Hacker News Reader

Comment by himinlomax | Hacker News Reader

I know people who have had the service for months, outside the US, and are happy with it. How can it be a scam? Why didn't they ask for a refund? Was the refund denied or slow to arrive?

View on HN

I suspect the original comment is referring to Starlink taking a (~ 15% deposit) and 'promising' 1-2 months wait time which isn't reducing so they end up still waiting 6 months later, and the expected delivery is still reported as 1-2 months in the Starlink account.

It's possible that the delay is due to lack of legal clearance in the customer country. Starlink needs to get approval to install and operate the ground station satellite links in each country. From the few authoritative statements I've seen those are sometimes delayed due to local country bureaucracy.

I ordered Starlink in the UK in February 2020 and the equipment finally arrived in May 2020. I /think/ the stated delivery estimate at the time was 2-3 months and never reduced until the order confirmation email arrived and I paid the balance, after which the equipment arrived a couple of weeks later.

They're selling pre-orders in several countries where they almost certainly won't launch at all, or won't launch for a long time, due to huge regulatory hurdles. It does seem a bit like the same scummy behaviour as airlines still selling tickets for flights that definitely will not operate, thus getting cashflow for the period between sale and refund (which can be many months), as well as real profit from the people who don't bother to request a refund.

For example, Starlink claimed in early 2021 to be launching in Viet Nam "within a year", and have been selling pre-orders, but they can't legally operate in VN unless they form a JV with a local partner, since foreign companies aren't allowed to provide telecoms services there. The relevant government agency went on record saying that Starlink hasn't even applied for permission, yet they're still selling pre-orders.

I agree about the needless misleading of expectations. Some, but not all, is - I suspect - well-meaning public sharing of ambitions based on most favourable ideal timelines - something very common across most Musk-led businesses. I usually read that stuff as a partial sharing of stream-of-consciousness ideas and targets before there's a fully formed plan of execution - where reality often imposes impediments!

In your Viet Nam scenario and similar cases I wonder if it is (partially) a result of the Starlink plan to use direct satellite to satellite LASER links to relay data in low earth orbit to a more remote existing ground station?

As in, if I recall correctly, SpaceX originally expected to be launching 'block 2' satellites with LASER links in mid 2021 but suffered internal hidden delays (that led to Musk's internal SpaceX existential warning in October 2021 and firing of some senior staff) so the first batch were only recently launched in early 2022.

Those LASER links being in place are likely a prerequisite for serving territories where SpaceX cannot obtain favourable permissions for ground stations.

I don't think SpaceX will actually do this. They'd be explicitly breaking the law in those countries by providing services to people there (the mere fact that there is a technical means to do so without installing a local ground station doesn't change that). In several countries (I think including Viet Nam) it's illegal to even own an unlicensed satellite terminal, so the users would be at risk too.

If you order something online with estimated delivery "in a few weeks" and a year later it still isn't here, it's a scam, regardless of how easy it is to get refunded.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com