Clear review: Forced to use

On 25 March, my husband and I were flying from Detroit (DTW) to Washington DC (IAD). The TSA shutdown had caused longer than usual wait times at DTW. We arrived 4 hours prior to our flight to accommodate. We checked our bags at the curb and got our boarding passes. We were heading to the AMEX priority boarding line when a woman in a uniform, who I thought was a TSA representative, directed us from the line to the CLEAR machines. She had two other people checking in at the same time and was barking orders at us at the same time. I had never had a problem with DTW check in before and thought this was due to the shutdown. The agent didn't explain anything, just kept barking instructions to do this, do that...

She asked for our credit card. When I asked her why, she said there would be a $1.00 charge for each of us. Her details on full membership were sketchy. Again, we thought this was due to TSA shutdown. Today we found a $334 pending charge on our credit card. I disputed it right away and put a notice on it. Now I'm waiting to see what happens to the charge. If it is put through, we will dispute it.

I've looked up CLEAR and found that this is a totally voluntary system. We weren't given any option, just told we had to go through the CLEAR check ins. I am not happy with the way this happened and know that quite a few of us were asking the same questions. We also didn't get through the line any quicker and still had to show all of our ID to the TSA agent. What a scam this is! If CLEAR wants to be an asset to check in, they need to be completely transparent with the customers.