Review by Spyder550 
Posted: 1.8 years ago
member for 1.8 years, 2 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
 Seattle,King,WA
 $34 per month (12 month contract)
 "Quick and Easy Setup"
 "Seems like they have more lawyers than Engineers"
 "If they become customer centric, they might be a good service"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Pre-Sales Information:
They have the price points clearly listed and were clear about contract commitments. However, they get 3 because finding the 7day money back guarantee was hard, and despite a very nice conversation, they would not furnish me with a list of blocked services nor admit as others have found they are not actually an unlimited Internet Service. The sales literature doesn't claim this, but they are taking advantage of implying they are because most ISPs are unlimited services. And there seem to be other hidden or implied changes at their whim.
Install Co-coordination:
No complaints here. I signed up at Best Buy, and when I got home the service just worked with my laptop.
Connection Reliability:
As far as I can tell, the connection was there and worked. However, due to an apparently incompatibility with the Netgear FVS114 running version V1.1_01 I didn't exercise is well as I might. See my Tech support complaint below.
Tech Support:
They get a 1 not only because a tech refused to help and hung up on me when I requested to speak with someone else, but when I did speak to a floor supervisor my issue was suppose to get escalated to "L2" support. I was suppose to get a call back in 24-48 hours and it has been 48+ hours with no call back.
Now, a little more detail. My FVS114 had be working without issue with my CISCO 675 for months. And at work they work well too. However when I connected it to the Clearwire modem, with a few minutes the firewall froze. That is, even on the LAN side of the mode, I could not ping nor connect to the administrative interface. I could repeat this on demand. When connecting my laptop directly, I had no problems establishing a connection. I made sure of this before I called tech-support.
Now, I call tech support and as soon as I said the firewall/router was crashing, he said he had to refer me to Netgear. I told him that the Clearwire modem was causing this. He then asked if I even understood how wireless encryption worked as I didn't need the firewall. At that point, I asked him if he knew what IEEE and RFC specs were and that I wanted to speak with someone more knowledgeable. Well, alas, I didn't record it for youtube.com. He hung up on me telling me he didn't have to take my abuse.
I then called back and immediately asked to speak with a supervisor. I got a very helpful person who listened and agree the first tech didn't act appropriately. She asked if he had informed me of local outage issues, and he had not. I then explained that my laptop worked without issue, but the router/firewall was crashing when I hooked it up. She also seemed surprised that networks were supported but I referred her to the »www.clearwire.com/support/networ···ethernet. Now she said, to date, she had been told that such networks were not supported due to bandwidth constraints. I pointed out that I am not trying to play games, but that I had to have VPNs working between my home office and work. Anyway, she said this was above the support they could provide and that my issue *did* need to be escalated. So, my hat is off to this person for her direct and honest desire to help me resolve this issue. However, tech support gets a 1 because of the person who hung up on me and the fact the L2 folks have not gotten back to me.
Services:
It seems like they are an ISP that wants to be a VoIP provider rather than a Communications provider of wireless Internet and VoIP. Personally, I don't want VoIP but I find it troublesome they block services and use their contracts to fudge what they are.
Value for Money:
For me, no. I need a full fledged, unencumbered ISP/Internet connection. a 768/256 connection is plenty of bandwidth for me. But the restrictions and potential restrictions since you have to agree to any contract change Clearwire wants to make, I don't need an ISP that acts like the arrogance of the Mobile Phone Industry.
BOTTOM LINE:
I was considering them as a backup ISP but because of the tech-support issue, I am not like to stay with them. I may try them again when the WI-MAX rollout is done.
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