Sunday, July 19, 2009

CLEAR Internet Service


So, due to my hatred of Comcast Service, I finally ditched them in order to give CLEAR a chance. Here is what I've found so far:

When I called and spoke to the first guy who actually sold me on CLEAR, he told me it would be $162 to get set up for what I wanted. This fee included an activation fee ($35, I would prefer not to pay something like that, but they would of course waive it if you sign a 2-year contract, I just wasn't ready for that commitment yet), the price of the modem ($80, and I would much prefer to buy it then rent it), and the first month of service ($30 for the 3mbps plan, supposedly comparable to Comcast6). When I actually went to pay the price was $161.87.

CLEAR internet service runs on radio waves comparable to microwaves. I don't really understand the technology and I haven't done a lot of research on it. Supposedly you take the modem out of the box, plug it in, it gets the signal from the air, and you're ready to go. It wasn't quite that easy for me. I took it out of the box and it never got service. I tried putting in a window like the instructions suggested. I called customer service that had me walk it from room to room all over my house and point it "left of east" where the actual tower was in order to achieve a signal; still nothing. They did offer to send someone out, but it was going to be about a week before they could come out and I had scheduled the Comcast people to come pick up their equipment the following day. I really wasn't interested in waiting that long and was considering just returning everything. I left the modem plugged in and called my husband to give him the bad news. When I walked back in the room...boom! Two bars of service!

I had a little trouble after that because I never saw the TOS to agree to in order to activate my service. I called customer care again to see if I was just missing something and they supposedly set me all up. I ran a few internet speed tests and I was only hitting about 1.52mbps for my download speed which I thought was rather disappointing. Everything was SLOW.

HOWEVER...the next morning when I tried to browse the web I kept getting the TOS that I coudln't make load the night before. Only, now I was sucked into a loop where all I could do is load the TOS without actually being able to browse. I finally called customer care...again...and they "provisioned" my router. After that, I started doing internet speed tests and I was testing at almost the entire 3mbps I was promised.

The next day (today), I have ran a few more tests. The lastest one, the download speed was 4.26mbps! And all of this while running major downloads in the background. I am starting to be very impressed with this service.

One more however though...I looked at my banking info online and I was not charged the $161.87. I was instead charged $187 and some change the day OF the transaction. I thought they must have charged me to overnight the product to me without asking me. But, today the charge is only $160.00. So I'm really not sure if that was an issue with my bank, or an issue with them, or what. But I will update if I find any new information.

3 comments:

  1. I am sorry to learn that we have lost you as one of our customers. If there is anything I can do to convince you to come back, please let me know. I will be here to help.

    Mark Casem
    Comcast Corp.
    National Customer Operations
    We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com

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  2. Dear ComcastCares1,

    Well, of all of the possible responses I could have imagined receiving, this was not one of them.

    Although I appreciate your efforts, Comcast and I share a relationship that was simply not meant to be.

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  3. I just got some referral cards in the mail. If you use my referral code, they will send you a $10 coupon 7 days after activation. I will also get a discount on my bill. So do it!

    My referral code is: m32qe8.

    ReplyDelete