Anyone else having problems with Clear internet? (San Antonio, Anton: get credit, houses)

[hillcountrywinefan]

Originally Posted by markintosh

I think Time-Warner offers both wireless routers for their regular wired service, but also now they are reselling Clearwire's wireless broadband under their name as well.

So if I understand your post correctly, you're saying that Road Runner Mobile is simply Clearwire repackaged with the Roadrunner label?

Time-Warner is really pushing this new Roadrunner Mobile service. I had a Time-Warner telemarketer constantly calling me the other week. When I finally answered the phone the person said they were promoting Road Runner Mobile and asked "How do you access the Internet when you're not at home?" I answered "I don't."

They said "OK, thank you." and hung up.

[Proud_SanAntonian]

Originally Posted by JuanValdez

Our connection speed dropped from ~220KBps to ~28KBps about 3 weeks ago and hasn't budged since. We've been through all the trouble shooting routines and the problem is clearly on the provider's end. I'm reading on their forums that other San Antonio folks have had issue - how about anyone here? We're this >close< to dropping the service and fighting them on the cancellation penalty.

Exactly the same thing happened to us.

Same timeline, too - started about 3 weeks ago, after the last heavy rainfall. So we figured, it's probably a network problem from the storm, no problem. We gave them time, but things just kept crawling. Our box showed 4 out of 5 bars and yet our internet would crawl, especially at night.

Finally, we'd had enough. Speedtest.net clocked us at a low 0.29 MB (I'm not a techie, so my terms/acronyms might be off! ) Problem is, we're paying for 6.0! OK now I understand that 6.0 is a maximum, and that we're not in any way guaranteed to get that speed. But 0.29? Really?

So we called to see what's up. They had the following to say:
1) It's primarily a Netflix problem (yep, that's what they said - nevermind that the people streaming Netflix are simply using the broadband they're paying for), and so
2) THEY have been throttling the speed down for ALL of us (indescriminately), and
3) They're doing "system upgrades" to their infrustructure, and
4) They didn't know when it would be done (i.e. how much longer would we have to go on like this?)

My questions to them (they're lucky my husband talked with them and not me! Lol) are:
1) When exactly were they planning on telling us the above (we received NO communication from them at all, and from the looks of it, neither has anyone else), and
2) Are they going to give us a rebate/discount to cover the disparity between service paid for and abysmal service provided? (AT&T DSL and Timewarner Cable each did this for us whenever they had outages/subpar service)
3) What does that do to the 2-year contract we all got roped into?

Well, my first two questions didn't get answered, but here's what they had to say about my third question:
- Apparently, we MAY be able to get out of our contract at this point (this is coming from Clearwire directly), because they simply can't deliver what we've been paying for.
- Also, since we have Clear at both our apartment AND our office, we could merge the 2 accounts into one, maintain the same (theoretical) 6 MB service, and cut the bill in half.

I polled my friends about Uverse - they really seem to like it, and for those for whom it's not still available (because they moved or whatever), they lament that they can't have it.

My biggest beef with Clear is the lack of upfront communication. Sure, they attempted to kinda make things right, but that's AFTER we called. They could've avoided a PR nightmare by being more proactive/pre-emptive.

[Proud_SanAntonian]

Update:

About merging our 2 Clear accounts:
They're now backpedaling, saying "oh. We're sorry; when we told you that you could merge your 2 Clear accounts, we didn't know your accounts were at a2 different locations", when I KNOW my husband specifically told them the 2 accounts were at different locations.

So apparently we can't merge the accounts. OK, no problem.

As far as getting out of our contract? It'll cost us $40. Related to "the equipment" they said. To which I asked my husband, but they get the equipment back... And he said they called it a "restocking fee".

So, just so you know, you CAN break out of your contract if you're having this problem.

[markintosh]

Originally Posted by hillcountrywinefan

So if I understand your post correctly, you're saying that Road Runner Mobile is simply Clearwire repackaged with the Roadrunner label?

Time-Warner is really pushing this new Roadrunner Mobile service. I had a Time-Warner telemarketer constantly calling me the other week. When I finally answered the phone the person said they were promoting Road Runner Mobile and asked "How do you access the Internet when you're not at home?" I answered "I don't."

They said "OK, thank you." and hung up.

Yep, I'm pretty sure that's the deal. In fact, I think Clear is just reselling Sprint's 4G network to begin with, so it's just getting resold on down the line...

[CTSanders]

So is this why I haven't been able to watch netflix movies between 7-9pm? I have clear also, thought it was a netflix issue.....

[NaturalizedTexan]

Not a huge fan of TW, but they (imho) still manage to beat the pants off the competition. Currently have TW and have only had 1 problem with their service - it was fixed within hours. Same situation when I lived in Houston - when Comcast took over, prices went straight up and service plummetted. And ATT will nickel and dime you to death (plus, heaven help you if you ever need to get anything resolved through their customer service!).

[HeyEng]

Originally Posted by NaturalizedTexan

Not a huge fan of TW, but they (imho) still manage to beat the pants off the competition. Currently have TW and have only had 1 problem with their service - it was fixed within hours. Same situation when I lived in Houston - when Comcast took over, prices went straight up and service plummetted. And ATT will nickel and dime you to death (plus, heaven help you if you ever need to get anything resolved through their customer service!).

Thank goodness we didn't go with Clear. The reception was just awful, so we declined. Instead, have gone with the naked DSL w/ ATT for 19.95 a month. It's not super fast, but unless you are streaming movies, it should be good enough. The price certainly rocks! And for whatever reason, there aren't any taxes, fees, or anything. Just 19.95 a month. I think it's called "DSL Basic"

[Pachuco2]

A friend of mine that worked with Clear told me that they were having trouble with the home service,.. too many customers to handle the network and it was gonna take till November- December to fix the problem,..yet they were of course not telling the new customers that were signing a contract the outages,..I know this cause I was gonna hook-up with Clear and had a chance to hook-up with AT&T, but stayed with TW,..didn't wanna take a step backwards with AT&T,...

[ged_782]

Originally Posted by HeyEng

Thank goodness we didn't go with Clear. The reception was just awful, so we declined. Instead, have gone with the naked DSL w/ ATT for 19.95 a month. It's not super fast, but unless you are streaming movies, it should be good enough. The price certainly rocks! And for whatever reason, there aren't any taxes, fees, or anything. Just 19.95 a month. I think it's called "DSL Basic"

Currently, the $19.95/month promotional "naked" DSL service price goes to $45/month at the end of the promotion. Their lowest cost standalone DSL service (1.5 mbps) is $35/month, after expiration of promotional pricing.

[lovin'it]

TW just hiked our DSL price, so last night we signed up for AT&T's DSL Elite. What do you guys think? Bad move? We watch a lot of Netflix Instant Play and that is my primary concern...that we can keep watching it.

Any thoughts?