Clearwire Sucks - User Submission by David in Lewiston Idaho

This is my experience with the corporate greedmongering of Clearwire.

Last year, in may or June, I signed a one year contract with Clearwire to provide internet service. I was told by the local clearwire rep that as a bonus, I would receive a $50.00 VISA online credit card by signing the contract. This was, in fact, false, as I later found out. The $50.00 VISA card was only for two year contracts, and I made it clear I was only signing a one year contract. This usually wouldn’t be a major concern, other than the fact that I’d borrowed the money to pay the sign-up fee, and in exchange I was going to give the card to whom I’d borrowed the money from. So I was lied to right out of the gate by the “licensed clearwire rep.”

Well, one year comes about and expires, even though I hadn’t even been using their service for the last two months of it, and I was in the process of moving, so the modem was packed away. I come to find out after a time, that they’re still charging me. So I call and request a cancellation, they say sure and we’ll send you your handy-dandy shipping label to your email and you just send us the modem back and we’re done.

Well, after several days of checking my email, no shipping label came. I was very busy around this time, and the existence of the modem in the trunk of my car fell from my mind. Two months or so passed, and I was going over my finances and discovered I was about $100.00 short. I determined Clearwire was still charging me, so I called them up and demanded an explanation. They checked into it, and said that I hadn’t sent their equipment (modem) back. I explained that they hadn’t sent me the shipping label, which would thereby allow me to send their modem back in the first place. Multiple clearwire reps verifiied this over the phone. So, I demanded my money back for the two months they kept charging me, and after multiple phone calls and jumping through multiple flaming corporate hoops, I finally got one nice rep who credited back the *next* month they had charged me. By now, I had disabled my debit card anyway, so Clearwire was not going to see another penny from me, and I explained this to him. He then said he would write a request for my $96+ some odd cents to be reimbursed on the return of their equipment. So, I explained to him that my doubts that I would be reimbursed if they got their modem back, to which he replied it was pretty much the only chance of getting it back. Without really any other option, I retrieved the shipping label that they had *finally* sent me from my email, and sent their modem to them. After which, of course, they refused to refund me.

So, I called Clearwire, and spoke to a lovely individual whose name was, I believe, Joe. Joe, if any of you have spoken with him before, is quite the condescending little fellow who has no customer service skills to speak of, and probably thinks he is the Keystone of Clearwire. After I explained everything to him, he had the audacity to tell me that a refund was “not warranted” and I’d already been graciously credited the $48+ some odd they’d wanted to charge me afterward. So, I say, even though you people stole $96 from me (by all definitions, stole is the correct word), I was not at fault for this, AND I took all the steps i needed to in order to get my money back and they determined my refund was not WARRANTED? After listening to about one full minute of dead silence on his end other than furious, angry typing, he yells into the phone “IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN HELP YOU WITH TODAY SIR?” I told Joe where to stick it and hung up.

Today I am going to call Clearwire and attempt to get a manager or something, and explain if my money is not refunded I will file a complaint with the better business bureau.

Thanks,
David in Lewiston, Idaho.