I will try to be as polite as possible with this article, but I must say, I'm a bit ticked off at this point. Please also keep in mind that I work at a software development company and do customer service and tech support. Our products are distributed mainly electronically and we offer subscription services. So, I am not exactly an impatient newbie to this type of stuff. And, going into this, I knew that satellite service was far from perfect......I just didn't realize how far......

I have Direcway satellite as my internet connection. Why? Because they are the only "broadband" that I can get. I can either have dial-up, or pay the big bucks to have satellite. There is no cable or DSL available at my house.

So, we got Direcway, which was a total pain to actually get somebody out to install, and we had to do a lot of the work ourselves, but not having to use dial-up was something that I was looking forward to.

In the first 3 months, I had to contact tech support 3 times for various reasons (always something on their side. Once they even claimed that the center that I am served by was hit by lightening). So, that was about 4 days that I did not have service (no credit given) and about 8 hours that I was on the phone with them getting it fixed.

Fast forward 3 months later. Day before yesterday, at about 9pm I noticed that the lights on my modem weren't blinking the way that they should be. I assumed it was just something that would fix itself (like it was too overcast and I just didn't know it). Last night, when I got home from work, it was still wrong. So, I called support. The first person that I spoke with didn't speak English very well, and ended up saying that I needed "advanced" support. When she "transferred" me, she hung up on me. (This is 1/2 hour into this ordeal). I call back. Speak to another person that doesn't speak English well and I have a hard time understanding what numbers he is saying. 116 and 160 sound identical when he says them, and I have to ask him to break down the number each time he says one so that I can understand it. He can't help and transfers me to advanced support. I sit on hold for half an hour (We are now 1 hour and 15 minutes into this).

Advanced support says that I need to update my software. I guess they updated their drivers to "improve" performance, but in reality, it made a whole lot of people lose signal strength due to the signals changing to work with the new driver. This is a wonderful thing since I don't have internet connection. So, it takes him a bunch of time to set up a dial-up account for me. Luckily, I have two phone lines in my house, so I could use the other one. I get dialed up on their service and try to get the file that he said that I needed (which is setting on an ftp site). I can't get it through their site. It can't find the source. I try to ftp through a command line- it times out. I try to grab it from the ftp site directly. It times out. He asks: "Do you usually have problems with dial-up? Do you have any idea what might be wrong?" Now, I have been on the phone with support for over two hours at this time. I wasn't in the mood. What I really wanted to say was: "Think about that, Jack-ass. This is *your* dial-up which is trying to connect to *your* ftp site! How the hell am I supposed to know what's wrong?" Instead I said: "I have no idea since I have never used this dial-up account, since it's through your providers...."

So, to make a long story even longer, my satellite is still not working, but I now have dial-up. I had to download the file that I need for home through work. I still don't know if it will fix my problem. I wasted *all* my free time yesterday on it. (well, 2/3 of it, anyway) and I really don't want to waste any more time on it. I was on the phone so long that my dog was getting mad at me.

So, while I was on dial-up yesterday, I checked my email (which I usually don't do from my DirecWay account because it has a hard time finding the mail server). It has an email notice from 11/23 that says that they have a new "update" out and you could enter some drawing if you updated before sometime in January. What it really should have said is: "Update within the next 10 days or forget being able to connect, sucker!" If their drivers are so important, don't you think that they should have some "auto-update" reminder for them? Like MS, Norton, Stardock, etc. do? (and, their updates are not typically "critical"). Can you imagine ATI emailing you a notice that says to update your video driver, then within two weeks you can no longer use your computer because your video card wouldn't work?

So, I can only assume that, by the time they get their act together, and quit having a totally flaky system, DSL and cable will be available in the areas that typically are using satellite. Either that, or people like me, will get so frustrated that they will go back to dial-up when their term is up. Who wants to spend so much money on a flaky, poorly supported product?

For the reasons above, Direcway gets a two coffee cup rating. They *really* need to get their act together!