Wildblue.net Policy

[RogerAS]

I posted this under Rants & Opinion and apparently that was seen as a problem and lasted about as long as a ball of softserve icecream on a sidewalk in Dallas. Therefore I'm putting the same exact thing over here in my diary. I stand by this and take responsibility completely.

http://www.wildblue.cc/wbforums/showthread.php?t=2769

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Hello Everybody,

I'm so fed up with our great and wonderful ISP that I have initiated action with my Arkansas State Attorney General. I have contacted both my congerssperson and senator. I have retained a private attorney.

Wildblue is about to discover a level of customer dissatisfaction beyond any expectation in their worst nightmare.

What brought me to this point? Well, I would like to say it's just simple frustration for the lack of consitent ablity to connect to the internet, but that's only a small portion of my reasons.

Wildblue purposefully instructs phone and chat room support personnel to provide intentional misinformaton, and attempts to redirect legitimate customer concerns and questions with issue unrelated to service outages. I have documented proof. I have saved every email from our omnipotent ISP from day one of my installation, as well as pasting chat room dialouge into a text file and saving those as well as taking screen shots. I have recorded phone conversations to tech support. I have an installer willing to give sworn testimony in open court.

I strongly urge every single wildblue customer to begin their own documentation effort in this matter. It is not illegal to record your own phone conversations, but it is a federal crime to use the telephone in a fraudulent manner, in such a way as wildblue instructs its support personnel.

Falsehoods such as "Tech support has limited access to network availablity issues", and "We have no way to determine how much downtime the network has suffered this month" are beyond belief. Wildblue can determine exactly how many bytes have passed through the system by any individual user. They know full well how long a given "beam" has been down within any time frame. Whether or not level one personnel are provided these data is irrelavent. These are premeditated tatics to provide no recourse for the consumer in any attempt to be credited for service that does not exist. Charging us for service that is unavailable is at best unethical, and at worst criminal. Evidence points to the later.

In closing I want to admonish each and every wildblue customer that reads this to copy and save it to a text file. Save every form of communication you have with wildblue from now on. Call your elected representatives. Contact every other wilblue subscriber of which you are aware. Talk to your installer or COOP. The only way this treatment is going to change is for us to become an active force and work within the legal system. Alone we are but a source of revenue for an Enron-like entity that obviously does not care about we the customers. Together we are a tidal wave of such force no walls of misinformation can withstand us. I say it's time to make the earth shake under the feet of wildblue management, and bring about change!

Roger A. Stephenson

theropod@wildblue.net

roger@gobblerguns.com

theropod@yahoo.com

[Volvo farmer]

Well, that's a shame. Everything I had read about WildBlue at http://www.dslreports.com/ seemed to indicate that they were a better company than Direcway and Starband. Were you around here when Starband had their major breakdown and our hosts lost all their internet connectivity for several days? I wonder if you're just in an area with bad spot beam coverage or a crappy install, or too many people on the beam?

Check out EVDO coverage in your area. It's true broadband around major cities. I still get speeds a little faster than dialup where I'm at off cell towers. It's pricey at $60/mo but uses almost no power since it's a PCMCIA card that just plugs into the laptop. Verizon is cancelling heavy users at the moment, despite "unlimited usage" advertisements. So it appears there might be no perfect solution. If you're interested, check out EVDO at http://www.evdoforums.com/

[asheets]

I personally think that it is a horrible shame for WildBlue, Direcway, and Starband for force a multi-hundred dollar installation charge on people.  It really isn't that hard to aim a sat dish if you know what your long/lat is and where the sat itself is.  In fact, this is an exercise I teach in my college intro to astronomy course for IT students that need science credits.

[Volvo farmer]

Yeah but if you miss, you don't just get a fuzzy picture on the TV, you're actually transmitting data on a focused beam. Lots of military and communications satellites up there to interfere with. I think this is their argument anyway.

[asheets]

I know their arguements, but I've never seen seen a dish installer come out with a precision GPS, Jeppeson Aviation magnetic deviation map, compass, and 3-axis theodolite.  Even without the theodolite and gps, I'm willing to bet dollars to donunts that my aiming precision is consistantly better than that of a "professional installer."

Hell, I'd be willing to bet a sizable sum of money that a "professional installer" can't give me the correct reason why they've never done a dish install on the north side of a building.

[asheets]

Thanks for the info on evdo; that will help me with one of my problem customers.

However, I think that evdo won't help most people that have to use satellite now -- as they are probably too far away from cell phone towers for evdo to work properly.  It won't work for the Dans up on Vine drive, unless there's a Sprint or Verizon tower on one of the hills above them.