My experience – User Submission by Bill B.
November 13th, 2009 | by Admin |I GOT OUT OF MY CONTRACT WITHOUT PAYING AN ETF!!
After recently moving to Atlanta, I signed up with Clearwire (as I use Directv and I do not have a landline, so cable and dsl were out). After three weeks of very slow connection speeds, I decided I would cancel Clear service and pay extra for cable internet. I figured I would have no trouble as I only had their service for three weeks.
After calling to cancel service, they said I needed to talk with technical support before cancelling. I was on the phone with this woman for 45 minutes as she had me trying the modem in 7 rooms in my house. She was tricky because she asked me what rooms I had in my house before she started sending me around my house. Each time she had me test the speed at speedtest.net. The best result I had was 1.14 mbps download, which she asked me if I thought this was acceptable (no way). After my cell phone battery died in the last room, I tried calling back after plugging it in only to find that it was after their call hours.
The next morning while at work, I called again to try to finish up, but because we had not tested the last room, they would not allow me to cancel (they put notes in the system when my phone died).
When I got home, I called again, and after concluding that I could not get decent service they said that they needed to send out a technician to verify the connection speeds. I flipped out and asked why I had to spend 45 minutes running around my house if they were just going to send someone anyhow. Well, the technical services person transferred me to an account rep who tried to schedule a technical service visit, but I told them that I was only available Sunday evenings from 12:00-2:00 AM. The woman insisted that I or someone else could be available at another time but I stuck to that time slot. She said she could cancel the account but I would still have ETF because a technician could not verify the poor connection. I (lying, but knew they weren’t going to send a tech 2:00am) told her that they were welcome to send a tech during my available hours. After telling me that if a tech could not verify the speed, I would incur an ETF. I asked to speak to her supervisor and she transferred me. After going through the same rundown of conversations with the supervisor, she insisted that because I was not available for a tech, I would have to pay ETF. I (in a mockingly kind voice) told her that I was available for a tech and it wasn’t my fault that they weren’t available when I was. She put me on hold to “review the case”. When she came back on the line, she informed me that I could cancel without paying the ETF because of my experience and my “schedule availability”.
In sum, after phone calls of 17.43, 55.26, 19.12, and 67.03 and reiterating that it wasn’t my fault that they weren’t available when I was, I got out of my contract without paying their ridiculous ETF. Hopefully this is a loophole in their contract that can work for other poor souls stuck with their terrible service!
One Response to “My experience – User Submission by Bill B.”
By Anonymous on Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
Wow, thank you so much you have given me the loophole I’ve needed. I purchased Clear here in Atlanta and thought it would be great, but it’s been awful i’ve gone through multiple tests and they’ve had me log directly into the modem to open ports on the modem itself (it’s basically a router), sent me the Clear plugs to move the connection around my house, but nothing makes my connection any better. They’ve repeatedly told me I would have to pay the ETF fee, but I work all the time and cannot be there for a tech to come out. Thanks for this, you are awesome!