User Submission

Wow, how I wish I would have found this site before signing up with Clearwire (not) 2 weeks ago! I’m about to get an ulcer from dealing with this incredibly pigheaded company. To think, they are more concerned with stealing $220 in cancellation fees instead of building a company renowned for superior customer service and products. It’s a shame, really, because the potential and concept are so appealing. Here is a letter from my wife that I’m sending off to Clearwire investor relations today. I doubt it will do any good based on the stories I’m reading, but I’m sending it anyway. Count me in on a lawsuit against them!

Click the link to read on:
November 14, 2007

To Whom It May Concern:

I have never had such a frustrating customer service experience as the one I’m currently having with Clearwire. Please let me share this painful experience with you…

I can assure you, that we were VERY excited about your product and service. It was recommended by a few of my husband’s co-workers at Starbucks corporate office, and he was very eager to try it out. Prior to getting the service, we had been talking about it with all our friends and neighbors about its potential versus the cable and DSL options out there today. We ordered our Clearwire system on October 26th and had it delivered very quickly to us (great feature and prompt service)! It was easy to set up, but we immediately realized it wasn’t very useable from the minute we plugged it in. It was hit and miss in terms of speed, and had trouble staying connected to the signal. My husband spoke with your customer service and tech support that very first night because it just didn’t seem to be working right.

For the next week or so, if it was foggy, no luck…in the middle of the day, no luck. I watched my husband walk around the house for 2 nights trying every plug and window set up, no luck…we still could only get 1 bar! ONE day I did get 2 bars for about half an hour. We have trouble logging on at night, and only with the window shades up and the window cracked open (apparently the signal doesn’t travel well through double pane windows…wow, surprising defect given that most houses in the northwest have these windows!). One bar is all we can get 99% of the time.

HOWEVER, we were still big believers in Clearwire, and were not discouraged. We are having a house built, and guess what, we can see your towers in Poulsbo from anywhere on our lot! We were excited because we just knew the signal would be stronger at our new house. We took the unit to the model home in our new neighborhood, plugged it in and got 4 bars and high speed! Awesome…we had renewed excitement about Clearwire! We were still excited (even more so), because we knew it would work as expected once we moved. We told the community sales manager (of the new home development) about how cool Clearwire was, and she was excited to get all the info to share with the other home buyers who are looking for internet options other than cable, etc. There are 185 homes being built in this development! That’s a lot of potential customers for you!

However, after a week and a half (and several long phone calls to your company, one being the very first night) our love affair with your product and company has been destroyed. We do not get the speed, or the consistent connectivity that we need. My husband cannot log on and download the things he needs to from work. I cannot send pictures to friends or family. I cannot even download pictures to snapfish.com or Costco to get digital pictures printed. It’s too slow and does not meet our needs…its definitely not “high speed” internet. When it was foggy last week, forget trying to log on and read/use the Internet during the day…the router could not lock in on a signal!

So, after deciding that this very cool technology is not going to work for us right now, (while we live in a rental house while our new house is being built), we have no choice but to cancel Clearwire until a later date. Unfortunately, when we tried to cancel and tried to explain the problems we were experiencing with the service, we got nothing but a very uncompromising response, unrealistic solutions, countless holds, and transfers to 3 different people… unbelievably bad customer service!!!

The bottom line is this…It DOESN’T work for us! It doesn’t meet our needs and is too inconsistent! We should NOT have to pay a cancellation fee of $220 after only 2 weeks of horrendous service because your product does NOT work as advertised? How is that even close to fair and reasonable, let alone good customer service???? We called to complain about the service on the very first day we had it, and allowed the tech person to talk us into trying the service for a couple more weeks to be sure it wasn’t just a one time thing. Had we known there was a 7 day trial period, we would have cancelled within that time frame. How we wish we would have just canceled that very first night so we could have avoided the very bad experience we are going through now.

So, upon our trying to cancel, you sent out a field technician, who arrived with a 5 minute warning a day earlier than scheduled, thus interrupting my personal plans with my child (but that’s another customer service issue all together). And guess what, he stuck the router in a window (the same window we’ve tried many times) and got 2-3 bars and a fast connection speed. How does that happen? Of course, it was the clearest, non-foggiest, non-rainiest day we’ve had here in 2 weeks, so maybe that makes a difference. I can only guess that it helps to highlight how inconsistent your service really is. He couldn’t get more than 1 bar anywhere else in the house. And, of course, this one and only good spot was nowhere near the computer.

Perhaps if he comes back at 8pm some night, he’ll get the same frustrating, slow or non-existent speed that we get all the time? Because guess what? It’s not working again and he even taped exactly where and what angle to place the router. Go figure! Not to mention the fact that the one and only place that it works in our house is in the middle of a window sill in the middle of the kid’s play area, and only when the curtain is open. I have a 4 and 6 year old boys, and cannot have wires and routers dangerously hanging off the edge of a window sill in their play area. And do you know what the solution was for this, per your customer service rep? A wireless router!!! Hmm, so if I add yet another device (and pay more to get this setup working), I can have 2 things sitting in the window sill? Wow, would anyone with common sense think that is a legitimate solution, not to mention a safe thing to do? Why can’t we put the router in the office where we want it? Why does Clearwire think getting a signal somewhere in the house, whether or not it works out well for the customer, is perfectly acceptable and deemed as ‘meeting’ the contract? Are you willing to pay millions of dollars in lawsuits if my son dies because he trips over all those wires and strangles himself on the setup your customer service team is offering? Is that really a wise suggestion? I sure hope not everyone at Clearwire thinks this way. I’ll be sure to avoid any stock investments in Clearwire if that’s the case, because I see lots of liability in statements like that!

So, back to my thoughts and the frustration I’m feeling right this minute. Something that we were so excited about and had talked up to everybody, including the sales manager at our new home site, (where we had perfect vision of the towers and 4 bars when we tested it) will now get nothing but bad publicity from us. I can’t wait to call Lindsey and tell her NOT to recommend this service to anybody in our new development. In fact, I’ll be sure she tells them all about your terrible customer service and how you would not work with us on such a simple request. I’m sorry to say this, but we will do all we can to make sure everybody we know is aware of how poorly you have handled this situation, and also how bad your product and service is. I have never felt this way before, and have never thought I would have to act this way, but this experience has been overwhelmingly negative and is truly ruining my day. I can only hope that you find it more important to have positive word of mouth advertising then to steal $220 from a 2 week old customer with legitimate complaints. I’ve heard it said that it takes 7 good word of mouth recommendations to earn a new customer, and only 1 bad one to lose 20.

I am not exaggerating when I am telling you that my husband was OVER the TOP excited about this because he could take it most anywhere and log in (coffee shops, friend’s houses, whatever). He was really, really pumped about the potential. Now, it’s not the case. And, I’m afraid, based on principal alone, you’ve lost a great advocate for your services. Please just let us drop our service without charging us a cancellation fee, because believe me (PLEASE believe me) if we could have made this work for our needs we would have. It’s just not fair and it’s bad business.

Too bad for all…