(Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
UPDATE 6/5: The $500 surcharge has also been popping up in western North Carolina. One customer discovered the extra fee after already buying a dish and trying to activate it. "Is it just me or is this exorbitant and disgusting?" the user wrote on Reddit. However, the extra fee isn't appearing in other parts of the state.
Original story:
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you might be forced to pay an extra $500 to subscribe to Starlink. SpaceX is quietly doubling the cost of the "demand surcharge" for Starlink in parts of Oregon and Washington state, where the satellite internet service faces limited network capacity.
On Tuesday, a Reddit user who lives north of Seattle reported the $500 demand surcharge, which is more than the $349 price for the Starlink dish itself. “What gives? $500 is INSANE! Seems like a ridiculous charge to take advantage of those who don’t have other options,” they wrote.
(Credit: Starlink.com)It’s a significant increase from when the demand surcharge, previously known as the congestion fee, was only $100. In April, SpaceX then increased the surcharge to $250 for select areas where Starlink was already at capacity.
On the plus side, the company has removed the waitlist for Starlink across the US for consumers looking to subscribe to the residential plan. But it looks like SpaceX has increased the demand surcharge for select areas to prevent overloading the network with new subscribers.
Although the $500 one-time fee is high, SpaceX appears to be imposing the surcharge in more urban and suburban areas of Washington and Oregon, including Seattle and Portland, where other ground-based internet services are usually available.
Unfortunately, the Reddit user wrote: “My house just happens to be on a road where the two options are either DSL or another company who refuses to extend their service to my address, even though they service the house across my street.”
In other areas of the US, including in more rural areas of Oregon, SpaceX is taking the opposite approach and offering Starlink hardware for free, without any demand surcharge. But to receive the deal, the customer has to commit to a one-year subscription for the residential plan.