Complaint Review: Clearwire

I am writing to share my experience with Clear's wireless Internet service, which we have had for about 18 months. We ordered the service on the promises of fast connection speeds and easy setup.

We liked the fact that no line would have to be brought into our apartment, and though i had a feeling the connection was not going to be lightning-fast, i figured if we averaged 1-2 mbps down, we'd be ok for our purposes of heavy surfing and light streaming.

Perhaps not right away but not too soon after we ordered Clear, we began noticing a drop in connection speeds in the evening and on the weekend, the peak-usage times. A couple of calls to customer service ensued, during which we were instructed in moving and turning the modem to make the best use of our signal here, advice that in hindsight seems downright malicious.

I say that because i eventually learned that Clear throttles the connection speeds of subscribers exceeding a certain download volume. Naturally, this is what caused our connection to be slow, not the modem's alignment, and as a result, we felt we were being lied to and given the run-around in a way that was offensive even by today's low customer-service standards.

When i finally confronted a Clear rep with this finding, he resorted to stock excuses that would have been funny if Clear's deceit was not so blatant. For instance, he kept insisting that subscribers' download volumes were not being capped (though anyone would have a hard time racking up a high volume with a connection speed "managed" to .25 mbps, as ours was).

We have now canceled our service (with one week to go), though Clear needed to be reminded that they had agreed not to charge early termination fees to subscribers opting out with complaints of poor service under a settlement reached with a class of former Clear subscribers.

Since we canceled, our speed dropped even further, to .16 mbps. Hopefully, a dormant broadband cable line will be back in service tomorrow. Don't ask me how I feel about Time Warner Cable, but we do need Internet. 

Disclaimer: Had I ever been truly happy with an ISP, I probably would not have switched in the first place. I have dealt with Verizon, Towerstream, Time Warner Cable and Clear. Though Clear's product ranks lowest, none of them delivered what they promise.