Well, sort of.
Had to stay overnight in a hotel with work Wednesday. Used the hotel phone to call home (domestic UK call). Prices worked out as about £25/ hour.
Thank god for expense accounts ! In hindsight I should have used the company mobile !
Oh, and their £12/day WiFi didn't work. Luckily they didn't charge me for that (presumably billing starts when you connect through. I got stuck at the verification page after entering my details).
On Friday 20 December 2013 12:53 Jethro_uk wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Try a Premier Inn next time - the mugging is much gentler!
I don't recall ever using an hotel phone, because they have always been noted for being expensive, but charging for WiFi? I normally use Accor hotels and, obviously excluding the time before WiFi, every one I have been in, including the odd stay in one of their two star IBIS range, have had free WiFi.
Colin Bignell
*shrug*. If _I_ was paying for it, then I wouldn't pay for WiFi.
As an aside, is it just me, or is there a pressing need for an app to manage all the free Wifi services you can sign up to ? Browser password managers don't cut it, if you need a username/password from the WiFi menu.
The Novotel in Sheffield, which is an Accor hotel, charges for wired Internet in the rooms. I think there might be free WiFi in the lobby.
Last couple of large companies I've worked for with expense rules wouldn't let you claim for hotel phone calls - always required to use the corporate mobile instead.
Lots have done, although it's becoming less now. Being charged has nothing to do with the quality of service, which is mostly fairly crap. Best hotel WiFi I ever had was in hotel which looked more like a student hostel in the middle of amsterdam. Was getting a rock-solid 16Mbits/s, and it was a free service.
The "free" WiFi in the Radisson Blu in Canary Wharf is brilliant. But at £265/night for a room, it had better be.
The hotel information says the rooms have complementary WiFi.
I've never used wired internet in the hotels, so I don't know whether charging for that is standard or not.
Colin Bignell
Blimey, they don't mention that in the rooms. Mind you, when I'm in the room, I'm usually asleep, or drunk, or both, and WiFi is a long way from my mind.
On Friday 20 December 2013 14:27 Jethro_uk wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Yep - definately.
The most useless one to date has to be the one on the Tube in London.
Next train was 5 mins away so I tried to log on to check the mainline train times at the other end and send some email.
5 minutes later I had not succeeded in getting past the "payment" screen - it just jammed.The process up until that point involves navigating god knows how many sooding graphics loaded web pages, instead of a simple lightweight page that has a "pay for a day" button.
In other wise, it is so completely unfit for the environment it is deployed (where a quick log in is needed - I mean, who sits in the Tube all day, except for hobos?) that they might as well not have bothered.
It would have been far better just to put some free open wifi down there, even if it was limited to TFL and Nationalrail websites.
I bet there was a committee who had 30 x 3 hour e-meetings involving 100 people who came up with that implementation...
I have high hopes of my just acquired Blackberry Z10, which cheerfully logged back onto the WiFi on the 2nd and 3rd days of meetings at a hotel in London, without prompting for a username or password. I have no idea how that worked.
IME the notifications vary from an A5 poster in its own perspex stand, to a bit of paper, about half the size of a business card, hidden among the other hotel information.
I usually have a bit of time to browse through local sights in a strange city while my partner is getting herself ready of a morning.
Colin Bignell
IME in the UK Wifi costs money in hotels - though I've never stayed in an Accor one. In the US even the scungier motels had it for free. Las Vegas was the exception, but there they don't want you to stay in the room, they want you on the floor.
There seems to be a correlation between the room rate and the cost of the wifi all over Europe.
Stay in a place that costs £500 per night, and you'll pay a month's 3G rental for an hour or two, stay in a fleapit for £30 a night and it's free. Cost of room is no predictor of availability, either.
But take your own torch and fan heater. The lights don't work and the heating is appallingly inadequate. Second worst hotel experience I've had in the last 10 years. (Yotel Heathrow was the worst.)
Who wants to sign up for a free wifi service?
Motel 6 and a number of others charge for wifi. Starbucks have free wifi which works with a Chrome browser, but not with Android Firefox. Panera had excellent wifi and have now moved to a registration system which for my phone (and others) is a total failure. I suspect it only works with Internet explorer.
On Friday 20 December 2013 20:58 Capitol wrote in uk.d-i-y:
It's true I have only been in warmer times, but everything worked in the several I have been in.
We recently stayed in a Premier Inn & the heating was indeed appalling.
Not help by the heater switched spur being upside down! I put the switch in the down position thinking I was switching it on, when in fact I was switching it off - as SWMBO told me later - many times :-(
Maybe that is why policemen shoot electricians on the London Underground. (To teach the buggers a lesson and because they can get away with it. (By jamming the connections.) And because they can.)
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