> He then reviewed my billing history and account details, confirmed that my service address had never actually changed, and determined that nothing had been moved. As a result, he issued a full refund.
Yeah but it still sounds like $1,500 demand fee was not a mistake, charging OP was the mistake.
People first mentioned these fees at like $100... now you can go to Costco, grab a Starlink, and they'll randomly ask for $1,500 to actually start service.
Congestion is a thing when each node needs to go to space, but it also feels like they're cashing in on years of "just move to a cabin in the woods and work off Starlink"... once you've done that they have you by the balls even worse than a typical ISP.
Let me guess... if you put the address into their handy text box, they tell you exactly what the demand surcharge is going to be for that location?
I tried it, and would you look at that, I was right.
I guess if you buy an entire house without checking to see what it costs to get internet service at that location, then you might be in a tough spot. Hard to blame it on anyone else though.
If you're privileged enough to work a six-figure tech job while engaging in a homesteader larp in a "cabin in the woods", you can probably afford the fee. So can "off-grid" YouTuber grifters.
It's like everyone feels entitled to something they didn't know existed a few years ago.
People feel entitled to the advertised rate structure. Was there anywhere in the promo material that you might get slapped with $1500 connection fees?
If you are not big tech, that’s a lot of money. For the home in the middle of nowhere, $1500 could be more than you would pay in monthly rent. Plenty of rural people without access to good internet were hoping for Starlink to save them from garbage DSL connection options.
I go to their home page, click "get started," and it asks me where I want service. If I put in a place with a congestion surcharge, then it shows me on the next page. In fact, you have to pay it up front to order service. Seems advertised to me. If you don't want to pay it, then you don't have to use their service.
Boo hoo.... these same people were previously faced with $40,000 connection fees for Comcast and Verizon to trench a cable 1/2 mile to their property so $1500 seems like a pittance.
Look, friends of mine did this, they bought a country place so they can live the dream and write software in the sticks.
Next thing you know they're drilling new wells and installing a generator to support the fantasy while the bills pile up. When you bring modern conveniences to rural life it costs money.
His address would have received it too, if he was starting new service. It's only for new customers, they're not hitting existing customers with the charge. The error was that putting in the address made it look like he had moved, which counts as new service.
It sounds like this was a bug where slight updates to geolocation data (his address updated its physical location, probably to be more accurate) triggered a "location moved" process. Annoying, but not indicative of a new policy.
Starlink should probably reverse course on this however, it's one thing to pay 10k for up to 20 guests on a small private jet vs a company like Delta with a fleet of 747s. Charge Delta 20k, charge this guy 10k.
There are quite a few providers of inflight wifi via satellite (or even cellular towers). Speeds are not usually as high as Starlink but it is ridiculous to say they have zero competition.
You also have Amazon building a constellation, OneWeb with one already in place (though not available for retail customers), and a Chinese one under construction.
I don't know who else is launching satellites, but many airlines do offer wifi, often via partnerships with telco companies. It's just expensive and slow.
So the only moat I see (as a layman) is the speed and capacity. The one flight that I was on that had Starlink, had better internet during the flight, than most airports have on the ground.
Also, not everyone in "aviation" is either an airliner or a 20 seat private jet. Joe Piston flying his two seater Cessna that cost him about as much as a new Toyota is not ever going to be paying Starlink's aviation price.
They really need more price tiers and scale them by a better price differentiator: max gross weight or number of seats.
Joe Piston probably has enough on his plate flying his 2-seater without global 1Gbps entertainment-on-demand or executing trades on his brokerage account while his team of financiers crunch the numbers in row 2.
Starlink Aviation has 2 General Aviation tiers at $200/mo and $1,000/mo, 3 business tiers, $4000/mo, $12,500/mo, $20,000/mo, and negotiable “Fleet” pricing for commercial and government.
Of course a pilot is not going to trading stocks while flying, but there are plenty of safety reasons to have in-cockpit connectivity, including weather, notams, long-range comms with their destination, and so on. Not to mention convenient Internet for a passenger on a long flight, who themselves might want to trade their stocks.
These use cases are approximately competing with SiriusXM weather, which has price tiers from $29.99/mo to $99.99/mo.
Whats the point of taking passengers if they aren't going to be paying attention. Leave them on the ground and take someone who actually enjoys the experience.
As a Joe Piston, the starlink pricing constant-whipsaw has been really annoying.
I love the tech. It's truly game-changing. And there is no competitor right now.
I bought my mini dish for $400 or so. I've paid $250/mo, $65/mo, $250/mo again, now $200/mo, and on standby for $5/mo and now $10/mo. Don't get me started on the speed-limit and bandwidth-metering games they've played along the way.
I literally have no idea from month to month what the thing will cost. It's still awesome. But there are thousands of butthurt pilots who bought the dish at 65/mo (and many made 100W PD power upgrades, self included, for another few hundred) and got raised to 250/mo immediately.
It's not so much the cost anymore as the principle of a completely unhinged vendor. Bezos' version will have a bunch of ready buyers if he can stick to a price for longer than a Ketamine high.
Why? Rich people flying private want to be connected and Starlink is the most reliable game in town. "Do you have Starlink?" is probably already being asked by those booking private.
That 20 guests on a PJ are probably worth more than a fully booked 747. Price has always been set based how much customers are willing pay, not based on the value it creates.
They are attempting to juice revenue across all product cohorts, this is simply another datapoint. Customers are captive until there are more connectivity options.
“Juice?”
As in they have the best product by a wide margin and are charging a totally fair price for it that reflects demand.
Nobody flying private cares about the price of Starlink.
It’s worse if they are squeezing people in underserved rural areas… our monthly has gone down from €35 to €29 and still getting the same speed.
The second SpaceX offers direct-to-cell in our area we will switch to their service as we’ve never had any issues with it whereas the incumbent mobile/broadband providers regularly throttle even when we’re paying top tier prices.
Totally agree there needs to be more competition and preferably not from other billionaires … but until then, Starlink is great!
SpaceX has a monopoly on high speed satellite internet. They will extract as much as they can from customers with said monopoly until there is a competitor. Doesn't sound like we're talking past each other except perhaps you might be a fan and I am not (specifically, extractionist monopolist behavior).
Don’t think anyone except Peter Thiel and Hasbro will argue that Monopoly is a good thing. ;-)
SpaceX has made the investments/innovation to better-serve the satellite internet market that already had players in it; HughesNet, Viasat, Iridium / Globalstar. Those were the price-gouging Oligopolist incumbents who Starlink is disrupting with a 10x better service for considerably cheaper.
Totally agree that SpaceX doubling the price from $10k/month to $20k looks really bad especially if they’re doing it to existing customers.
But the way I see this (as a non-private-jet-traveler) is: Starlink is doing a “Robin Hood” and making the Rich (who can all easily afford it) pay for the expansion of the service which will benefit all the rest of customers. And if the 0.01% decide to switch to an alternative supplier, that’s good for competition. So in a way it’s anti-monopolist. ;-)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1uklz4q/starlink_...