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My family had starlink installed at a remote house we own for internet access. While we could get it up and running, the connection wasn't reliable and we encou

My family had starlink installed at a remote house we own for internet access. While we could get it up and running, the connection wasn't reliable and we encountered many issues. When we tried to contact Starlink for help, support was non-existent; sent us to multiple dead ends, and often wasted our times with repairs promised weeks into the future, over and over, which never surfaced. After 8 months of pain, we ended up getting rid of it and moving back to our 6mbps. Starlink is like Elon's other companies. Engineering marvels—where the customer's are merely an annoyance and the means to an end. They are basically hostile to the customer every step of the way; and from what I've seen from Elon—I think this attitude comes right from the top.

UltraSane 2y ago
"and from what I've seen from Elon—I think this attitude comes right from the top." Yep. Tesla infamously doesn't have a Public Relations department ( I assume because he got rejected by a woman who worked there) and “press@twitter.com now auto responds with [poop emoji],” Musk tweeted. Ladies and gentlemen, the richest man in the world!
benjam47 2y ago
I was an early user of Starlink, starting with the original terminal (today I have the 3rd generation high performance terminal). Being in a very rural area in MT where there was never congestion in my cell and I have a very open view of the sky, it has worked well for me since day 1 and has only gotten better with time. Personally, I monitored latency more than speed, as I always had enough speed to do whatever I wanted. When I first started using SL, latency averaged around 100ms (which compared to my previous provider HughesNet was amazing, but was high compared to ground based connections), but today averages around 35ms which is still technically higher than ground based connections, but for all practical purposes for me, is indisguishable from any other internet option, even for online gaming and live video streaming. Although I did not monitor speed as regurarily, it averages around 300Mbps for me. Sometimes it exceeds 400Mbps (I just ran a speed test and got 420Mbps), and it is rarely less than 100Mbps. I have contacted support twice, and always received quick replies. However, based on my monitoring the Starlink Reddit forum, customer support during their beta period did appear to have often been poor. And there was also a period of time where performance was poor in many populated regions as they started opening up the floodgates a bit sooner than they probably should have, resulting in slow speeds for people in many regions, until their satellite launches caught up to demand. However, my impression is that both of these issues have improved significantly since Starlink left beta. I do still see some complaints about customer service, but anecdotally it appears less frequent. My impression is that they have the ability to remotely troubleshoot many hardware issues, and will quickly send a replacement if they can confirm a fault. I do worry about this though, as even a quick reply and a quick hardware replacement means several days of downtime. Speed complaints are almost certainly less frequent than they used to be. I have no doubt that your customer service hell story is true, and if that happened to me I would be just as turned off, but I think that, especially today, that is not the norm. I have considered purchasing a spare terminal as a backup, but I do have some concerns. I have heard that terminals that stay unpowered and unconnected for very long periods of time get too behind on FW updates and essentially become bricked, I don't believe that is the case today but I am not 100% sure. Also, back when there used to be a queue for signing up, it would not have been practical to just set up a new account for the new terminal, but now that the sign up queue is gone, maybe it is an option today. I have not fully researched my options for this redundancy idea.
hcurtiss 2y ago
Where was this? Members of my family have three different remote cabins surrounded by trees in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, and all work perfectly. The early days were a little more glitchy, but with the constellation they have today, you don’t even need to aim.
- nikkwong 2y ago
  2023 in the Pacific Northwest. We were given the argument that tree cover was a problem quite early on in our attempted troubleshooting. The house is a waterfront property, with a clear view of sky to the east. Anyways, the suspected issue continued to evolve, and we were not able to get to the bottom of it with the support we received. Certainly, our experience could be an anomalous. But I certainly hear this happening all the time with Tesla, with the manufacturer trying to void warranties and evade liability for vehicle defects. I just.. wouldn't be bullish on any of Elon's companies in a crowded market; which I suspect will define more his companies in the future. His politically obtuse behavior and lack of respect for authority is enough to turn off ethically minded consumers; and that's before the general crummy experience of being his customer. My best friend has a Honda EV that broke down twice, one time being potentially out of warranty-and the dealer repaired it, no questions asked
  - infobot 2y ago
    You…wouldn’t be bullish on the most successful businessman in the history of the world? Sometimes I come here for a good laugh
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      > most successful businessman in the history of the world You're ranking Musk above Jobs, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Disney, Toyoda, Walton, and Buffett?
      - tgma 2y ago
        This characterization isn't entirely unreasonable. Isn't Musk objectively the richest businessperson ever in nominal dollars? Inflation-adjusted, I think only Rockefeller or Carnegie may come close, but the variety of businesses Musk has is impressive, and it appears he is just getting started with a long way to go.
NoPicklez 2y ago
I appreciate you have had a bad experience, but to then think that's the overall experience is myopic. There are many highly remote areas where people can't speak more highly of Starlink.
- Nursie 2y ago
  And not that remote. Internet provision not all that far out of major Australian cities can be abysmal. I'm only 30 minutes drive from the centre of Perth and my options are currently 5G (operating at about 4Mbit), Wireless Broadband (performance promise - the download speed will reach 25Mbit at least once in any given 24 hour period!) or Starlink, at a pretty stable 120/20. I'd love to not have to pay for it, to use what local/national companies can provide, but so far nothing comes close. I am informed that the wireless system is due to be upgraded to support much higher speeds, but that was supposed to happen this year and there's not a lot of this year left.
  - NoPicklez 2y ago
    Absolutely, I've had 5G modems within the metro area of an Aussie city and it was horrible.
  - hattmall 2y ago
    I would think 5G could really improve that situation. In the states we have the 600 MHz spectrum on T-Mobile and can pull down decent speeds 30-150mb through trees 15 miles from the tower. Upload is not great.
    - Nursie 2y ago
      It could, if there was decent signal here. At least in part that's been delayed because of someone in the area raising a band of nutters and giving the council hell about 5G killing her grandchildren. Sigh. Might happen before too much longer - she managed to get the project to build the new antenna on private land killed (I'm sure much to the annoyance of the landowner, who was going to pocket a nice chunk of ground-rent). But now the local authority have given the go-ahead for one to be built on their land, and they're going to get the rent. She is apoplectic, which brings me great joy.
loandbehold 2y ago
Your experience is not typical. Starlink has been working flawlessly for me for the last few years. It revolutionized Internet access in my remote area. HughesNet was the only game in town with speeds under 3Mbps and 10GB monthly data cap. Now everyone has Starlink with over 100 Mbps speeds. Never heard of issues.
- nikkwong 2y ago
  I stated in a neighboring comment that our experiences could be anomalous. Based on how frustrating it was talking to them on multiple occasions with multiple different service reps I assumed it was endemic to their culture; a la Comcast. At the very least, Telsa seems to be trailing tens of thousands of angry customers online who are struggling with defective vehicles.
  - loandbehold 2y ago
    Tesla has some of the highest customer satisfaction scores among car brands. I'm not sure what you are referring about "tens of thousands of angry customers", you need to look at percentages and not absolute numbers. Tesla has had quality issues and problem with services but overall people are very happy as far as car brands go. And you have to be reasonable with your expectation for customer service of an internet service provider. There's only so much you can do to help an individual customer. Maybe it doesn't work in your area for some specific reason, you can't expect their engineers to spend time investigating that single case. If it was a broader issue i'm sure they would look. Did you try getting new Starlink receiver?
matwood 2y ago
I use Starlink in Italy and it's been flawless. To be honest it's like magic with how easy it was to setup and use. One my colleagues tried Starlink at his cabin in the PNW and he had to return it. He just couldn't get a clear and wide enough line of sight through the tree cover. I wonder if that was your issue?
TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
I think this is quite perceptive. Musk is a narcissist, and the driving motivators of narcissists are a bottomless need for praise and attention and contempt for others. Musk is famous for being contemptuous of his employees, and he's starting to show more and more contempt for Rest of World. Cybertruck and X both reek of it. Everyone here is assuming Musk is rational and SpaceX and Starlink will continue to develop rationally. I don't think they will. He appears to be becoming more and more unhinged, and that's going to have negative effects on his fledgling empire.
- misiti3780 2y ago
  how is cybertruck contemptuous lol?
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    It is contemptuous of all the smart people who HAD to have told Elon it was a terrible design.
    - misiti3780 2y ago
      i think it looks cool!
      - UltraSane 2y ago
        The rear view is blocked when the bed cover is closed. That should NOT be legal
GJim 2y ago
> moving back to our 6mbps * Mbps

UltraSane 2y ago

"and from what I've seen from Elon—I think this attitude comes right from the top." Yep. Tesla infamously doesn't have a Public Relations department ( I assume because he got rejected by a woman who worked there) and “press@twitter.com now auto responds with [poop emoji],” Musk tweeted. Ladies and gentlemen, the richest man in the world!

benjam47 2y ago

I was an early user of Starlink, starting with the original terminal (today I have the 3rd generation high performance terminal). Being in a very rural area in MT where there was never congestion in my cell and I have a very open view of the sky, it has worked well for me since day 1 and has only gotten better with time. Personally, I monitored latency more than speed, as I always had enough speed to do whatever I wanted. When I first started using SL, latency averaged around 100ms (which compared to my previous provider HughesNet was amazing, but was high compared to ground based connections), but today averages around 35ms which is still technically higher than ground based connections, but for all practical purposes for me, is indisguishable from any other internet option, even for online gaming and live video streaming. Although I did not monitor speed as regurarily, it averages around 300Mbps for me. Sometimes it exceeds 400Mbps (I just ran a speed test and got 420Mbps), and it is rarely less than 100Mbps. I have contacted support twice, and always received quick replies. However, based on my monitoring the Starlink Reddit forum, customer support during their beta period did appear to have often been poor. And there was also a period of time where performance was poor in many populated regions as they started opening up the floodgates a bit sooner than they probably should have, resulting in slow speeds for people in many regions, until their satellite launches caught up to demand. However, my impression is that both of these issues have improved significantly since Starlink left beta. I do still see some complaints about customer service, but anecdotally it appears less frequent. My impression is that they have the ability to remotely troubleshoot many hardware issues, and will quickly send a replacement if they can confirm a fault. I do worry about this though, as even a quick reply and a quick hardware replacement means several days of downtime. Speed complaints are almost certainly less frequent than they used to be. I have no doubt that your customer service hell story is true, and if that happened to me I would be just as turned off, but I think that, especially today, that is not the norm. I have considered purchasing a spare terminal as a backup, but I do have some concerns. I have heard that terminals that stay unpowered and unconnected for very long periods of time get too behind on FW updates and essentially become bricked, I don't believe that is the case today but I am not 100% sure. Also, back when there used to be a queue for signing up, it would not have been practical to just set up a new account for the new terminal, but now that the sign up queue is gone, maybe it is an option today. I have not fully researched my options for this redundancy idea.

hcurtiss 2y ago

Where was this? Members of my family have three different remote cabins surrounded by trees in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, and all work perfectly. The early days were a little more glitchy, but with the constellation they have today, you don’t even need to aim.

nikkwong 2y ago
2023 in the Pacific Northwest. We were given the argument that tree cover was a problem quite early on in our attempted troubleshooting. The house is a waterfront property, with a clear view of sky to the east. Anyways, the suspected issue continued to evolve, and we were not able to get to the bottom of it with the support we received. Certainly, our experience could be an anomalous. But I certainly hear this happening all the time with Tesla, with the manufacturer trying to void warranties and evade liability for vehicle defects. I just.. wouldn't be bullish on any of Elon's companies in a crowded market; which I suspect will define more his companies in the future. His politically obtuse behavior and lack of respect for authority is enough to turn off ethically minded consumers; and that's before the general crummy experience of being his customer. My best friend has a Honda EV that broke down twice, one time being potentially out of warranty-and the dealer repaired it, no questions asked
- infobot 2y ago
  You…wouldn’t be bullish on the most successful businessman in the history of the world? Sometimes I come here for a good laugh
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > most successful businessman in the history of the world You're ranking Musk above Jobs, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Disney, Toyoda, Walton, and Buffett?
    - tgma 2y ago
      This characterization isn't entirely unreasonable. Isn't Musk objectively the richest businessperson ever in nominal dollars? Inflation-adjusted, I think only Rockefeller or Carnegie may come close, but the variety of businesses Musk has is impressive, and it appears he is just getting started with a long way to go.

NoPicklez 2y ago

I appreciate you have had a bad experience, but to then think that's the overall experience is myopic. There are many highly remote areas where people can't speak more highly of Starlink.

Nursie 2y ago
And not that remote. Internet provision not all that far out of major Australian cities can be abysmal. I'm only 30 minutes drive from the centre of Perth and my options are currently 5G (operating at about 4Mbit), Wireless Broadband (performance promise - the download speed will reach 25Mbit at least once in any given 24 hour period!) or Starlink, at a pretty stable 120/20. I'd love to not have to pay for it, to use what local/national companies can provide, but so far nothing comes close. I am informed that the wireless system is due to be upgraded to support much higher speeds, but that was supposed to happen this year and there's not a lot of this year left.
- NoPicklez 2y ago
  Absolutely, I've had 5G modems within the metro area of an Aussie city and it was horrible.
- hattmall 2y ago
  I would think 5G could really improve that situation. In the states we have the 600 MHz spectrum on T-Mobile and can pull down decent speeds 30-150mb through trees 15 miles from the tower. Upload is not great.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    It could, if there was decent signal here. At least in part that's been delayed because of someone in the area raising a band of nutters and giving the council hell about 5G killing her grandchildren. Sigh. Might happen before too much longer - she managed to get the project to build the new antenna on private land killed (I'm sure much to the annoyance of the landowner, who was going to pocket a nice chunk of ground-rent). But now the local authority have given the go-ahead for one to be built on their land, and they're going to get the rent. She is apoplectic, which brings me great joy.

loandbehold 2y ago

Your experience is not typical. Starlink has been working flawlessly for me for the last few years. It revolutionized Internet access in my remote area. HughesNet was the only game in town with speeds under 3Mbps and 10GB monthly data cap. Now everyone has Starlink with over 100 Mbps speeds. Never heard of issues.

nikkwong 2y ago
I stated in a neighboring comment that our experiences could be anomalous. Based on how frustrating it was talking to them on multiple occasions with multiple different service reps I assumed it was endemic to their culture; a la Comcast. At the very least, Telsa seems to be trailing tens of thousands of angry customers online who are struggling with defective vehicles.
- loandbehold 2y ago
  Tesla has some of the highest customer satisfaction scores among car brands. I'm not sure what you are referring about "tens of thousands of angry customers", you need to look at percentages and not absolute numbers. Tesla has had quality issues and problem with services but overall people are very happy as far as car brands go. And you have to be reasonable with your expectation for customer service of an internet service provider. There's only so much you can do to help an individual customer. Maybe it doesn't work in your area for some specific reason, you can't expect their engineers to spend time investigating that single case. If it was a broader issue i'm sure they would look. Did you try getting new Starlink receiver?

matwood 2y ago

I use Starlink in Italy and it's been flawless. To be honest it's like magic with how easy it was to setup and use. One my colleagues tried Starlink at his cabin in the PNW and he had to return it. He just couldn't get a clear and wide enough line of sight through the tree cover. I wonder if that was your issue?

TheOtherHobbes 2y ago

I think this is quite perceptive. Musk is a narcissist, and the driving motivators of narcissists are a bottomless need for praise and attention and contempt for others. Musk is famous for being contemptuous of his employees, and he's starting to show more and more contempt for Rest of World. Cybertruck and X both reek of it. Everyone here is assuming Musk is rational and SpaceX and Starlink will continue to develop rationally. I don't think they will. He appears to be becoming more and more unhinged, and that's going to have negative effects on his fledgling empire.

misiti3780 2y ago
how is cybertruck contemptuous lol?
- UltraSane 2y ago
  It is contemptuous of all the smart people who HAD to have told Elon it was a terrible design.
  - misiti3780 2y ago
    i think it looks cool!
    - UltraSane 2y ago
      The rear view is blocked when the bed cover is closed. That should NOT be legal

GJim 2y ago

> moving back to our 6mbps * Mbps