My CLEAR membership nightmare – Is it worth it?

For the past two months, I’ve been giving the CLEAR program a try.  They offer three free months, and hook you with the standard auto-renewal mechanism. I wanted to see how the service worked, and I wanted to see what their retention mechanism is like.  After all, there are relatively decent discounts (all the way to FREE) for various levels of Delta Medallionship.  Surely, they would have something in place to sweeten the pot a little, if you threatened to cancel after taking them up on their free offer, right?  If retention strategies are in place for Comcast, Verizon and nearly all credit card companies, maybe CLEAR has their head in the game as well.

Well, when my free months had lapsed, the best they could muster was a retention rate of $99 a year after I selected to cancel my membership.  Sure, that’s lower than their MSRP of $179, but CLEAR has discounted membership rates for Delta SkyMiles members. Diamond Medallion members get complimentary membership, with a discounted rate of $79 for Platinum, Gold, and Silver Medallion members. Even someone who just signed up for a SkyMiles account gets a discounted annual rate of $99.  Literally, all you have to do is merely possess a SkyMiles account (and know the link), and you get a better rate than their rack rate.  However, they didn’t recognize that I was a Delta Platinum Medallion, despite their obvious affiliation with the airline.

I guess I was expecting something a little more than an email telling me that my credit card was going to be charged $179 now that my free months were almost up.  But given my experiences with their service, I can’t imagine why I was expecting even that much…

Getting Started with CLEAR

Given the timing of my renewal notification, the timer started on my “Free Months” the day I filled out the online application, rather than the day I went into the airport and successfully provided my biometrics.  Do yourself a favor, don’t bother doing it online… it doesn’t save you the slightest bit of hassle, and starts your timer too early.  Then again, it may be the only way to get the free months, but don’t do it any earlier than you absolutely need to — like the same day you intend to fly.   I noted the day I signed up online, and put in a reminder on my phone to cancel my membership in three months.  However, when I got to the airport to start my official membership, their kiosk could not properly scan my new REAL ID license.  The girl working the kiosk tried about ten times, and then gave up as the device couldn’t perfectly OCR my name to match the name on my application; it always mangled somewhere between one and most of the letters of my name.  She told me the only way I could finish registration was to bring in my passport.  Well, thank goodness I have a passport, otherwise I guess I’d just be out of luck completely.

They collected biometrics first, though.  So, I went through full right hand, left hand, both thumbs at the same time, and retinal scan, learning the sensitivity of the machinery, and having to redo each one a few times, only to watch the buffoonery hit maximum throttle when it came time to scan my license.  Since I didn’t have any foreign travel planned, I didn’t have my passport on me – it was in my fireproof safe back at the house – which I wasn’t going to see for a few weeks… the timer, all this time, is still going.  I flew through a couple of airports which I noticed didn’t care bupkis about CLEAR, and managed to sail through those TSA Precheck lines with little bother or issue — generally waiting 5-10 minutes, tops, before hitting the TSA screening point.

When I finally made it to another CLEAR airport, I had been carrying my passport around for a little bit, and started to do the whole registration thing one more time.  This time, however, we had to repeat the process at three kiosks that each simply refused to work after scanning all of my biometrics.  The machines sat there, frozen, not moving to the step for scanning my passport.  The “agent” walked me to another bank of machines about ten minutes away, and finally we were able to get past the biometrics, and it only took four scans of my passport to fully and accurately recognize my name.

Hooray!  After all of this hassle, I can finally experience the bliss that is the expedited CLEAR process!  Or so I thought…

Then, the folks at CLEAR, have the gumption to immediately send me an email, on the day after all of this, asking me to rate my experience with their service.  I related exactly the same message, and it’s been months, and I haven’t heard from them.  They asked “would you refer others?” I was fairly explicit in that I would not, and that the proportion of my time dealing with their idiocy had far exceeded the amount of time experiencing the value of their service.

No Clear Advantage

On my weekly commute, only one-half of my boarding is at a CLEAR location.  CLEAR just isn’t everywhere.  For example Boston, Mass. (BOS) — no CLEAR kiosks = no value.  On other trips, for example, to Denver, Colorado (DEN), I COULD have gone through CLEAR, but my wife would have had to go through the TSA PreCheck alone.  So, it’s only good for a couple when you fork out the dough for both.  I wonder if we’d both get my Medallion discount… probably not… it doesn’t really matter.  By the time I started using the service, I’ve already used up a few weeks of my allotted free time.  As a result, I don’t get the full chance to the experience the full value of the program – I don’t think they care.

Once I was finally set up and when in a situation where I can use the program, I started noticing how long the TSA PreCheck lines were in comparison to the CLEAR lines.  Maybe something has changed recently with TSA PreCheck, but those lines have started shrinking.  It appears that, for a while, the TSA was giving away PreCheck to folks in hopes that the passenger would find the program appealing and then make the leap to paying for the service.  Perhaps that has slowed or stopped now, because each of the times I headed to the CLEAR line for the past few weeks, the PreCheck lines have been short — like “less than ten people in line” short.  In fact, on one occasion, I paced myself with another passenger who entered the TSA PreCheck maze, as I walked past that entry point to the CLEAR maze.  With all of the twisting and turning she had to do in the cordoned off PreCheck maze, and my having to wait for one of the CLEAR kiosk AND an attendant to be available, she actually made it to the cheese before I did.  Isn’t that something? I was using a premium service that is allegedly worth ten times more ($85 for 5 years [$17/year] vs $179 a year), and she gets to the luggage screening actually before me.  The answer was becoming clear – their value proposition just isn’t holding water.

But What about SkyClub?

Is that the only value of CLEAR?  To get through security faster?  For most, I’m sure it is, but I saw another avenue to test their product – the Delta SkyClub.  To enter the SkyClub, you need to provide proof of your authorization to enter.  My American Express Business Platinum card justifies part of its expense by providing access to various lounges, the Delta SkyClub, for example, when you are flying on that airline that day.  So, my authorization requires two steps.  I have to show my American Express Business Platinum card and I need to prove I’m on a Delta flight.  This is where CLEAR comes in.  Usually, I have to scan a boarding pass (on my phone), but with CLEAR, all I need to do is place my index and middle finger on the bio-scanner.  But then, this is where CLEAR fails… again…

First, the recognition process is somewhat slow, especially compared to the SkyClub’s ability to scan the QR code of the boarding pass.  The bar code scans nearly instantly with an affirmative beep of success.  With CLEAR, I have to hold my fingers on the reader for 5 seconds to hear an unintuitive tone that occasionally means that I have to try again since I placed my fingers too heavily or too lightly or had recently applied lotion or whatever variety of malady affected the technology that day.

Second, CLEAR only works when you have an outbound flight at that airport! I admit it, I’m frugal to nearly a fault… even without much hair, I take the shampoo that the hotel allocates to me (and will throw away after I’m gone) and use it as a three months supply for my gym bag.  So, when you tell me that I can visit the SkyClub on each side of my flight… you can bet your sweet bippy I’m going to do just that… getting a free drink, cookie, tea bag, and a few packets of Truvia each time.  Consistently, CLEAR just does not recognize my flight information from my biometrics when entering the SkyClub at my destination airport.  This instantly reduces the alleged value of this service by half.  And surprises of surprises, CLEAR even sent me another survey after noting my use of their service at the SkyClub.  Of course, I was honest with them about it, as usual.  And, as usual, there has been no response to my telling them, yet again, I find their value proposition questionable and that I will not recommend their product to others.

Summary

It seems that CLEAR is meant to be a high-cost for high-speed bypass lane to reward the highest of Delta elites.  They’re still knocking the kinks out of the process, and asking for feedback.  Unfortunately, their service failures don’t have a recovery process yet – and that’s giving them the benefit of a doubt.  Otherwise, their perspective is that they’re just uninterested.  It’s been weeks since I’ve left my first, somewhat scathing message to them about their service, and I haven’t heard a peep.

Overall, the price for layfolk however, in my opinion, is just not worth it.  By using your Delta frequent flier account to get a better rate, and depending on your flying habits, you might find that you’re getting something worthwhile out of the service.  But, for my hard-earned dollar, I’m going to spend it on anything else, thank you very much.