Clear

Clear Internet sucks! At least the mobile hotspot does. It worked fine for the first year… but as soon as the second year rolled around, all of a sudden Netflix and You tube won’t play. It just loads and loads and loads. So annoying! So annoying in fact that I stopped paying my bill. They will not get another dime out of me. They can kick rocks.

I wish I had checked Unilocal before signing up with Clear. I too have had the worst experience of my life with them. Within the fist 30 days service is good and fast but after that I was getting typically below 1Mbps on an account that was uncapped and supposed to be close to 6Mbps speeds. I stupidly thought there were just tech issues that could be resolved and spent literally hours on the phone with customer service and tech support trying many different things. No improvement. In addition. Clear has a real problem of lying to customers. One day when service was down I had two different reps tell me that they were not having any issues with towers in my area yet i happened to go to a local café that had Clear Internet and that was also down and I overheard two other customers with mobile Clear complaining about how service was down throughout Hyde Park. They simply are uninformed or LIARS. On another occasion I spent over an hour with tech who agreed to send me a new modem. they took all my shipping info and the modem never came It’s almost like the left hand does not talk to the right. Long story short, I also had mobile Clear which I cancelled when I no longer needed it but they somehow forgot to follow through with the cancellation and I got billed for 3 months before I realized it. My fault for not checking my card statement but then instead of an immediate credit for their mistake they wanted to give me $ 20 off for 6 months. Ok, fine but now I’ve cancelled my home internet as of two months ago so I’m out that money and a surprise $ 45 cancellation fee appeared today on my credit card. Hmmm, I’ve been a stupid customer of theirs for over two years so I’m surprised they think I have a contract still.
Anyway, 2 more hours talking to the Philippians and I’m done. I’m disputing with my card company and BBB and IL commerce. I URGE EVERYONE NEVER sign up with Clear. They are an absolute nightmare to deal with and their service is poor. (we also tried office phone service with them and that was also dismal).

The worst customer service I’ve ever dealt with. You get put on hold for hours at a time. I checked with them to see if I had a contract and how much the termination fee would be. I was told there was a contract but no termination fee. I cancelled service and then told I owed $ 80 for restocking fees. I took this up with the BBBureau and they refuse to budge. I don’t know of any other communcation service companies that charge a restocking fee for equipment you have returned to them. They claim the restocking fee is because I opted to rent the equipment rather than purchase it. I don’t ever remember having that option when I signed up. They are now hounding me by phone to pay this bill which I never received a copy of even after asking for one.
My recommendation is don’t use Clear as your internet provider. Besides I understand that they are in financial difficulites after the founder of the company resigned.
I might add that the connection failed a lot in the year that I had it.

HORRIBLE!!! Connection is so slow, there is no way its 4G. I could use a papercup and string and have better reception and thats even with living downtown. I took my laptop outside and still only got 2 bars. Rethink ever using Clear for any tpe of internet service, the customer service reps have no idea whats going on and cant help you. When you call, they come up with the most ridicuous excuses for the bad reception and corrective measures to use.

It simply didn’t work– got absolutely zero signal at my home, even though their technician said we were near a tower. Returning the equipment, customer service were smooth; it was just strange to have something be so over-​advertised, over-​promised, and not work AT ALL.

Worse. Service. Ever.
The internet connection doesn’t work half of the time, and when it does, it is slow. Each week, like clockwork, we have to restart the little device that is suppose to bring us our internet service. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I use the internet at the coffee shop down the street more frequently than I do my own.
After 9 months of service, we have called customer service no less than a dozen times because the internet doesn’t work, even after troubleshooting on our own. We’ve sent formal complaints to the company. No response, no one cares. How could a company like this be in business?
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT subscribe to Clear internet service. It will be the biggest mistake of your life.

If I could give Clear negative ratings, I would. Think of every adjective you’d use to describe the worst experience of your life. Clear Internet & Phones is that and more. They are RUDE, Horrible. Awful. Terrible. They constantly transfer you to other «customer service» reps, and each rep doesn’t know what the hell the other has done thus far. Run. Run. RUN. As fast as you possible can. In the opposite direction.

Terrible. The sales person on the phone raved about the speed and even congratulated me that the service was available in my area. He said it was so fast that my netflix and hulu wouldn’t buffer at all.
I signed up for a plan that cost over $ 50 per month for 6mb speed and never got more than 1.75mb. Usually it was under 1mb and half the time, I couldn’t log onto the Internet at all.
I ended up on the phone with tech support for over two hours the first day and they couldn’t figure out the speed problem. I called back two weeks later and this time they ADMITTED that there was no way I would EVER get a speed faster than 1.75mb in my area.
One good thing was that they told me anything under 4mb was considered, «unacceptable» for my plan by Clear’s standards. So, FYI, if you are under a contract for the 6mb plan and get less than 4mb you should be able to cancel.
I am within the 30 day trial period so I can cancel the service. However, the customer service rep. couldn’t transfer me to the cancellation department because they were so busy!
Clear is making promises to Chicagoans that they cannot keep.
F-​A-​I-​L!

If I could give less than a star, I would. I have had this service since June 2010. I have been dissatisfied since June of 2010 with the spotty at best internet service. I have been too busy and too broke to change to Comcast (my only other option right now) so I live with it, but rarely a day goes by without me declaring a few explitives in the name of Clear Wireless.

I have had clear for over 7 months now, and those months have been nothing but frustration. I signed up for the $ 65 bundle package (2 home modems for multiple computers and gaming consoles). The first month was ok with 3 – 4 mbt on both modems, but after that it went down hill.
The connection is constantly disconnecting, and it is freakin SLOW. Online gaming is inoperable and netflix takes forever to load. It’s outrageous that I’m paying $ 65 a month for this crappy service. The only reason I put up with clear is because I didn’t want to pay the early cancellation fees for something that doesn’t work properly in the first place.
…but since its a new year, my new years resolution is to cancel my clear account, even though if I have to pay the early cancellation fee. I don’t want to deal with the frustration anymore.

Its friday night and my clear internet connection will not even stream a you tube video. Last night I didn’t have service on my modem or usb device. Clear is kind of like that car that may or may not start. You never know if your going to have service. I would have to say my service is down over 70% of the time and thats with me only using it 1 or 2 hours a day. I had AT&T for over 10 years and never had 1 outtage. I only switched to get the usb device. I’m about 17000ft from the At&t central office so the fastest speed I could get was 3mbs. Clear promised 6mbs and a usb mobile device for $ 55 a month. If the service actually worked this would be a great deal. This only proves that nothing in life is free. Just like the old saying if it sounds to good to be true it probably is.
Since I started to write this review my connection has been down about 15 days. Its only out between 8pm to 8am. I spoke to customer service and they said its probably due to Maintainence??? I think their service works off of T1 or T3 lines based at cell towers. Basically this is a very high data line installed at a cell tower and wireless from the tower to end user. The T1 line is seperated into channels to allow more users. Most T1 lines allow 25 channels= 25 users. Customer service suggested I move my modem. I explained to the idiot that I tried to connect with my usb device outside and up and down my block and I still had no service. Their lines at the towers are out. They know when their lines are down but they outright lie to their customers.
I called Clear to discuss this problem and customer service again suggested I move my modem again. I asked they send a tech out to trouble shoot and she refused. From day 1 I have had nothing but headaches from this. I purchased my equipment outright but they still insist on charging me an disconnection penalty. To make things worse I asked her to disconnect my service in 5 days so I could make a seamless switch to At&t. She said today was my billing date so if I kept the serice for 5 days I would be charged for the entire month. I asked her to pro rate the 5 days and she said they do not do this? Its CLEAR this company will not be around very much longer. I encourage everyone having this trouble to contact consumer fraud with the city and state.
I contacted At&t today to establish a dry loop dsl line. They have a special 3mbs for $ 14.95 a month for the first year. I can see the At&t cross connect box from my back windows its 1 pole away from my house. This is the main reason I never had an outtage from At&t for over 10 years. Clear is a scam fly by night service Save yourself a lot of time and money and stay away from Clear.

Same story as everyone else. Paid for 6 mbit home connection. Got 2.8 mbit for the first month reliably. Then boom, it’s like they turned off the «new customer» flag and our speeds have varied wildly from .5 to 2.3 mbit. When I sat for an hour doing speed tests every 5 minutes, it would vary *dramatically* every few minutes. Most of the time it was less than 1.0 mbit, which is worse than my old 1.5 mbit DSL line. Absolutely unacceptable.
Keep in mind we have a solid 3 or 4 bars of signal — never varies. The only explanation here is that their own traffic at the tower is overloaded and badly shared somehow — the quality of service is essentially random.
Going to cancel and switch to comcast. Oh, and by the way, the guy at 1500 N. Damen who sold me Clear is a slimeball. The whole reason they sell 2 year contracts is so that folks aren’t forced to purchase the $ 80 wimax modem. This guy sold me *both* the modem and the contract, and didn’t even TELL me I could be contract-​free by buying the modem!

I actually created a Unilocal profile JUST to review Clear, that’s how strongly I feel about them. Due to a long-​standing hatred of comcast, and terrible reviews of rcn, I decided to go with Clear when I moved last month. Long story short, my internet was pretty good (2−3mpbs, and I’m paying for «up to» 6) for 4 weeks, then it totally slowed to a standstill. My home modem still has ⁴⁄₅ bars, indicating good signal strength, but my connection is sooooooo slow (0.12mbps for a download speed). It just took me 2 hours to get through one 20-​minute episode of arrested development on Netflix. Uncool. When you call/​chat Clear to troubleshoot, all you get is people reading off a script, and they can’t deviate from it no matter how many times I say, «I know, I just talked you yesterday and went through all these steps.» So Clear worked for me for 4 weeks, so now it’s too late to cancel my contract! Well played, Clear, well played.
Also, while we’re on the subject, why is it so difficult to get reliable internet service for less than $ 60/​month in a major city? It’s 2010, right? Discuss.

All too often we are missing competition in segments of our society. One are where this is evident is an internet service provider. I was having problems with at&t I decided to give Clear a chance.
I signed up for both the modem for my desktop and the usb for my notebook. After about five months, I have to give Clear service a gigantic thumbs down. Initially the service was nominal 3mbs. But then in prime time hours it really went down… and I live a block from the tower! Last Saturday morning I was getting .047 mbs. Coincidentally it was the same time as the guy from Comcast was at my place running coaxle cable! Now, I hat Comcast, but their speed is undeniable. I just really dislike comcast television, Directv all the way. But when plugged in directly with my ethernet cable
had me puling down 35mbs!
In closing, let me state that the real reason I am writing this is due to when I called to cancel Clear. I did not want a contract so I decided to buy the equipment. All this operator did was try to talk me out of it. And he said your connection looks great… bs, it sucks!
So, yes I have clear equipment for sale. Any takers?
I was excited to have a different ISP option, but Clear is absolute garbage.