of the way.

    I live in a area with plenty of dirt and 110 degree temperatures in the summer and sub zero temps in the winter. Is that how they are trained? I managed to get the modem inside the window after the first sandstorm. The installers did not work with me what I wanted to me use as a sign on, user name and password. They put in my entire name and address and the local street as a password. What kind of security is that?

    I made several calls to wild blue to ask about the speed and the manner in which the way the gentlemen installed the equipment. while waiting of course I was instructed to reset the modem. That has nothing to do with an outdoor Modem. The lady taking the call did not even blink when I told her that they installed the modem on the patio filled with desert sand. She did not offer to have it checked or to apologize. Half of the South Eastern Desert could blow into the modem. So what, right.

    Several times I tried to use my dial up instead and for some reason the it kept going back to the other program. I wanted to discontinue the service for their poor service and to this they also did not make any concessions or try to provide any customer service. They just told me that i needed to discontinue the service, remove some tria and send them modem back. ( They said they would send the boxes several weeks after I disconnect the sevice) I said I was only 4′ 10″ and could not reach what ever they were talking about. They told me to use a ladder and I explained my yard was river stones and there is no way that a ladder could balance on river stones. She told me to ask my neighbor or someone from church to remove the equipment. Why don’t they tell you that they do not provide any help or at least show you what should be removed when the time comes.

    They said it was 125.00 for a service call. Lets see if they hold to that. It is less expensive to set up a service call to remove the tria then it is to try to climb a ladder handicapped, fall and end up in the Emergency room and break their precious equipment and whatever part of me hits the ground. Still she insisted I should try. They do not want to help. Then comes the early disconnect fee. If it worked like they said it should then it would not be a problem. They have false advertisement, lie and are not helpful, some of the persons on the phone are pleasant, but just the kind of pleasant to get you off of the phone quickly. If there is a speck of sand in the modem it is from being installed ON the ground on the patio. Talk to the installers. Make sure you know what you are getting into before you sign on with these folks. I pray that the disconnect goes OK and that they will send someone out to take off their parts. I pray that they stop charging me when I stop the service. Wild blue admin please help.

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