It seems my friends at hughes.net have devised a punishment more cruel and unusual than any the FBI, CIA, or any other three letters could come up with: Calling hughes.net's generously termed "customer service" line today gets you at least twelve minutes (I couldn't stand it any longer than that) of a looped, slightly off-key cover version of Madonna's "La Isla Bonita". Translate that through a garbled cell phone speaker and you've got a recipe for torture that is the audio equivalent of sticking the points of frilly toothpicks under your toenails. Who thought this up?
"La Isla Bonita, now that is a nice song. We should use it as our hold music. I could listen to that over and over again. "
"Yes, me too, but we can't afford to purchase the licensing to play the real Madonna version."
"Maybe we can buy a bootleg copy from one of the stands at the flea market on Sunday. That is the solution!"
"Ah, I am happy, now we can play the song we love over and over and share it with our friends who call us for technical assistance."
May I also add that if you have a choice, you should never, ever, ever use hughes.net for your internet service? The "Fair Access Policy" is invoked on a whim, slowing your upload, download and browsing speed to barely dial-up level without warning. One weekend, we weren't even home, and somehow exceeded our allotment of broadband while we were gone, with the computer off... but the difficulties in reaching an actual person are an effective deterrent to doing anything about it.
Each time hughes.net "upgrades" the email system, there is a guaranteed loss of service. Forget getting answers from their FAQ or bulletin site. They don't speak Mac, and insist that the problem-- which suddenly and coincidentally appeared the same day they executed the upgrade-- is a problem with your system--something Apple has done. (I found the answer to how to fix the problem here: on Apple's discussion forum. Go to the advanced tab on the setup for the account, and change the authentication to password. Done. All of this happened to me last time they upgraded, and I finally remembered this time to look for a solution outside of hughes. Which is, I think, their goal.)
If you survive the hold music, when and if you are finally allowed to reach customer disservice, you will be connected with a massive call center in India, (or perhaps a very small one masquerading as a very big one, judging from the length of time I was on hold) where people with names like Sally and Joe will not know what you are talking about, and will use many prepared statements such as, "I am sorry you are having difficulty. May I prepare the answer for you?" or "Thank you for your patience. If I understand you correctly, you are having trouble with your email. Now I am going to tell you the solution, starting with the first step. May I begin? Is your computer plugged in?" They are all very nice, and exceedingly polite, but the system just isn't working.
We've had DirecTV via Hughes for years with no to little problem, but if I were going to get satellite internet again, I'd go with Wild Blue, which was unfortunately unavailable when we signed up.
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