Watch this space.

I saw numerous adds for Clearwire’s new WiMAX service called Clear.  They were launching their Portland service at the time so I decided to go check it out. I could get 6Mbps for $45/month. This looked like a decent alternative to my DSL setup.

I spoke with a Clear sales rep at BestBuy who told me that for that week only they were running a special deal that will waive the one-time sign-up fees without the need to sign a 2-year contract. This sounded pretty good. Usually, service providers will either waive the sign-up fee or the need for a multi-year contract, but not both.

Skeptically, I asked the sales rep to please confirm that I can get a month-to-month deal without the need of paying a sign-up fee. “Yes, definitely! This is a special introductory deal we’re running this week since we’re launching our service here in Portland and we’re trying to ramp up subscriptions”, I was informed. Just to be sure, I asked her a second and a third time to confirm this seemingly too-good-to-be-true deal.

Given these assurances I signed up to give the service a try. The whole process was done online and I was told a confirmation email will be send to me within 24 hours. When I got home that afternoon, the email was waiting in my inbox.

Great was my surprise when I read the fine print in the email stating that I have apparently, contrary to what was promised to me, signed up for a 2-year contract. Just great!

I immediately phoned Clear’s customer service department to get this sorted out. The customer service rep told me that they’ve been having a number of similar calls from other new customers that day and that there was some problem with their system. I was told hat the detail contained in the confirmation email was erroneous and that the situation will be corrected immediately. I was reassured that I do indeed have a month-to-month service contract.

Forward 3 months. Present time.

Comcast has been advertising a number of really good looking deals for cable internet. I decide it might be worth looking into and since I’m on a month-to-month plan with Clear, I can switch if needed.

Before I call Comcast, I decide to first find out from Clear what the procedure is to cancel my service and return the WiMAX modem.

“Err, sir, if you cancel now there will a substantial penalty fee levied since you’re on a 2-year contract!”, I’m told by the Clear rep. WTF!!? Didn’t I sort this all out months ago?

So I’ve been lied to at numerous instances by Clear representatives just in order to get my business. Nice ethics guys!

Long story short. After much time wasted on the phone and escalating the issue up a number of levels in the service department, I finally got them to honor (to some degree) the agreement I was sold. I was told they will remove the 2-year contractual agreement, but I will need to retroactively pay the $40 sign-up fee (which was waived by the original sales rep). Just great. Whatever.

“Oh, sir, you will also need to pay a $20 restocking fee for the modem”. Even better.

So, $60 later I’m finally done dealing with these clowns.

Up until recently I was recommending Clear to friends. I don’t think I’ll be doing that anymore.

Stay away from these unethical scammers at all cost.

UPDATE : It seems like MANY others are dealing with similar issues with Clear / Clearwire. Do I smell a class action lawsuit in the making?

I feel like some form of “guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people” is applicable here.

“Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”, Karl Marx (Das Kapital, 1867)

Looks Marxian enough. Stephen Colbert would probably claim that it has a certain sense of truthiness to it. A quick Google of that exact phrase shows about 2650 hits. Most of these are from blogs, news articles and other commentary pieces about the current global financial (economic) crisis. This definitely has the hallmark characteristics of a contemporary meme.

Snopes had nothing to say about this one. Luckily, Google Books allows you to search the full text of a vast collection of books, including Das Kapital. That quote i nowhere to be found. I can’t even find anything related to it from which the quote might have been paraphrased.

Just another meme.

UPDATE : Yep, according to the Times, it’s a fake.

Sometimes, however, one simply need to get from point A (your house) to point B (somewhere else too far away to walk) and back. This requires that you drive. But driving in conditions like we’ve been experiencing in the Portland metro area for the last 10 days requires that you have some decent traction augmentation technology installed on your car. These usually come in the form of tire chains. That is, unless the friendly folks at Les Schwab informed you that your 2003 Subaru Legacy cannot use regular snow chains ($60) due to the limited clearance in the wheel wells. In stead, you have to use this really nifty and super convenient traction device called a Spikes-Spider. The kicker, as always, is that a pair of these cost abour $450. Ouch!

Anyway, I needed these last winter when we went up to Mt. Hood for a cabin-in-the-snow getaway. Believing that this would be a long-term investment, amortized over many winters to come, I buckled down and bought a pair of these bad-boys. They worked nicely as advertised for the limited amount of snow-and-ice driving we had to do that weekend.

When the BIG snow hit here in Portland a couple of days ago, I was confident that when the need arises I can just pop the spikes-spiders back onto my car (the installation hubs are left on the wheels) and be the master of any sub-par driving surface in a jiffy.

Just such a requirement arose late yesterday afternoon (Christmas eve). I had to make an unexpected last minute excursion out to Costco for some last minute Christmas shopping. Knowing that the spikes-spider was already on the car (I installed them a couple of days earlier), I jumped into the Subaru and set off in the direction of Clackamas (about 4 miles away).

The roads were pretty bad and I was very happy that I had all the traction I needed: the Subaru’s AWD (all wheel drive) and the added traction of the spikes-spiders. Things were very slippery, things were slidey, thing were bumpy, things were jumpy. I finally made it. As I got out of the car in the Costco parking lot, something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. As I looked down at my drivers side front wheel I noticed something especially odd about the current state of the spikes-spider for that wheel. The oddness stemmed from the apparent lack of corporeal existence of said traction device. The spikes-spider was completely absent. Gone. Missing. Fell of the car. Simply. Not. There.

All of a sudden this last minute trip has become very much more pricey that originally intended. Remember, these Spikes-Spiders cost almost half a grand. With a sinking heart I walked around the car to check on the state of the other tire and as I assumed, second missing spikes-spider. My disappointment was only somewhat lessened when I saw that at least half of the second spikes-spider managed to stay attached to the wheel hub. What perseverance!

Anyway, this is where my story ends. I managed to make my way back home with significantly reduced traction. My naked-wheeled Subaru Legacy performed admirably. Great car.

I will be getting in touch with the good folk over at Les Schwab over the next couple of days to find out what the deal is with the very expensive yet exceedingly dodgy quality Spikes-Spiders they recommended and sold to me at a pretty high premium.

So, until further notice; Spikes-Spiders Sucks!

A strange obsession, mine. But better to be addicted to smartphones and gismos than cocaine or sex, I suppose. Well, I don’t know, the result is the same after all, very little sleep, great expense and horrific mess everywhere.