WildBlue Sucks

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!

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

This post was originally posted by jhart2007 as a comment on WildBlue Class Action Suit

A couple of questions and then a brief comment.

First, has anyone on this Blog ever spoken with anyone at the Wildblue “Retention Department? I seen several references to such a Department on the epinions complaint link I posted earlier. Just curious.

Second, I also saw a couple of epinions complaints reference a Wildblue Email link that the poster said could be used for elevating subscriber complaints up a couple of levels. The Email address was listed as “executiveescalations@wildbluecorp.com” I have not tried to Email the link, but did try clicking into “wildbluecorp.com” and got a “server down or unavailable” error message. That means ther IS a web page with that URL, but it is offline or access blocked. Just curious if any of you have heard of this Wildblue web space before.

Comment. I couldn’t shut my brain off last night and get to sleep. As I lay in bed, I decided to try and think like Wildblue. How would I handle equipment and performance failures and lots of angry subscribers across the nation. I quickly realized that I would have Wildblue management, particularly Wildblue legal, regularly surf the net looking for Blogs and web pages like this one. That’s the one problem with the public internet cloud…it IS public and accessable by victims and criminals alike. Just something to be aware of as we vent, share stories and discuss options. It is also possible, if not likely, that Wildblue itself might set up a false complaint web space in an effort to collect names and track the activities and plans of subscribers who are getting screwed with an eye toward proactively thwarting their efforts. I don’t know if Wildblue is actually that smart, but I think we should at least consider the possibility. Given Wildblue’s other activities, I wouldn’t put it past them.

I can’t think of any way to protect or prevent this kind of activity, but I thought I should share it anyway.

Suggestions? Comments? Am I being paranoid? Alternatively, Am I being paranoid enough?

And then the following comment:

To: ADMIN

My comment above was NOT aimed at you. Please don’t think that I’m attacking your credibility. I’m not!!! I just wanted to alert you and the other members and surfers of this blog to the possibility.

I have seen this done in other businesses so it is not without possibility that WildBlue could or would. Anyone that may question me personally thoug - see My Personal Blog - that’s me.