A Conservative View

HONESTY

When I got up yesterday morning my objective was to write an article for my blog about “Honesty”. I was then going to compare some of the current dishonesty we have in government with examples of resent happenings. Well it took me over 20 minutes to get the following definition from Wikipedia with my recent new internet provider, Hughes.net.

The story I will share after you absorb the following definition is one to show how major organizations really do not care about individuals. They are no different than our government when it comes to honesty except they have to get you to agree to be screwed. The government bypasses asking you to bend over because they have you by the balls and can seize your property.

“Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness, including straightforwardness of conduct, along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc. Furthermore, honesty means being trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere.”

A few weeks ago I gave up on getting the service I was paying for to have high speed DSL service from Windstream Communications via my hard line telephone service. When they first started DSL service the technicians sent to install the modem had never installed one before but we eventually got connected. For several months the service was as advertised. Then the speed became to decay and it was worse than the non-DSL service I had in the past.

After letters, E messages and conversations they told me my service was inferior but made no attempt to correct the problem and provide me the service I was paying for. I just gave up and cancelled my service and selected Hughes.net who I expected to be “Honest”. Until yesterday I was totally a totally satisfied customer.

When my service disappeared it took my computer over 22 minutes to get the Hughes website to appear just so I could get a phone number to call. That set the tone for discovering that Hughes is no more honest than Windstream or your elected representatives.

I called three different numbers that appeared on different screens and took some 20 minutes before I finally got to talk to a human named Christian something as I could barely hear him and tired of asking him to speak louder.

He asked me to stay on the phone while he searched for a reason my service was lousy. After about 5 minutes he told me the reason my service was slow was that I exceeded my allowed time on the Internet for August and that I had no credits to apply for extending my allowed time. No one at Hughes ever mentioned that I had a time limit for usage when I contracted for their service. I never have had a limit and why should I have expected one from Hughes? The issue that really incites my rage is that no one had the courtesy to call or send me a message telling me my service was being shut off. Is that “Honesty”, I don’t think so.

Christian then told me he was a service technician and would have to transfer me to another agent to help me do something. I stayed on hold for about 10 minutes and Christian came back on and gave me a case number, apologized for the delay and told me again he was transferring my call. After about 5 minutes a computer voice told me I was on hold for the next available agent. Another computer voice came on and asked me to push number one on the phone and in less than two minutes I got a computer voice that my time had expired and hung up.

That entire task took over an hour and my temperament had reached my limit and I just decided to wait for them to call me back, it was 4pm. I waited until about midnight before I decided they had no desire to help me and took another 20 minutes for their website to connect and see if I could send an E message that might get me some help. After 30 minutes of searching different screens I finally found a way to send an E message which I did about 12:30 this morning.  

Before I started typing this about 9:30am I was able to connect with Google and request a connection with goodreads.com. It just appeared after waiting one hour and 23 minutes. Now that is Gen 4 Hughes.net high speed internet service. It is now 10:25 am and I will try to get this posted as soon as possible. You will know when it finally gets published as WordPress time stamps the time I hit the button. It may be next week when you get this as I have not yet heard from Hughes.net and it may take all day to check and see if my “gmail” will download.

If anyone knows how to forward this to Hughes, I would appreciate the gesture as I can’t find an address to send it.

I will return to discussing “Honesty” in government someday. If anyone has factual examples government “Honesty” I would appreciate your inputs. I can’t find any examples searching the Internet.

C Brewer Thursday August 22, 2013, 10:30 am