(Starlink.com)It looks like SpaceX's Starlink really doesn’t want to take on new customers in parts of Washington state. The company is forcing new customers in the area to pay an extra $750 to subscribe to the Starlink residential plan.
The extremely high “demand surcharge” began popping up on Thursday, according to one Facebook user in Washington, who noticed the extra $750 fee. The one-time charge has also appeared for prospective customers in Seattle, Redmond, and Spokane, in addition to Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding suburbs. (But other areas of Washington, such as Yakima and Walla Walla, show no extra fee.)
The change can crank up the starting price simply to own the Starlink dish on a residential plan to $1,099. That’s a huge contrast to how SpaceX is offering the dish for free in select areas across the US if the customer commits to subscribing for 12 months.
The $750 fee is also an increase from the already-high $500 demand surcharge that SpaceX began imposing earlier this month in parts of Washington, Oregon, and North Carolina. (The $750 fee is also enough to buy two standard Starlink dishes.)
The company has been using the demand surcharge to prevent overloading the Starlink satellite network with new customers. Last year, SpaceX initially introduced the extra fee as a $100 "congestion charge."
But the extra charge has since been increased to $250 and even $500 in select US areas after SpaceX decided to remove the waitlist for the Starlink residential service across the country. As a result, any user in the US can subscribe to the residential tier, but the starting price will vary, depending on if your area is already full of Starlink users.
“This charge will only apply if you are purchasing or activating a new service plan,” SpaceX adds in a support page.
Meanwhile, in other areas of the US, where Starlink has extra capacity, SpaceX is offering discounts, including a new $80-per-month residential lite plan and free Starlink dishes, to help drive growth. This includes parts of Oregon, such as Bend and Eugene, where there's no $750 surcharge.