Clear Wire

This is the worst thing to waste $ 55/​month on, I’ll be cancelling as soon as I can find another option. Portland apparently sucks for Internet providers, but I would honestly rather disconnect my home service than pay for this. To the people who manage Clear, you blow chunks, and I hope you get caught in a grease fire with only a cup of water to put yourselves out with.

I have the home modem with the possibility of an external antenna, but never needed it. Coverage is great at work too (always four bars). Latency is not nearly as good as Comcast, but doesn’t matter too much for my use — streaming TV, minimal VoIP, regular surfing. I’m saving several hundred bucks per year over Comcast.

So I just moved to Portland and I was looking for an Internet provider that I could take with me around town to use with my MacBook air. I stream video from time to time, download lots of files, and use my Internet for multiple hours a day. The reason I chose clear was simple. I needed a plan with unlimited data, this means sprint or clear (which runs on sprints network) are the only option in this price range. I wanted something to use as home as well to stream from my Roku and Plug into my desktop.
Now before I get into my overall opinion I want to make it clear to people that are looking at this as a home Internet option what they need to expect. There seems to be a misconception because of terrible marketing by cellular providers that 4G is as fast as your cable Internet from Cox or Verizon, this is simply not the case. This is not ever going to be as fast as your local cable provider. It is (on occasion) faster than the fastest DSL speeds but its not going to match a cable provider plugged into a fiber optic network. This will stream 720P fine through Netflix but struggles with 1080P streams. Because it’s on a cellular network it is also susceptible to slowdowns during peak hours (Just like any cell based service).
I currently own the Clear Spot Voyager and I want to give you a few best practices to get the best performance possible. Admittedly without using these you might be disappointed.
1. If in a building use your device next to a window. This increases speeds and signal strength.
2. Try and keep the device close to your computer. Signal strength drops significantly beyond about 10 feed. This is par for the course with a hotspot running off a battery.
3. Set your streaming device to 720P. Most streaming devices support this and it gives you HD without any load time. Most people will have a hard time telling the difference.
4. When out and about put the device on the table. This device does not work all that well in your pocket. The more out in the open you can use it the better.
5. Plug it into your pc. The best speeds and performance I have experienced with this device is with it plugged into my pc via USB or plugged into the wall and charging while streaming. My assumption is that it has better signal (perhaps more juice for the antenna plugged in) so that’s best.
Final words:
This product is not perfect (nor is any cellular data connection I have used) but I honestly think it’s the best solution you can find in Portland for take anywhere Internet that will also work at home. It goes out every once in a while but I found that just powering down and back up fixes the issue. Overall this is a stable mobile solution for someone with a laptop like me that’s always running around. I have never had a situation where I didn’t have Internet around Portland. I also cant overstate enough the importance of it being unlimited. I use a TON of data and would blow through 5gb (what most carriers offer for their $ 50 a month hotspot) in less than a week. Data limits makes offers from Verizon and AT&T not even a viable option. Streaming means you need the unlimited plan so keep that in mind. I don’t think I would ever recommend this as a home Internet solution but as a mobile hotspot that can also be used at home it’s pretty solid for the price. Hopefully this review will allow people to go in with proper expectations and prevent frustrations. Cheers!

If it was possible to write a lower score I would. This is the WORST provider ever. Sold me a defective device… and then says I have to pay to have it replaced. Main reason I bought the device was because I could use it while I traveled. Ha! Did not work at all. Useless piece of shit I have bought in a long time. I travel to San Francisco — a main hot spot. DID NOT WORK. Do not buy their devices. I can’t wait to switch. Plus, after spending 3 hours with their customer service — and 3 people… all gave me completely different stories. Worst? Buy something from one store… but then be forced to deal with another store for an exchange… cause the store you bought it from was not an «authorized» exchange center. STAY AWAY. Scams.

I have been completely disatisfied with Clear’s service. I signed a 2-​year contract in December 2010 and immediately regretted it. Ridiculously slow internet speeds, useless customer service. It turns out we’re right on the edge of a no-​coverage area in North Portland, so there’s nothing Clear could do about improving their speeds. They never should’ve sold us their service if they knew we were on the edge of their coverage area, and they should’ve let us out of our contract when we figured that out – but they did neither. There’s been nothing good about their service and I’ve been counting the days to the end of my contract so I can go back to Comcast. What’s even worse, I called to cancel my Clear service Monday 1÷7÷2013 and they said I’d be able to use it until Sunday 1÷13÷2012 (since Comcast wasn’t coming to hook us up until Friday 1÷11÷2012), but when we tried to stream content last night, Thursday 1÷20÷2012, the service was so utterly slow nothing – Netflix, HBO, even low-​bandwidth YouTube videos – would run. They «clearly» impared our service as punishment for canceling. I will never use this service again and will strongly discourage everyone I know or meet from signing up. Positively horrible.

Both upload and download rates are F– on
for NW Portland. Delays to watch youtube, etc. Not cheap. Customer service is lousy, basically liars.

Oh my goodness, when I first signed up with Clear, I thought the service was a bit expensive but I tried them out and it was mediocre at best, the bars would come and go and the modem itself was designed oddly and kept tipping over. Also, I would receive telemarketing calls from them to upgrade my service which was annoying especially because I already had what I needed.
1. Installing the Clear on my computer was hellish! They sent me the wrong modem to begin with.
2. When I needed to cancel, I had to jump through the hoops of their call center which is obviously located in another country and speak to individuals who could not understand the basic nuances of the English language. Reading from a script does not mean you are fluent in English.
I had to deal with some of the most rude and shady characters that asked personal questions that had nothing to do with the account!
3. Then even though I was a customer for several years, I was charged a $ 40 restocking fee!?!
4. EVERYTIME I SPEAK TO THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE, THEIR ANSWER IS DIFFERENT. NO CONSISTENCY.
The company is the worst. I do not understand why I cannot speak to someone that has at least proper command of the English language and that won’t put customers through hoops just to do simple tasks. It depresses me when these companies can’t even maintain a call center in the US!
I would rather pay more for service elsewhere or just walk down to my community coffee shop and use the WiFi there. Clear clearly doesn’t want good word of mouth or repeat customers.
ALSO IF YOU CANCEL YOUR ACCOUNT, CLOSE YOUR BANKING ACCOUNT TOO TO AVOID FRAUDULENT FUTURE CHARGES.
It is CLEAR that CLEAR stinks!

One star says it all. I admit I have had clear for a little over 2 years. I have a lot of patience. Its cheap. Yep Cheap. You get what you pay for, but now Clear wants to raise it’s price by 25%. Really Clear you think you are worth 25% more a month??? Me thinks no freakin’ way!
I give this company less than a year and it will be gone. I give myself less than a week and clear will be out of my home.

SHADY TACTICS!!! For over a year I used Clear’s lowest tier internet plan. It was cheep, and I hated Comcast; so I suffered the painfully slow (and often abscent) service. Then one day, I decided to stop being so cheep, and I called to upgrade to their «super-​fast» 4G plan and began paying an extra 20 bucks. After two weeks I didn’t notice ANY improvement in speed, so I called customer service to find out what the deal was. After they helped me run a download speed test, and transfered me to three different people, they dropped a BOMB on me:
My account was being «MANAGED.» This meant even though my signal strenght was at their MAXIMUM level possible, I was getting limited service because they claimed my video streaming habits were excessive (two hours netflix per day, I don’t have cable TV) and they were limiting my signal strength.
I freaked out, RANTING at them that they advertised «unlimited» for the price I was paying, and this was INSANE! They told me they were «sorry» but there was nothing they could do, and also REFUSED to reinstate the cheeper price I had been paying. DO NOT USE CLEAR!!!

so check THIS out.
the day after i cancel my service, my clear modem happily informs me that i NOW have ⁵⁄₅ bars of service, after a year + of 2 or 3 bars at most. EVER. i go and fire up my wifi, and try google.
i get an intercept page telling me that i can sign up for clear service, or get 24 hours of service for $ 10.
so.clear is smart enough to know that:
1. i don’t have service with them, and
2. clever enough to tweak my modem to report higher than average signal strength.
wow, didnt AT&T have their balls raked over the coals for ‘fixing’ peoples service bars on their phones to overstate connection strength? guess there needs to be a little bit of reality check for these guys too.
clear, i had SUCH high hopes for you. WHY did you screw the pooch so bad? korean kids with starcraft obsessions get 3+MB fiber connections for $ 15 a month, all day long, no packet shaping. W T giggty F guys?

The worst service you can get, and the connection… forget about it!!! It sucks

Yes, it’s 2011, and Clear Wire’s internet and customer service is still slow and awful. And, when I called to cancel my service last week because I stopped using it because it was so slow, my automated monthly service charge still showed up days later. When I called customer service to inquire why, they said it hadn’t been cancelled (what?!) and I had to go through the whole song and dance again. An hour later, and I am still on the phone with them to cancel my account, which gave me plenty of time to get back on Unilocal after a year on hiatus to write this review.

In the ten plus years I have had high speed internet at my home, no one has performed as poorly as Clear in terms of service and customer service. Their actual service is half baked (which means you DO NOT get what you pay for) and I test my throughput regularly to see if I am getting my promised 6 Mg download and it NEVER seems to hit the mark. We also have home phone service with Clear and it works off and on. Also, they actually CLOSE customer service at 10 PM PST, so if you have an issue or outage after 10 PM, you have NO OPTIONS. My two year contract is up in March and I am RUNNING back to the other company who rivals Clear for horrible customer service, Comcast. I figure I have spent upwards of six hours of my life in two years on the phone with their customer service people and I just hung up on them tonight after three days of headaches and issues (still unresolved, but being escalated and «Can you call back tomorrow to check up on your trouble ticket?») tonight was the last time I put up with this and am calling to cancel tomorrow. Do not waste your time with these people.

I agree with everyone else. The customer service is simply awful. I would give it a 0 star if I could.
I signed up for the mobile service on month-​to-​month contract. The coverage was decent for me except that one time I wasn’t able to get the signal in a McDonald’s right off the highway on the west side and had no idea why.
1) the on-​line customer service routinely doesn’t know what they’re talking about and they make up answers whether they’re for technical or nontechnical questions. They are also not well educated about their own products either.
2) The terms are ambigious. I wanted to cancel my service after my 2-​month promotional period and switch my account to the «day pass». They let me. Now they called me yesterday saying I either had to cancel or switch to month-​to-​month or some kind of contract. I had no hesitation to cancel. Then they told me I wouldn’t even be able to use the day pass once I cancel. (and, if I want to get back onto a month-​to-​month plan, I’d most likely to have to pay activation fee again). So, I’m left with my expensive modem.

I took advantage of the «Trial Period» here in Portland, OR.
The service was great for casual browsing, but totally failed for online gaming and VOIP. Audio got totally messed up, chopping people’s voices into gibberish.
When I returned my modem, I was charged from the date that I ordered the service, instead of the date that I first used the service. The trial period ends when they receive the modem at their facility in Nevada. The rep that I spoke with when I opened my account told me that my trial period began when I first accessed the service.
This was significant because it took them 3 days to send the modem to me, 5 days after that before I first turned it on, and it took another 5 days (weekend + shipping) for them to get the modem. So I paid for 13 days of my 14-​day trial period with no access to the modem. Bogus. The $ 35 activation fee is also not refundable if you choose to opt-​out during the trial period, so that’s gone the moment you hang up the phone with them.
«Clear» is an ironic name for a company with such shifty practices. I’ll only make that mistake once.

Absolute nonsense.
Dealing with Clear in terms of the company’s sales force is an exercise in watching someone show signs of physical stress with just how much of the truth they are bending. The salesmen will make outlandish promises that simply cannot, and will not, be backed up by Clear’s technological infrastructure. Seriously, it is impossible for me to convey how much you will be misled in a conversation with a Clear sales rep.
But the real tale of woe, the meat on the bones of this fly-​bloated, necrotic, ox-​heap of a company is the hands down shittiest customer service you will EVER encounter from an Internet Service Provider. When I demanded the closing of my month-​to-​month account with Clear this very afternoon, I was run through the ringer as they attempted to beat me up over every last cent Clear could rape outta me.
Let me provide an example: I was told that Clear would not close my account down (therefore billing would continue) until they received the modem I had been leasing, which should have been no problem as I was calling them from their own store on NE Broadway. Unfortunately, they made it a problem when they told me that the store could not accept the modem– I had to mail it to a warehouse. My response was to inform them that: A) there was no way Clear should be billing me when I would not be able to access their slow-​ass Internet service once I mailed the modem (a requirement for access) to this recently mentioned warehouse and B) nowhere in the Terms of Service does it state that I had to mail anything– it only says that I would have to return the modem when canceling the contract. The service rep lied and said that it was stated in the TOS and kept telling the lie even when I reminded her that I was in the Clear store and looking at their TOS online. After 45 f***ing minutes of this being escalated twice and being put on hold 4 times, Clear finally relented and allowed me to turn the modem in at the store.
In summary, I would really advise that no one use this horrific, trainwreck of a service. On second thought, this company is so frickin’ terrible that referring them to an a-​hole boss or your buddy’s ex-​girlfriend might be worth keeping Clear’s doors open. The joke/​revenge factor would be rather high and certainly deserves consideration…

For some people, it’s great. For me, not so great. Not one bit.
Technical issues: I can only get about 50 — 75 kbps and no hope of better.
Billing issues: I was a technical trial participant. Clear offered 6 months free service and free modem for my work for them. Good deal? Nope. They were extremely difficult to work with to get the «free» service. They continue to bill me $ 5/​month lease for the modem that I own.
Customer service: Awful. Handed off from place to place. «Not my job.» No return calls. No return emails. «FAX us a copy of that agreement, sir.» FAX??? No email? Nope. How quaint.

yeah, what nathan said. SHADY.
and worst perfomance in customer service ever, ever, ever. irony is i wanted to give them a try because i wanted an alternative to comcast.
never thought i would say this: can’t wait to call comcast.

Near the intersection of NE Williams & Alberta.
I got 2 – 3 bars with my windows open, and 1 bar with them closed. These are high-​quality double-​pane windows. Speeds were actually pretty good when the window was open, but downright pathetic when the modem only had 1 bar lit up. I was paying for 6mb service and during the various speed tests I ran I topped out at 3.5mb/sec (3 bars lit at the time).
Opening my windows to get decent connection speeds is not an option. At least they make it easy to ship the modem back…

I was on Comcast. Didn’t much care for Comcast and wanted to make a change. I contacted Clear and they promised me just as good throughput as Comcast for about $ 20 less per month. I was in. But, unbeknown to me they locked me into a 2 year program. The throughput was a fraction of what Comcast was and after hidden fees turned out to be about the same as Comcast. Did I mention Clear blocked some of my programs critical to my business. Well I went back to Comcast. Great speed and reliability. But, Clear hosed me for $ 116 early cancellation.
In conclusion… if you think you are going to save money with Clear, forget it. You won’t.
I am really sorry to report this because I am not a fan of Comcast.