Who is running clear’s customer service? – User Submission by Ryan B.

Being a manager of a store and a full-time student, I thought that doing my college work online during breaks would allow me to ultilize more time of my day. Clear seemed like the perfect solution. Though already a Comcast customer, I thought I’d purchase the “On-The-Go” modem and stay on a month-by-month plan to make sure that there were no cancellation charges or random tags they’d stick onto the account.

Only a few months later, as I suspected, the store I worked at was shut down and I was laid off. With my income reduced severly, I had to cancel Clear. I was already planning on cancelling clear regardless, seeing as I didn’t get reception where I needed it, and the connection speed barely qualified as “3G” (or “4G”, for that matter).

I called to cancel my service, and the representative that helped me asked me my reason to cancel. For the sake of arguement, I chose to tell him that I didn’t get reception at the address I found myself at most. He told me that because I had chose a month-by-month plan, I could choose to put the account in a hibernation state, and when they opened up service where I requested, they would notify me and unfreeze my account. If they didn’t open up service there, the account would automatically close at the end of the hibernation period. Seeing as there was no penalty to freezing the account, I told him he could do it. (This also seemed like a decent catch because I could step over an activation fee if I chose to reuse it.)

Four months went by and I hadn’t recieved any notifications from Clear as far as opening up reception. Until one day, while reviewing my checking account, I noticed three months of being charged for Clear. I called up customer service, and the lady who helped me reviewed the account and saw what the previous rep had told me. She justified the situation by reimbursing me for the months I wasn’t supposed to be charged and told me she’d put it back into a hibernation state for another 4 months.

Within those 4 months, I found myself employeed (also as a Clearwire provider – the irony), and decided that I’d just cancel my account. Especially seeing as I could set myself an employee Clear account and pay only fractions of what I’d normally pay if I really wanted to continue to use the service. I called them up before the end of my hibernation period and told the representative who I talked to just to cancel my account.

Within a couple days of canceling my account, I noticed a 45 dollar charge on my checking account. Where’s the justification in that?

I called up customer service not two, but three times, and all three representatives told me that I shouldn’t have been charged and should have been refunded. I had a verbal commitment from each one that the money would be credited to my account. Each time, I waited the 3 to 5 business days just to see that nothing was added to my account.

I ended up talking to a different service department concerning this charge, where the lady’s reasoning behind the charge was simply: “It is a valid charge”. When I asked how it was valid, she responded: “It was because of the date of when your bill cycle was.” There shouldn’t have been a charge from turning an inactive account into a canceled account, seeing as I was still not using the service. So that made absolutely no sense.

I called back and asked to be directed to a supervisor, and her supervisor’s reasoning was “Because you decided to cancel it before the end of the hibernation period, we prorate you until the end of your hibernation period.” First off, if there was such a charge, I think that a representative could have notified me. If this was the case, and I was incorrectly told the conditions of cancelling the account, I requested of being put back into a hibernation state so I could wait until the end of the period to cancel. (To avoid this “valid” charge.) She refused, and I eventually hung up with her.

This would make a total of five times calling, each one saying that I would be refunded, and two others having two different reasons to why I was charged.

As I mentioned earlier, I started working at a electronic store where we do offer Clear. I then got employee numbers to personal corporate phone numbers, and personally met the district Clear retailer for our area.

Guns blazing, (which is hard for me to do, seeing as I’ve worked customer service the majority of my jobs,) I went to the supervisor of the supervisor of the call center. Her intital reasoning to the charge was “You had a balance on the account.” – Impossible. Clear is a prepaid service. I then recited all the other reasons to why I should have been charged back to her, and how each one wasn’t a valid charge. Eventually, her bottom line to the charge was “Because we felt it was fair.”

You know that it’s a balony charge when they say “You were charged because we felt like it.” I got the supervisor’s name, and told her I was a retailer for Clearwire and she was going to be reported to the district manager if she didn’t clear this up.

It was only then, six representatives, hours of waiting and talking time, numerous lies and broken promises, and threatening to contact a legitmate corporate employee that I was able to refund an unfair charge.

I couldn’t care if Clearwire was the only ISP on earth. I would never go back.

- Ryan