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

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!

I Rock – DSL for Me

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!