It’s easy to blog about bad tech service/support and even easier to glaze over when it goes the opposite way. I’ve had flaky experience with my satellite internet connection at my cabin (the last time I even tried customer support, I was 2 hours on hold before expiring from fatigue).
So I was ready for more of the same when my connection got creaky slow, and virtually no speed for upload or sending email. The darn speed test from Hughes borked as usually on the upload test, and trying an outside service (http://dslreports.com/) that uses the same darn applet, I got a result…. 619 KBs down and a paltry, limping pigeon 11 KBs up (the rates I pay for are 1000 down and 200 up). And just got wonkier into my second day here. It was so bad, when I tried to use their online chat tech support, I could not chat since my messages would not go out.
So it was just a longshot tonight I called the dreaded tech support number, and was nearly shocked when I got a human after 4 minutes on hold. “Steve” asked for a lot of settings, had me hook my iBook directly into the modem (taking the wireless router out of the picture), add Web Proxy settings, try several browsers, all to no avail. While waiting for the speed test to respond (it never did), he asked about the weather in Arizona, which I explained was non existent, so we had very clear conditions. And he told me of the weather in India.
Steve tried his suggestions, and did not flinch when I said I was on a Mac (the docs in their “Knowledge Base” assume we are all Windoze users), and eventually passed me on to an advanced tech specialist. “Len” more or less remotely rebooted by modem (long distance from India), something I swore I had done, and lo and behold– we finally got a speed test result that was good (995 down and 180 up).
So while I really have no idea what happened or why, and rebooting from India was the trick, I have to say thanks, and I feel bad that “Steve” and “Len” have to work behind Americanized names. But they were very patient, thorough, and for now, I am a content satellite net user.
I was also impressed by the improvement in customer suppport — based on an extended call last Friday. I hardly spent any time on hold, and though “Bruce” on the other end of the line was obviously not from the USA, his accent was not a barrier to solving the problem of re-registration. This was a welcomed change in service from just a year ago. (But I still can’t get a terminal services or VPN connection to work well with them.)
That’s encouraging. But I found out today I cannot stream live audio from my laptop to our hosted streaming audio server through Hughes. It would be nice to know what they clamp down on by port or name.