Stay Clear of Clearwire!

Will_hendrix

Anyone considering getting Clearwire Broadband, STAY AWAY!

Trottleing, packet shaping, port blocking and to top it all of....
If they dont like the number of Peers Connecting to your computer or the upload rate you use (i.e. torrents) they will ristrict your connection to "Dial-Up" Speeds

At Clearwire they consider anyone using torrents to have 'Server' statas as of the number of connections and traffic. They suggest limiting or blocking uploads aswells as limiting the number of Global Connections to under "10". At that rate anything you try to download will take weeks and it will be noticed that constantly more will be uploaded than downloaded, useless with public torrents, and privite ones are out of the question.

Clearwire has a 7 day trial period, within this time you can change your mind and cancell free of charge, even if you took a year or 2 contract. But it seems apparent with all new customers as if they got "Preimium Use" of there Server.

For the first week you will enjoy a 160k - 240k download rate (from http servers only), However after the trial period you will be luckey if you top 60k in the middle of the night when you would expect lass traffic, 10k/s during the day and little or no use of torrents/ P2P networks

Here's what tops it off, after the trial period is up any decision to cancell will cost you """€180""" ill let you make your own mind up about that!!!

I may as well conclude by saying, all you current Clearwire Customers know what im saying

Stay Clear of Clearwire, Dont pay for poor Quaility, Stay AWAY!!!

Sponge Bob

Have you reported all of this to Comreg and the ODCA and the Consumers Association who should surely be able to replicate what you say within two weeks, if true ??

Clearwire are within their rights on torrents/servers may I add.

Will_hendrix

i know its well within there rights and is outlined in there terms and conditions, this was just a warning (or rather my bad experiances) with clearwire

Sponge Bob

The bit I would ask them to prove or disprove is the http:// bit only . Leave torrents out of it. Trapping people into contracts and then throttling http:// connects would be a naughty thing to do if PROVEN.

One thing for sure, Clearwire _can_ shape traffic and _could_ technically do what you describe but I think that they would have been caught by now if that was their standard operating procedure for trial customers.

Did you use it in one location only , did you test it around Dublin in varying signal areas ???????

Will_hendrix

yes, i know where your coming from,

yes they do have the rights
yes thay can restrict, block, packet shape, etc if they please

other than similar experiances by a few m8s i have nothing solid
nor do i wish this tread to be taken to seriously,

i would like to see some similar posts of recuring problems with there service add to this tread.

n yes i suppose if they were doing anything with there service ilegate it would have been well noticed by now

again, not making a serious point, just angry conjecture brought by experiance

i have noticed other treads mentioning poor ftp performance aswell
(hence the only http comment, appologies for not been more clear)

Sponge Bob

the http:// comment is the only interesting and valuable point you made.

please ask the bodies above, who are experts on what are called "Unfair Contracts" to investigate.

Thats the only way you can get your €180 back ...if you can get someone like that to replicate what you just said about http://

Cryos

Will_hendrix wrote:

Anyone considering getting Clearwire Broadband, STAY AWAY!

Trottleing, packet shaping, port blocking and to top it all of....
If they dont like the number of Peers Connecting to your computer or the upload rate you use (i.e. torrents) they will ristrict your connection to "Dial-Up" Speeds

At Clearwire they consider anyone using torrents to have 'Server' statas as of the number of connections and traffic. They suggest limiting or blocking uploads aswells as limiting the number of Global Connections to under "10". At that rate anything you try to download will take weeks and it will be noticed that constantly more will be uploaded than downloaded, useless with public torrents, and privite ones are out of the question.

Clearwire has a 7 day trial period, within this time you can change your mind and cancell free of charge, even if you took a year or 2 contract. But it seems apparent with all new customers as if they got "Preimium Use" of there Server.

For the first week you will enjoy a 160k - 240k download rate (from http servers only), However after the trial period you will be luckey if you top 60k in the middle of the night when you would expect lass traffic, 10k/s during the day and little or no use of torrents/ P2P networks

Here's what tops it off, after the trial period is up any decision to cancell will cost you """€180""" ill let you make your own mind up about that!!!

I may as well conclude by saying, all you current Clearwire Customers know what im saying

Stay Clear of Clearwire, Dont pay for poor Quaility, Stay AWAY!!!

Im on clearwire, and the connection stays at 50k/sec all the time i download 15gb last month (10 over the limit) and its stayed the same...... The service did go down on the weekend and was slow for a few days afterwards but its back up perfect at the moment.

vibe666

sounds more like a contention issue than a shaping one. although i did see a few warnings here when clearwire were just starting up that they were blocking voip and p2p traffic in the US.

their adverts do say that they give you broadband the american way.

ronanp

On a side-note, I never signed any 12 month contract nor did I ever at any stage make any verbal commitment to any length of time with clearwire. I'm cancelling the direct debit with the bank. If they want 180 euro off me at that point, they can suck my ****ing balls.

bonzoboy

I registered purely on the basis of these posts. Clearwire were possibly the worst company I have ever dealt with.

I signed up in september of last year. i was assured my area had a decent connection speed so i went ahead. i was getting abyssmal signal for most of the time. it was flyin up and down like a yo yo. often i could not connect at all. eventually in november i phoned to cancel my subscription and they tried to pull the 180euro nonsense on me. i will not pay for a service that doesnt work nor will i pay to get rid of the thing.

anyway someone came out and retrieved the modem and assured me i had been cancelled. in may i noticed to my dismay the muther******s had been billing me consistently. naturally i phoned to figure it out. 5 times i called. each time someone will get back to you, and they never did. eventually i was guaranteed a refund. unfortunately this wa around the time i was leaving for the summer. i thought nice i'll get some extra cash while away.

While abroad at the end of june, my irish bank account mysteriously 'lost' money and in july my credit card payment bounced. furious my mother rang rang my bank for me as i was away, to discover some company named Clearwire had been debiting my ac for months.

eventually i got back and 5 days upon arrival i was called by clearwire customer accounts dept. for personal info updates which was completely bizarre:mad: . from here we finally got on to the accounts manager and after lengthy calls got a full refund but it was not a pleasant experience particularily the horrendous communication skills showed by the company.

sisyphus

Clearwire were possibly the worst company I have ever dealt with.

I second that Bonzoboy. Biggest shower of thieving cowboys I have ever dealt with. I joined them also back in September 2005, and was stuck with them for a year as I simply couldn't geta decent alternative. I had nothing but problems with them. From port shaping, to outages, to slow speeds, to massive packet loss and latency. You name it, I encountered it with Clearwire. And as for their tech support or customer services side, forget about it! If you spend any more than 2 mins trying to get through to them, you're automatically bounced to a U.K. call centre, where you're told a bunch of nonsense about someone from the Dublin office calling you back. Guess what! They NEVER call back!!

Well, I finally moved to a decent place, and have since gotten an IBB Breeze 3 Mbps package installed, and now it's happy days. Connection works like a charm. No caps, excellent upload and download speeds (3 mbps symmetrical might I add!), and most importantly, it's real broadband. i.e. no shaping, no throttling, and no randon jumps in service quality. It's so nice to have a decent connection after my nightmare of a year with ClearWire. I was beginning to lose faith in broadband in Ireland!

Anyways, I have to agree with the above. STAY AWAY FROM CLEARWIRE. They're the most useless bunch of cowboys this country has ever seen.................

DamoVOTF

I too joined in September 2005, and I use it only for gaming and have watched my service degrade consistently for the last year, the nights of 700ms pings and disconnects are the worst and so soul destroying.

Sometimes I have noticed for definite:
1) At 6.30 every evening quality of service to my WoW server falls away from 300ms to 400ms. (This may be due to people logging on, to Clearwire and or WoW, but the 6.30 exactly time frame is freaky). To me it looks like all user are port shaped at this time.

2) My upload rate to a WoW server, is unbelievably bad at between 0.080-0.020 KBPS, like come on how bad is that? I can dial up using my modem and get a better connection.

3) I logged a query with customer services, 4 weeks ago concerning specific ports for playing WoW and how I wanted them either shaped properly or given decent emphasis (playing games does not require massive bandwidth). I ring every week and get told the same story, i.e. Network services are looking into this and I will get back to you by the end of the day. Except I know what Network services are saying to themselves: "Well this is because our network is pure dog sh1t. And we shape every port into oblivion anyway. Oh and dont bother asking for any special port shaping, as we tell you we do it for you, and then make it worse."

Combined with all of this I have good signal and can just see the lag spikes when I trace route.

The whole Clearwire thing is ****ty. I cannot wait to move out, and get a place where I can get normal broadband.

Oh and dont even mention to me the fact I pay €50 a month for this ****.

generalmiaow

Is it true that they automatically renew your contract after twelve months? Because if so, I better mail them this modem tomorrow.

DamoVOTF

I believe so, and they need 2 months notice.

But when I signed up I told the guy, that I get wireless broadband for surfing through my college, and so only need Clearwire for playing games. So if they dont deliver I will be sending my modem back and they can do what ever they like. I wont be paying any leaving fees.

sisyphus

Oh and dont even mention to me the fact I pay €50 a month for this ****.

I know dude. I have been paying €50 p.m. also for the last year. No longer though.

By the way, have you ever read the specs on the actual ClearWire box? It states on it:

"Complete broadband service in a box.
Connect at up to 1.5 Mbps - over 25 times faster than dial-up.
Enjoy always-on, always-secure Internet access
Set it up yourself in just minutes - no technician needed"

Anyone else notice something odd/illegal here??

I have been paying €50 p.m. for the last year for a 2 Mbps service. Yet on their official packaging, they say the modem is only capable of speeds UP TO 1.5 Mbps (i.e. You may only get 1.5 Mbps at the best of times, and never actually get 2 Mbps!).
Is it just me, or is it actually illegal to sell a package as 2 Mbps if the technology cannot actually support such speeds??

Sponge Bob

Tis if they themselves know it maxes out at 2mbits .

Remember that the equipment used by clearwire is supplied by a company ALSO owned by the very same person. This equipment company only has one customer for its equipment which is clearwire.

Tiesto

Yah Queeerwire really are a disgrace.. I had them last year for a week and returned it to them within the week...Had numerous phone calls with them... yeah we are looking into that and it should be fixed by whatever day.. But if i waited that long i would have been tied into the contract... Im only after realising that was an attempt by them to reel me into a contract.
So I made sure i got my 30 euro back.. Had to ring them 4 times.. The same ****.. Oh sorry i thought it was processed already... or ill bring it down to account straight away sir.. The usual bull****. So i went to comreg about it and i got my 30 euro back off the fuppers within a week...
Suck my balls clearwire.

Dellas

They were in my local shopping center today !!! The rep could hardly speak English and he spent most of his time chatting to his mates on his mobile !!! I went to ask him for a coverage map and was standing there for well over 5 mins and he didnt even bother to ask me if I was ok , just carried on talking on his mobile!!! Not great service in my opinion.

There stupid ads annoy me anyway !! Its the American way so we all have to sign up for it because its superior ( not ) ....

Moe Lester

i have this crap service aswell

it was good for awhile but yes p2p programs and torrents do not work at all.

not only that it went down for a day and they say that i would get 5 euro of the bill for that.

it went down for like a week and nothin they just sent me an email sayin that they where updating the service for better reception.

guess what where i use to have the ****ing modem it doesnt work there anymore it doesnt get s signal there. it is absolutly a ****in disgrace.

i sent a few emails complaning about the problem and all they said back to me was to turn the modem off for 15 seconds and back on.

i just froze when i read that. see i said in the email that i have tried turning it off for a couple of mintues and back on.

i replied saying that i already tried that and that was 1 month and two weeks ago and have had not reply since.

i know that if you go over the limit they put your line down to dial up speeds but i know for a fact that i did not hit the limit this month cause it was down for the first week aswell and not only that i had a program to count everything i was downloading and it was at 11 gb when they struck me with the dial up speed

i sent them an email to cancel it and i wonder if they are even going to try and charge me for canceling it

as ronanp said 'If they want 180 euro off me at that point, they can suck my ****ing balls.'

IF ANYONE IS EVEN THINKING OF GETTING CLEARWIRE ****BEWARE****
THAT YOU WILL BE PISSING ON BY THESE PEOPLE.

Dellas

I picked up a leaflet tonight from the empty stand and looking at their prices they are very expensive for what they offer!!! Does anyone else think the same???

I think youd be better of with Eircom or BT in that case...

Floodzie

Clearwire are the biggest load of scumsucking motherf******!!!

I have rang them over >> 40 << times, waiting in vain for a callback. Guess what? They have never, ever called me back.

I usually get through to some overflow service in England (who apparantly don't write any details down, seems like they just fly one of their number to Dublin every now and again to tell Clearw*nker all the problems off the top of their head)

I also have two modems - they sent out another one (because of course it HAD to be a problem with the modem, and not with their USELESS wireless network - second modem solved ZERO, by the way) but forgot to collect the original one. Dipsticks.

Customer service were completely useless so I managed to get talking to the CS manager, who was also no help and wouldn't give me HIS boss's name. So I contacted the office of consumer affairs and they told me to go to the Companies Office to find out who the hell is running this shoddy operation, and to contact them directly.

In short, Clearwire are the worst company I have EVER dealt with in ANY capacity.

They should have their licence to trade (is there such a thing?) revoked and their owners and workers should be paraded through the city with 'LIAR' signs around their necks, going from customer to customer and imploring our forgiveness.

Phew, had to get that off my chest. Thanks for listening.

DamoVOTF

Once again tonights performance is shocking, disconnected 8 times from the game server.

Oh and my ISP speed test is actually funny how bad it is.

Ludo

Had Clearwire for 6 months from Nov 2005. They are USELESS. They were the only BB provider (VERY generous description there) that I could get. Rang their useless customer support line too many times to remember. After 6 months, my phone line started passing the online BB tests so I got in a proper service. I just wrote Clear****e a letter explaining my unhappiness with them and sent it back with the modem. They didnt even try for the cancellation fee as I basically threatened them with legal action in the letter if they tried anything.

STAY CLEAR OF THEM (no pun intended).

ZygOte

I hope someone in "management" from clearwire is reading this thread. all i can do is agree with everyone here that clearwire are far and away the worst ISP this country has ever had the misfortune to encounter. personally i do not use them but as a computer consultant ive had to endure the horror of their systems on behalf of family and friends alike who unwittingly thought they were getting a good deal.

Irish broadband have in my book lost the title of irelands worst ISP and handed it straight over to clearwire.

All hail the new scumbags of broadband, may you rot in contention hell.

seriously they should have their license revoked. they are pathetic. i will activly be discouraging people to go anywhere near them and advise anyone reading these posts to do the same. Warn everyone you know not to go near them. hit them where it hurts.

geecee

Clearwire have once again invoiced me for another month of their sh1t service... despite THEM cancelling my contract back in July!

I have spoken to what seems like 100 different people in their office... but despite guarantees from each and everyone of them that they are personally looking after it... i keep being charged month after month!

At this stage I'm at the end of my tether with clearwire and fed up of re-explaining this sittuation time-after-time.

I'm thinking the best next step of action is to complain to my Credit Card fraud department - as Clearwire are not just incompetent - They are Con men!

Like loads of others have posted ...

Stay Clear of Clearwire!

jimmycrackcorm

Looks like Clearwire is the new IBB...

RangeR

ZygOte wrote:

I hope someone in "management" from clearwire is reading this thread.

Clearwire do monitor Boards but are under orders not to reply. They are just not allowed to. Clearwire management don't really care what we think. We are power users. They don't want us.

I'll give you an example. My mother has ripwave. Yes I know the bad press it has received and I actually suggested it to her. She loves it. It gives hetr better than dialup speed and lets her surf and check email. That's all she uses it for. She has no complaints.

I on the otherhand, wouldn't touch ripwave. There is a whole different ,market out there other than us power users. I reckon that is the market that Clearwire are after. That and the remote installs that can't get DSL or Cable hence the over inflated prices.

Sponge Bob

Vodafone 3G will murder them I fear. At least Voda has a decent support department , accurate billing, real human beings in their Customer Care department to answer the phone (and them based in Ireland too) and much much better coverage if the mobility aspect is in any way important to you.

Would you let your mother near Clearwire or would you feel happier with Voda. Ripwave of course is a dialup/line rental substitute not BB at all and works OK as such.

RangeR

Sponge Bob wrote:

Would you let your mother near Clearwire or would you feel happier with Voda. Ripwave of course is a dialup/line rental substitute not BB at all and works OK as such.

Clearwire and Voda are out of the question for Me Ma as she wants no contract. But hypotetically [spelling] speaking, I don't know. I always told myself I'd never reccommend IBB to anyone But it suits her usage.

Tiesto

geecee wrote:

Clearwire have once again invoiced me for another month of their sh1t service... despite THEM cancelling my contract back in July!

I have spoken to what seems like 100 different people in their office... but despite guarantees from each and everyone of them that they are personally looking after it... i keep being charged month after month!

At this stage I'm at the end of my tether with clearwire and fed up of re-explaining this sittuation time-after-time.

I'm thinking the best next step of action is to complain to my Credit Card fraud department - as Clearwire are not just incompetent - They are Con men!

Like loads of others have posted ...

Stay Clear of Clearwire!

I know how you feel... stop wasting ur time with these wasters and just contact Comreg.. They had it resolved for me within 2 weeks... money in my account... I just wonder about the customer service... how they can so blatently lie... how they can do a job like that... are they so desperate???

Floodzie

Tiesto wrote:

I just wonder about the customer service... how they can so blatently lie... how they can do a job like that... are they so desperate???

Yeah, that's what really bugs me, more than the bad connection - the blatant lying.

The person on the other end of the phone is talking bull, you know they're talking bull, and they know you know, that they know they're talking bull (hope that made sense!)

They are bare-faced liars. What must it be like to be them? God only knows. To look in the mirror every day and know that your job involves p*ssing people off to the point where they are at least posting their gripes on boards like these, or at most are threatening legal action. Don't the individuals working for CW have any sense of shame?? I mean, how heartless must they be to get a call from someone looking for broadband, or help with their broadband, and knowing all the time that they are talking to them, that they have little chance of ever becoming a satisfied customer?

I have no respect for Clearwire or anyone who works for them. If I met someone like that socially I'd stop talking to them and move away. Seriously. They're lying scum scum scum.

I wouldn't p*ss on one of them if they were on fire.

I'm in the process of cancelling my subscription (it's been a LONG and hellish 12 months), and I just don't know if I have the energy to go through the Clearwire Canellation Nightmare that so many people have talked about.

I suppose the best thing is not just to send CW a letter of cancellation (as if they'll even read the thing, I mean, seriously!) but also:

Go to your bank and make sure that they know that CW have no longer got ANY authority to keep debiting your card (get it in writing)

Threaten legal action to CW if they try and debit your account.

Forward all correspondence to the Office of Consumer Affairs and Comreg.

At least then, when they try something, you'll be ready.

Good luck, fellow CW quitters!!!