CLEAR clearly unclear, again

A follow-up story to: http://clackablog.blogspot.com/2010/03/clear-internet-service-failure.html, in which many and various blunders at CLEAR leave us without Internet service for > 4 days.

Come home tonight after a wonderful movie, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, and went to Google Mail; instead of my friendly pile of 9,947 messages, every PC in the house is stuck at Clear's welcome screen, shoehorned in by their proxy servers. Every web page anywhere, on every browser, on every machine, is replaced with the picture you see below. Can't get anything else.

Now, it's a pretty page, but we don't pay for a 3 Mb/sec high-speed internet connection just so that one web page can be served up really, really fast. And, their instructions to clear it on said web page, well, can you guess how effective they are?

So, luckily, Clear-as-Mud Internet hasn't quit taking calls, yet, so off we go to the phone. Agrapinal assures me he has the solution, and has me do exactly what Mark the L2 Supervisor told me to do two days ago. Mark, too, assured me his fix would be a permanent solution, but since the problem recurred in 48 hours, well, not that permanent, eh?

The irony is lost on Agrapinal, who then suggests if the problem he just permanently solved forever recurs after they close, we can use their web chat help line (which won't work because of this problem). He also suggested, since this problem prevents access, that I could get another broadband Internet connection so I could report the problem through the web. Gee, Clear suggests having a backup broadband Internet connection for when Clear fails.

Clear-as-Mud, indeed.