Warning: Rant below
I decided to take a last minute trip to Belize with Lisa to meet up with Jed who has been traveling around Mexico for the last few weeks. Lisa found a $360 ticket at 8 PM leaving at 12:30 AM so we packed, hit up a Taqueria for a goodbye burrito and beer and BARTed to SFO.
I had some last minute work I had to get done this morning, and a 3 hour layover at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. I haven’t jailbroken my old-school iphone since I upgraded the firmware, so I didn’t have a good way to tether it to my laptop, nor did I have an SSH application on my phone, so I had to buy the $7.95 airport wifi provided by Boingo.
I opened up firefox and after sitting through a flash intro on the boingo website, I entered my credit card info. After a confirmation screen, I was presented with the data I had entered and asked to download the GoBoingo Utility, an application that could run on my PC and notify me whenever I am within range of a Boingo hotspot. Clicking “Download and Install” was the only way to continue purchasing internet access.
Only after beginning the download was the page redirected to the page announcing that my credit card info was incorrect. I retyped my info and even tried a different credit card with no success. Noticing how quirky the website was, I decided to open Internet Explorer just to see if perhaps this form couldn’t be completed in Firefox.
After downloading the GoBoingo toolbar for the 6th time (this time in IE) I was given a page showing that my credit card details had worked.
Not only did they make me download unwanted software (note: you just had to download the .exe file, it is up to you to install it) but I had to use IE. What if I was using a mac? Would I have been locked out of wifi at George Bush Intercontinental?
I was able to complete the necessary work before getting on my plane to Belize. If you ever run across a boingo hotspot, make sure you are using IE.
16 Comments
Brendan, I am so sorry that you had trouble with Boingo and Firefox. We just recreated the situation in-house, and encountered the same loop. We are now on top of it.
Please contact me by email, and let’s fix the situation for you.
I hope the situation has been fixed, thanks for the prompt reply. Its nice to know that Boingo monitors the blogosphere for feedback.
Of course Boingo will jump to the aid of a blogger, but the forced software download is ridiculous and scammy. I’ve heard stories of people repeatedly getting charged with the toolbar, and moreover, the way its presented suggests that you have to have the toolbar (even though it says its optional). Even if it was just pushing ads, I think its rediculous for an ISP who you are paying fees to to then also force you to download that kind of garbage.
I agree, toolbars are so 2005.
Boingo does suck unbelievably. No suppport for https, ftp or pop3. Stay away from this dog, people, Boingo is a scam. Fortunately, I only signed up for a single day as opposed to being sucked into a monthly contract. I will be scanning my Visa bill for unwanted charges and will post again if I find any.
What a let down GoBoingo is,
GoBoingo seems to restrict access to everything except regular HTTP communication. I logged on with the intention of checking emails / making a few Skype calls before a long flight only to find that none of this was possible with GoBoingo. Further, access to my webmail intefaces were also blocked and even Gmail was a no-go.
The only thing I did use GoBoingo for was posting this message and researching how to uninstall the software … IE, GoBoingo doesn’t make that information known (at least on their Mac version.)
Boo-urns to GoBoingo, I’ll be requesting a refund as soon as I can access my email again. :\
I was on vacation flying from ATL (Atlanta) to CDG (France).
Since I was going to arrive to France late, I needed to contact my hotel and the car rental agency to let them know that I would arrive late. Unfortunately I had no way to call, my only option was through the Internet. When I fire up my browser, one of the option was Boingo = Bogus. I thought I sign up for just a month – a month later I was charged for another month. When I called to cancel the service, I was on hold for almost half hour. When I finally reached someone from customer service, she was very unhappy with me because I was canceling the service. The last monthly charge was on 6/15/09. I had sent an email to them instructing them to cancel the account and refund the $9.95. I got an email back saying please call customer service to cancel. To make a long story short customer service failed to refund me the $9.95 even though I have only used their service once. Boingo just made the biggest mistake because I will let the world know how sucks their service is. I enjoy demolishing greedy companies like Boingo. I was a big advocate when Blockbuster decided to sell movies to customers if they didn’t return them without making customers aware of the charge beforehand – that has resulted http://www.blockbustervictims.com . I predict that if Boingo will go out of business pretty soon if they continue this path. The service itself is a mith, they are doing the same greedy things that several companies have tried and continue to do until someone like Brenden and me say enough is enough. It’s good that they monitor blogs, but I don’t think they’ll be able to keep up – soon the internet will be flooded with hating Boingo Wireless website and I’ll be the first one to put one up and report them. Bogus Boingo, you are in for a fight – see you on ihateboingo.com and how about Bogusboingo.com GREED MY FRIEND, IT WILL TAKE YOU NOWHERE!
Some companies will never change, Boingo is using the same type of billing strategies that took our economy rock bottom. They believe as long as they use tricky and complicated service terms, they can get away with anything. They don’t know history, Blockbusters and others have used those techniques , but look where they are now. This is wrong and we all have to take a stand. Please join me, I started a website right after Boingo failed to refund my money, money that I have worked hard for. If you have been victimized by Boingo, please take a stand. This is what I’ve done so far and it’s very effective. I wrote a letter and mailed it to the Attorney General in California, I’ve also submit a complaint online at http://ag.ca.gov/contact/complaint_form.php?cmplt=CL
http://ag.ca.gov/contact/business_corpform.pdf
Mail Form to: Public Inquiry Unit Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550
I’ve also put in a complaint with the Santa Monica Better Business Bureau:
The BBB that will handle your complaint is:
BBB of the Southland
(Colton, CA)
315 N. La Cadena P.O. Box 970
Colton, CA 92324-2927
Phone: (909)825-7280
Fax: (909)825-6246
Email: info@labbb.org
Web: http://www.labbb.org
You may wish to copy or print this information for further reference.
All correspondence about your complaint will come from and should be
addressed to this BBB.
You will need this when you put in your complaint:
Company name:Boingo Wireless Inc.
Country:United States
City:Santa Monica
Street:1601 Cloverfield Boulevard, Suite 570 SouthRegion:CaliforniaPostal c
ode:90404Phone(s):+1 8008804117
(fax) +1 3105865180
By the way, they have a lot of people backing them, people who benefit from their scams.
I sent email to Clark Howard through his website. While they did not accept me to be on the show, some lady called me and suggest that I also contact the Public Service Commission. She also suggests that I write to the president (frankly it’s too late for that). TAKE A STAND BOINGO VICTIMS, JOIN ME AT IHATEBOINGO.COM/BLOG OR SEARCH GOOGLE FOR IHATEBOINGO. I AM EVERYWHERE SPREADING THE NEWS AND I STARTED JUST A FEW DAYS AGO – IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES: EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT I BREAK THE NEWS TO IS A VICTORY.
I used boingo wireless on a flight to O’hare.
Boingo is the fastest internet service that I ever used.
Impossible to find a plan that is cheaper.
Amazing Software.
Unbeatable!!!
I can say for someone who uses boingo on a regular basis (only because its the only thing available where i work) i have had nothing but problems. Everytime i try to stream any sort of video with it.. it cuts off about 10 seconds into the video. Also lately everytime i try to log onto this garbage, i get some continuous login redirect loop that ends up with an error. The service is absolutely horrible and would never recommend using this to anyone. Im really annoyed that this is all i can use here.
I just started using Boingo and I have used it at three different places and had no problems. I was able to access my Gmail, upload a video to my YouTube account and basically do whatever I needed while I was out and about. If I do run into any questionable issues I will relate them here, but so far I have no complaints.
Just want to comment that requiring a DOWNLOAD to access wifi is bullshit. Shame on Laguardia airport – mire options? I assume this is an ad-ware virus for all eternity – no?
Yep, going through the same nightmare right now.
I enrolled in the one time-monthly fee, only to be charged every month. Typical
I’m on hold with Boingo customer service right now in what now seems to be a futile attempt to cancel, it’s 12:50 in the freaking morning and I’ve been on hold for almost 40 minutes.
I will also spread the word on how much Boingo sucks.
Some of the stuff people are talking about, sounds like the tactics porn web sites use, the forcing of installing software.
I am sitting in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport with my Macbook Pro using FireFox and I am having absolutely no problems. Maybe they’ve fixed the problems mentioned above or I’m not one of those users who visits sites that Boingo doesn’t support. What I would like to know is how to pronounce Boingo. Anyway, here is my complete configuration in case someone needs it… Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7
Its’ all good!
Boingo is a great service for frequent travelers and the coffee-shop workforce.
Paying $7-12/day for Internet at airports or coffee shops is a much bigger scam than Boingo. For $9.95 they connect you with hotspots all over. As far as the speed of the connection and port blocking troubles (e.g. not having access to certain e-mail or FTP services) these are hotspot-specific problems not Boingo’s per se. What Boingo has done by aggregating hotspots and enabling universal access for one monthly price is a great thing.
Tethering my Blackberry (which is ultra-slow) and paying $10-15 to Verizon has been costly and unproductive not to mention you can’t use your phone when tethered.
The next best alternative to Boingo involves piggybacking on your cell provider’s network for $30-50/month long-term service contracts and related laptop hardware, I’ve tried those services as well and in addition to being expensive they are very slow and often have poor/no signal outside of major metros.
I would agree, it sounds like Boingo can do a few things to makethe sign-up process more straight forward like this. 1) Pay by day, 2) Pay by month, 3) Pay by year… with a clear option to quit at anytime via phone, e-mail, or their web site, and they should aim to limit the requirement of any software downloads to exactly what is needed to connect to their hotspots and nothing more.
One Trackback
[...] a related note, a representative from Boingo wifi promptly commented on my last post and stated that they were looking into the firefox compatibility issue. I was impressed by their [...]