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Posted in personal
July 18, 2012

I’m back!

Today’s post is going to have to be a short one. Most people come back from vacations with a ton of dirty laundry and a cold- I have a migraine.

Obviously, I survived without having internet in the room. I might have had to recharge my phone twice each day- but I survived. (And that was with just taking pictures on my phone, instagramming the ones I liked, and sending a few tweets)

I got a DM asking me how confusing an internet policy could be. Here’s how it went:

When I opened my browser, up popped a window welcoming me to AT&T’s wireless spot. It gave me the following options: Bill my room, Pay by Credit Card, Buy AT&T wifi service, Log in to existing AT&T wifi service, …and there was one more. I don’t remember what that option was, but maybe it was just to go to the AT&T store.

Paying by credit card gave me options about how many days and how many devices would be accessing from my room. I’m a little paranoid about using credit cards over unsecured wifi, so I wanted to bill it to the room.

Billing to the room said that I was authorizing a charge of $9.95 per connection for one or two devices for as long as the device was connected to the service.

That wasn’t exactly the verbage, but it was pretty darn close. I called the front desk to ask for some clarification, since to me it read as the charge only lasting as long as my computer was connected to the internet. As in, if I shut down my computer, I’d have to pay again. Which seemed wrong.

The front desk wasn’t entirely clear either, but she did say that while the first device was connected, I could connect as many other devices as I wanted- like an iPad or Kindle. But there wasn’t an hour limit.

So we decided not to do it. TheBoy suggested I give it a shot on the night we were mostly in the room, but it just seemed like a waste of money.

One of my favorite hotels I stayed at that charged for internet access, charged a small fee at check-in. You got their wifi password, and that was that. It wasn’t a per day fee, it was just a one time fee. The next time I went there, the wifi was free, but I appreciated a simple process that didn’t require me to remember when my 24 hours I paid for started.

…so for anyone affiliated with hotels or wifi providers- just make sure your policies are clear. Connection means so many things!

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