I have gone through the (not great) starlink support pages, and one can apparently only contact starlink through an account that becomes available through the confirmation email. Naturally I have none. It also states that if that confirmation email wasn't confirmed, the order would be cancelled after 7 days (it hasn't). There was no email in my Spam folder.
Now it's been over 3 weeks. I am a customer but as far as starlink is concerned, I am not. They obviously did their utmost best to not need a helpdesk, having generous procedures in place for when things fail. There is no one to talk to, not even a silly bot. This is all great when it works, but when you fall on the side where things don't work as intended, as I do now, it doesn't exactly feel great. It feels like a scam, it's indistinguishable.
There is also a potential for a scam. If I somehow filled in a slightly wrong email address someone else could, in theory, have taken over my account, and could have redirected the shipment. The point is, I'll never know, and I was not made aware of such risk while signing up. Indeed the signup experience was strangely feed-forward, without an email-confirmation step. In the end it felt like I was supposed to dump €480 into a void, with nothing to show for, except a bank transfer. I was forced to rely on the reputation of the brand, only.
I think the above is a relevant data-point to many of you (non-scammers), because it represents an extreme case, even beyond Google, one where not only the non-fallability of software artifacts is presumed, but also the non-fallability of the organizational process that led to its 100% no-contact design.
That's sure to have some relevance to the community, but of course I just want someone to talk to and solve what could have been the smallest of issues. Any advice on how to proceed next is appreciated.
Edit:
- as commenters have mentioned, there is a reset option, by email or phone. AFAIK neither works.
- I'm pretty sure I filled in everything correctly, and at the correct site. Never had this kind of problem.
1.) To start, open up:
2.) Click “locked out”.
3.) There’s a chance you entered your email incorrectly, but this screen gives you the option to recover by either email or phone.
You may already know this, but the entity you made payment to is:
Starlink Internet Services Limited
5th Floor, Beaux Lane House, Mercer Street Lower, Dublin 2 D02 DH60
Registered with the Company Registration Office under No. 677409
Lauren Dreyer is listed as the Director: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-d-8077b594/
Her email address: edit - removed now that OP has seen it
You should definitely pursue a refund from your bank. I hope you don't have to initiate a legal proceeding.
Alternatively, call the bank, claw the money back, and use a different email/phone to establish a new account.
Their might be an address you could contact (they have to have one on file for lawsuits, etc).
I’m not hugely surprised that they lack customer support. SpaceX won’t have had any of that in their DNA, won’t be practiced at it, and will have had to scale that function rapidly. Unless they hired amazing leadership for it at the outset, it’s going to take a while I’m sure.
Given customer support experiences at, ahem, related, companies, it may not be a priority for senior leadership. It needs to be something the top care deeply about and treat as an advantage, otherwise it’ll be perpetually underdeveloped and scraping by to provide the bare minimum as it will be treated as a cost centre rather than a differentiator.
Before taking a payment on a SPA, everyone please make a separate database transaction that records the user - come back to display the UI for CC collection AFTER. If you try to add the user, run the CC and return in one shot, while attractive from a transactional perspective, it's NOT good if your DB rolls back but the third party CC processing did not.
Then you end up with users that pay, but no record of payment in your DB. Get it right people.
Yes you can at least confirm your own transaction is committed in one shot THEN perform the CC, but separating these two out is still the best bet.
Sometimes these claims are limited in time by a number of days (like 30) so get it on it straight away!
As just one data point, I can confirm that they do send a confirmation message when they receive an order. But you probably already have heard this from others. One way to get their attention would be to get your bank to reverse the transfer, if they can possibly do that, which they might, given the circumstances. Of course that risks resetting your timeline.
Also check your deleted emails folder (since you didn't mention this). BTW three weeks is not a long time when it comes to waiting for Starlink. I waited a year.
UPDATE: the good news is here, this is going to get solved!
I had posted a copy on Reddit r/Starlink. Just now I found a response from Starlink Operations in my Reddit inbox.
The responses here have all been very well considered and helpful, that has been kinda magic. Thank you so much!
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https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=14253313125&text=Olá%21...
Contact your regional consumer protection agency.
>did their utmost best to not need a helpdesk
EU is pretty serious about ability to contact real live person on the other end of any business operating in EU.
> I am a customer
no you arent
* stifled laughter *