User Submission from a Very Unhappy Clearwire Customer

My problem with Clearwire is not based on a misunderstanding of company of the Terms of Service agreement, but rather with the directly misleading practice of bandwidth limiting and throttling. It is fairly well known that many ISP’s directly control the amount of bandwidth given for certain ports and protocols. A lot of information regarding this fact is available on the internet. Obviously I knew this when I signed up for the service because I read their Legal Disclaimers, as any consumer should, paying special attention to the “Acceptable Use Policy.” The document states:

“You may not use the Service or take any action, directly or indirectly, that will result in excessive consumption or utilization of the system or network resources (i.e. excessive peer to peer applications or continuous FTP uploading or downloading, or commercial purposes (except where permitted by Clearwire)), or which may weaken network performance, as determined in Clearwire’s sole discretion.”

That seemed rather vague to me, and I was skeptical. I play online games, and also utilize several p2p applications to download TOTALLY LEGAL content via torrents. When talking to the clearwire representative at one of their retail locations, he said he understood my concern, but was not familiar with the Acceptable Use Policy. (Friendly, misinformed salespeople; i almost feel bad for them, like they’re selling heroin disguised as girl-scout cookies.) He told me that there was no commitment if i took a modem home and tried it out, so i did. I was able to download at ‘acceptable’ rates and ping times and bandwidth seemed ok in my games; although slightly less than advertised, even on speedtest and dslreports.

Up until now everything seemed legit, and seeing as my 1916 house was not wired for telephone landlines or cable, it seemed an appropriate solution. I returned to the retail location, and told them I was ready to sign up. Although after-the-fact I did some digging and found the information available in “fine text” areas of the site; it was not CLEARLY stated in any of their advertisements or by the salespeople that there were a bundle of hidden fees. Modem rental fees, activation fees, early termination fees, etc. After doing the math vs local competition it was still competitively priced, only because i would have to pay to have cable or phone service connected to my house.

This is where i get really upset. After paying for the service, i go home and without interruption everything was working fine. After two or three days, my torrent downloads went from 100-200kB/sec to 5-15kB/sec without any change in software or hardware on my end. When I contacted customer support the girl i spoke with told me she did not understand my problem and i needed to talk to a specialist. The ’specialist’ tried to use the same torrents i was and reported he was able to get them just fine, so i must have no problem. He was very nice and even tried to help me troubleshoot any problems with settings in my torrent program, as he appaprently used the same one. Eventually i started getting very frustrated, only to find out he wasn’t having any problems because he wasn’t using clearwire. Their tech support guy lived in an area that clearwire did not serve. How are you going to help troubleshoot a problem, when you have never even used the service?

In short, i understand how much bandwidth p2p apps use, and i understand why ISP’s limit it. However, i was specifically told by one of their reps that the trial would be exactly what i would eventually pay for. This was completely untrue. The bandwidth throttling started AFTER I STARTED PAYING. To this day i have called probably five times, all i want is to terminate my service, and i do not want to pay my early term fee because i was intentionally mislead. I have no problem with the rep, because he was not given the tools or information to properly inform me. I am upset with the overall misleading and deceptive practices of this company. It is a scam and the only people i have spoken with who are happy with their Clearwire, are internet first-timers who don’t know the difference.

At this point all i do, and will continue to do, is inform anyone interested in how poor the service, support, and morality of the company are. I make it a habit to stop whenever i am walking by a clearwire retail location, and politely ask anyone waiting to talk to a rep for a few moments. I then explain to them as concisely and efficiently as possible how bad CLEARWIRE SUCKS.

Thank you,
Very Unhappy Clearwire Customer