I think their biggest issue is the mechanical engineering of the dishes. They use non-standard mounts, and (despite using bog-standard outdoor/riser-rated cat 5e cable) non-standard ethernet connectors.
For people replacing an existing internet connection with starlink, the cost of swapping out the existing (perfectly good) cable and antenna mount dwarfs the retail (and even manufacturing) cost of the dish.
Also, they don't document the electrical requirements for the ethernet cable, so people end up guessing, forcing it to turn on the on-board heater, then checking for voltage droop.
Even oversubscribed, they're better than most rural ISP options though.
I agree that the starlink customer support people are extremely overworked. In my experience, they're also completely incompetent.
The "impossible to update out of date firmware" issue is ridiculous, especially since they specifically market the RV service for use cases where you buy the dish and then pause the service for the 11.5 months of the year when you're not using your RV.
For people replacing an existing internet connection with starlink, the cost of swapping out the existing (perfectly good) cable and antenna mount dwarfs the retail (and even manufacturing) cost of the dish.
Also, they don't document the electrical requirements for the ethernet cable, so people end up guessing, forcing it to turn on the on-board heater, then checking for voltage droop.
Even oversubscribed, they're better than most rural ISP options though.
I agree that the starlink customer support people are extremely overworked. In my experience, they're also completely incompetent.
The "impossible to update out of date firmware" issue is ridiculous, especially since they specifically market the RV service for use cases where you buy the dish and then pause the service for the 11.5 months of the year when you're not using your RV.