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Review by ALLENIRON 
member for 179 days, 0 visits, last login: 179 days ago
lodged 179 days ago
 Odessa,Ector,TX
 $60 per month Verizon "If its all you can get may god be with you." "Everything you can imagine and then some." "Stay away don't get ripped off by these crooks!"
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I have used clear since they first rolled out as Clearwire. for 6 years now i have suffered there worst and
there best. from grade a customer support to a support team i wouldn't pay pennies. from people who were
courteous to the rudest people on earth that make people like Hitler look like a saint.
I have always expected some bad service hear and there. After all no one is perfect and nothing infallible.
However the last 7 days have been unbearable. I have dealt with over 10 reps and while only 4 of them were
trying to help the rest could give a shit and care less. Speeds have been below Dial-up Speeds and sometimes
non existent . We get no credit on our bills when we cant use the service. We get no information about why its
going on they wont own up to anything just tell us its us and not them then it magically works for a few hours
at blazing speeds then back to nothing for hours. Tech reps tell you to reboot your modem never do this this
kicks you from there networks for hours. Also they throttle everyone the same. You say no big deal almost
everyone throttles. This is true but I pay for the high end service as we watch Netflix and play games online.
Other people may pay for the lower end service around 20$ a month I pay 50$ and I get throttled to the same
below dial-up speed as the lower end service which in no way do I feel is right or ethical to do to a customer
paying your paycheck.
At this point I wouldn't recommend Clear to my worst enemy as they wont even tell us why we don't have service
and would like to keep us chasing our own tails and bullshitting us to believing our hardware is broken.
Hell I had one tech rep tell me I wasn't covered in service area Last night! I have lived in the same house for
entire time I have had Clear. My modem is fixed to the external wall of the house in a custom fabricated case
which keeps it clean and safe from the elements and ensures no direct sunlight and maintains a beautiful 5 bars
of signal worst ever being 4 bars.
Now I assured the tech rep my house being 2500 sq-ft had not in fact moved out of the service area magically
floating or otherwise. After this he decided to terminate our conversation.
So for those of you thinking of investing in clear before you do check out
»www.google.com/finance?client=ob···DAQ:CLWR
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Review by spud coolzip
member for 216 days, 0 visits, last login: 216 days ago
lodged 216 days ago
- Aurora,Dupage,IL
- Contract price not specified.
- "Well, it's not AT&T"
- "Low speed for the $, severe BitTorrent throttling, finicky reception"
- "OK if you're willing to invest in extra hardware"
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I terminated AT&T Uverse because of their corporate politics. Their broadband service was solid and only had outages after really bad storms. The other wired service available here is Comcast, whose extreme-right PAC donations are to most of the same anti-consumer politicians as AT&T, but a bit smaller. That left me with Clear and the satellite companies as alternatives for desktop broadband.
I started with their little pocket-sized Clear Spot modem, which worked beautifully at my office if I used its USB port. (Its WiFi radio was worthless in that noisy, crowded environment.) I got a solid 6Mb/sec there. At home was another story. The only place I could get reception at in my house got me a whopping 300-500kb/sec down, about 50k up. I could walk up the block and get 4-5Mb down. The problem turned out to be trees. I paid for another modem, the Clear Hub Express, which has vastly better WiMax and WiFi radios, due in no small part to better internal antennas. It is also the only product left in their offerings which has an external antenna port. With this, I was able to get useful-but-not-fast reception at my desk of 800k-.6Mb down and 1-3Mb down if I put it in my walk-up attic.
I decided to shop for antennas and bought a directional flat panel unit with 18dBi gain from RFWel.com. This gave me much better but still highly variable results. Depending on rain and wind, I could go from 12Mb down to complete dropouts, although I consistently got 2-6Mb down during calm, dry weather. For reasons other than WiMax reception, I cut down an eastern red cedar (juniper) tree in the path to their tower and my reception got much better, but rain and wind would still kill reception. It was only after most of the leaves were down a few days ago that reception became consistently good. (RSSI -72dB, CINR 25) I started thinking of putting my antenna on my roof and/or getting an omnidirectional antenna before the leaves come out again. (Side note: RFWEL has good app notes on antennas. A directional antenna is not necessarily better. Do some homework before you spend your money. Also be aware that roof-mounted antennas require hardware, good cable and lightning protection. Those items can cost more than your antenna. Google "antenna lightning protection NEC 2011" for info.)
Thinking I'd at least have high speeds for the next few months, I decided to use my bandwidth and download some music and videos last night. What a disappointment. Whether it was normal Friday night heavy traffic or the rain messing with their microwave backhaul, I was throttled at 1.5-3.5Mb down with only occasional peaks up to 6-10Mb. On top of that, BitTorrent is at a slow crawl of 400kb/sec down, Not sure whether they're intentionally throttling that or their slow ping times (65-90msec) are causing a problem. Either way, torrents are treated as third-class citizens by Clear. At least Uverse delivered full bandwidth for torrents (mine are fully legal public TV shows and open-source software, not pirated movies) and were basically content-agnostic.
This morning and again just a minute ago, for whatever reason, by Speedtest showed 6+Mb down speed. Their system is inadequate to fulfill their claims.
Because Clear operates in the 2.5-2.7GHz band, their service is only reliable closer to their towers or when people like me do homework and are willing to spend a couple hundred bucks to try to make it work. That frequency band will naturally give poor coverage under trees or in between buildings. A proper use of that band would be to have a larger number of lower-power towers at, say, 1/4 mile distances - In other words, neighborhood towers.
Clear is once again majority-owned by Sprint, who invested in them to obtain more 4G spectrum for their multi-band smart phones and tablets. Clear sells internet service direct and through a few other companies, including Sprint-branded products. Because it's currently a money-loser with valuable spectrum being propped up to stay alive until it's bought by an owner with deep pockets, their WiMax modem business is just another revenue stream to slow their bleeding. You can Google Softbank Sprint if you want to watch that story. It looks like a sale is imminent, but it ain't over until it's over. I won't repeat it here. I just hope that Softbank improves this service. If their service works acceptably during the transition, I might tough it out. Otherwise, I may have to do business with the dirtbags at AT&T or Comcast.
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain jps.net)
lodged 219 days ago
- San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
- $35 per month
- (month by month)
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I signed up for the Clear Spot month to month plan. I called and cancelled my account, because in spite of the coverage map, my signal was weak and speed was bad. They did not cancel and kept billing me. When I called them to point it out and ask for a refund, they tried everything to not give me the refund. Then after saying they would give me a refund it turns out it was a partial refund. They wanted me to pay for half of their mistake and the offers got worse from there. They are NOT out to help the customer. I think they must be desperate for money. Given my experience you can count on NO help from Clear customer support. And I really question their coverage map.
Please give them a miss.
I like my Virgin MiFi very much. It works much much better than the Clear Spot!!
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Review by SoulFood
member for 337 days, 0 visits, last login: 337 days ago
updated 337 days ago
- Citrus Heights,Sacramento,CA
- $55 per month
- AT&T
- "nothing"
- "customer service is annoying and unhelpful service is horrid!"
- "they are a total scam and do not care about their customers"
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Do not waste your money on this horrible service.
I purchased this service once and returned it right away as I found I was on edge of service area and got a refund for it.
I moved almost a year later to a whole different place and I asked the sales man if I would get good service or not because of my previous experience with Clear. He assured me!! that I WOULD GET GREAT SERVICE ((lies*)) in this new place. I trusted him otherwise would not have purchased the service. I was told I was near two towers who's signals cover me great.
Wrong! The whole time I got super slow speeds and continually called customer service who each time checked everything with me and said they boosted the signal and see I am getting great speeds there. Well I wasn't.
Also I was told that trial period was 30 days I found out over a month later it is 15 days trial period.
I did everything I could to get a faster speed including put my modem outside. I even went so far as to call them and get my service charged 15 $ more to think I would get a better service or signal...no I did not! I was paying 55$ at that point for a .07mbs speed!!!!
I was fed up and called for 3 days in a row upon the third day I asked for my service to be discontinued and that I would return their modem and get my money back. I had been lied to continually by their customer service telling me my speed and service would improve and it had not.
on another note why I am angry at them: after not being able to return the modem for that 110$ back because they said I was out of the trial period I asked them to at least refund me the money I prepaid for service that I was now NOT GETTING because a manger decided to turn off my account. I basically should have been reimbursed for 20 days of their service I wasn’t getting because a manager canceled my account. Well they said no and decided to take that money for themselves.
A manager knew that shutting off my account would take that service and money from me.
They also tried to tell me that I used their service ... omg no way I used your service I paid to use a service and I had to use it twice as much because it took 4 times as long to do anything on the net with it.
Horrible waste of time and energy and money experience. Horrible customer service! Will tell you they understand and care and they really just don't give a crap about you. Also whatever number I was called from I can't call back cuz it's in another country. SCAM service.
They will tell you one thing to get you in but their service covers no one. They can se it on a map and will lie to you. you will always be on "edge of service area" in the end. Super annoying. Then they will try to make it all your fault. Rude. I have never had to deal with such a bad business ever.
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Review by jerrysfl
member for 7 years, 65 visits, last login: 121 days ago
updated 339 days ago
- Hollywood,Broward,FL
- $50 per month
 about 2 days- AT&T
- "Not AT&T"
- "Not as fast as advertised, gateway sucks"
- "Not bad for the price , when it works it's very fast. good alt to AT&T"
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ClearWire 4g is a good alternative to AT&T faster speed for about the same price and so far no real problems. Basic service $35 for up to 1.5 Mbps down and .5 up. I try that first and got 1.9 down and .5 up I upgraded to the $50 plan advertised at 6 down and 1 down and am a little disappointed getting 3 down .75 up about half of advert speed 1/2 mile from tower with great signal . Ordered to express hub gateway hopping I would not need anything has built in wi Fi and 2 Ethernet ports but the wi fi range sucked 15 feet away in another room poor signal strength no matter which channel one uses. Had to just use ip pass trough to my old faintful Linksys WRT54gl , I have tried to replace her for something faster a newer but never found anything better and more stable. Inthink I will keep Clearwire but go back to basic plan $35 do see any speed difference for the extra $15 . If I did it again I would of just order the cheapest moden and use my own router since their Express Hub is not very good. update 6/2012 still works well no outage speed still the same , not bad. Stream sling box dish no problem , vpn , ddns and magic jack all work fine. Still happy.
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Review by dapaiko
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
lodged 1.1 years ago
- Portland,Washington,OR
- $25 per month
- (24 month contract)
- "Customer service apologizes frequently, offers rebate when you plan to cancel"
- "almost everything: service, equipment not working, frivolous charges, contracts longer than being told, more"
- "DO NOT EVER PAY MONEY TO THIS COMPANY"
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I was a Clear customer for 2 years and my entire experience with Clear was a nightmare! The first mistake I made was signing up with "a friend of a friend" who was a salesperson with Clear. He said he could get me a great deal with a 1-year contract and assured me that the quality of the service was excellent. Of course there was never a contract that I signed, but I assumed that since my friend knew this guy that everything was okay.
After about two weeks, my service stopped working completely for 3 days and when I called to complain, they so generously offered to refund me for the days I did not have service. Really? That's the best you can do, and you're going to act like you are doing me a favor?
Problems continued, and Clear continued to be terrible at fixing them, so when my "one year" period was nearly finished, I was relieved to know I would be leaving Clear forever. I called to find out how to return the equipment because my contract was ending, only to be told I had TWO year contract and that I would be charged to cancel my service. Finally I decided I would rather pay to leave than stay for another year, at which point they offered me a credit to my account to stay which I unfortunately accepted.
A couple months later I moved in with a friend who already had internet service. Once again, I called Clear to cancel my service and they again offered me a credit and rather than pay the cancellation fee to leave the service, they gave me the option to change to a mobile USB device which I could use outside my friends home. Unfortunately the customer service people are very courteous and convincing, so I accepted that offer and tried the USB device, which rarely worked in Portland, and never once worked outside the Portland area.
Probably my best experience with the company was when my contract expired and they paid for the return labels to ship my equipment back. However, this one good deed was overshadowed by the fact that they later charged my account $50 because of unreturned equipment (which I returned over a month before). When I called to ask what was going on, they realized they already had their equipment in their warehouse, and again generously refunded the money they should have never charged in the first place.
I would NEVER recommend anybody join this service. Again, DO NOT JOIN CLEAR!
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Review by greybear125
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
lodged 1.2 years ago
- Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
- Contract price not specified.
- (month by month)
- Verizon
- "When it is good it is very, very good (mostly)"
- "When it is bad it is horrid (goes away completely)"
- "Do not bother unless you know for a certainty that it works in your area"
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These guys offer services around the US. They may be great in your locale, but in general they have some issues and right here in Culver City, CA the service stinks. I had high hopes, they were dashed.
In the 50 days I have had the service I have been on the phone with their tech support, both junior and senior, for more than 6 hours. I am a very experienced techie and I am patient, but there are limits. I =
have been trying, patiently, ever since I got this service, to get the problems with it diagnosed. I was told that the problem was in my installation (not the case). Then I was told that the problem was in their local installation "at the pole" and that it would be fixed in a week. I was patient. The problems (slow / highly variable speeds and =
total disappearance of service), have persisted. Sometimes it gives 6 Mbps, sometimes 2, sometimes 1, but far too often, no service at all. The last senior tech support guy, on the second or third call, finally confirmed that yes, there was a service problem on their end, at several poles in the area, and but that he could not tell me when it might be fixed. Could be a month, could be a year.
Lousy service. No refund for poor service and they would not accept returned equipment after 30 days. I give up. I just cancelled the service and am telling the digital world just what kind of poor service they can expect.
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 | |  Cable service isn't much better
I have been trying, patiently, ever since I got Cox cable service, to get the problems with it diagnosed. I was told that the problem was in my installation (not the case). Then I was told that the problem was in their local installation "at the pole" and that it would be fixed in a week. I was patient. The problems (slow / highly variable speeds and intermittent problems when service was so slow [much slower speed than was promised], have persisted. Sometimes it gives 10 Mbps, sometimes 1-2, sometimes less than 1, but far too often, really bad service. The last senior tech support guy, on the second or third call, finally confirmed that yes, there was a service problem on their end, at several poles in the area, and but that he could not tell me when it might be fixed. Could be a month, could be a year.
Lousy service. Only positive is they credited my account a months payment. | |
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
lodged 1.2 years ago
- Wayne,Delaware,PA
- $25 per month
- Verizon
- "Price"
- "Service, Coverage, Unauthorized Billing, Customer Support"
- "Not worth the money at any price"
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Terrible service and dishonest billing practices.
I have tried this service in Philadelphia, PA. The coverage was VERY spotty. Even within center city the signal would go from red to green from block to block. It's completely hopeless to use it on a regional rail since the suburban coverage is even worse and varies by zip-code. Worst of all, when the signal is actually good, the connection actually on par with 3G modem. Because of these issues I've had to cancel my service.
Much to my surprise Clearwire started billing my account again half a year after I have canceled my service. They are refusing the reverse the charges and reaching customer service is a nightmare.
Run, don't walk away form Clearwire.
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Review by OC Josh
member for 1.3 years, 7 visits, last login: 175 days ago
updated 1.3 years ago
- Orange,Orange,CA
- $19 per month
- (24 month contract)
- Sprint
- "Plan prices (old plan of 60 for 2 devices or 80 for 3), device prices."
- "upload cap to 1.5 or 1mbps, sucky free rover puck device, very weak in the building, everything will be fine outdoors."
- "If you have outdoor antenna and not using it during driving, it's fine."
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This service requires to point the router to the tower direction and OUTDOOR under 99% of cases, to get better connections. The customer care won't tell you that.
I have offered a refurbished home modem for $20 and free rover puck for my plan. The modem is fine but the puck, the mobile hotspot not. That puck product sucks. Don't even try! It got 3 bars less and slower everything. I got dropped every mile or so on driving (maybe it's the network clearwire built? It's WiMax mobile for Taiwan's global mobile last time I tried).
That puck also auto drop internet though everything show on device page as normal about 200-300kbps download in couple of minutes. Clearwire service people had no clue on that device issue. Again, the home modem has no issue at all.
If you do some research, most of biz wimax solutions required outdoor antenna or cpe which give you perfect speed. If you can have that done, you will have much better experience with clear.
For me, it's impossible to do that, I only have modems on high floors and by the windows to face the direction toward the tower. The speed varies a lot from 13 mbps-2.7mbps, but upload is stable at 1 mbps.
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Review by WKPoschman
member for 7.8 years, 7 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
lodged 1.4 years ago
- Quincy,Norfolk,MA
- $50 per month
- Verizon
- "Plugged in modem, plugged in ethernet and it literally worked - and fast compared to DSL"
- "Occasionally loses signal due to environmental conditions (<1 day for sure though)"
- "If in a Clear WiMax coverage area, don't want to deal with the cable co, but do want 5Mbps-10Mbps this is a great option!"
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I had Verizon Highspeed Internet (aka DSL) for 10 years but the service never changed or improved and I never could get more than 1 to 1.2Mbps on a good day (at the edge of the CO service area granted). Since VZ is not building out FiOS in most areas (financial cost in CO and cabling work and low penetration at ~30% so no surprise) and the "wireless" FiOS CAN option is not widely available, I needed another option. 3G is equivalent to DSL but when 4G WiMax became available and Clear offered a modem, it seemed worth trying. The modems are a drop in replacement ofr any DSL or cable modem and are self-contained (read: the modem manages itself and the connection). So far the connection has been stable and is much faster than the DSL connection by a factor of 5 typically. I have no regrets. We'll see how the long term run is but unless there is a degradation of service or a Netflix-esque price increase I think I've found my next ISP for the forseeable future.
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