As I mentioned before I felt fooled by Boingo Wireless service, when I logged on to what was shown to be a “free.wifi.hotspot” and later was charge for the usage. I therefore both blogged about it and wrote to their customer service and wrote a blog post about it. I later found out that the responses you get from the two are very different: Here is the email I got from customer service:

“Annelie

Thanks for contacting Boingo Wireless.

You saw that the wifi was free.

The Boingo software client would have WARNED you of premium charges.

You selected a plan that specifically states you will incur premium charges.

The Charges are valid.

If you need further assistance please call customer support.”

I was very disappointed about their bad customer service, because aren’t the satisfaction of a customer most important? Perhaps they should have been a little more understanding, and then I might have tried their service again. However, only a few hours later I got this comment on my previous blog post

“We came across your blog and noticed you had a bad Boingo experience. We’d like to respond, if you don’t mind, to shed some light on what happened.

This location (with the SSID: Freewifihotspot) is part of the Anacapa nework and offers customers the choice between a free sponsored Wi-Fi session or paid access for their roaming partners. Since the Boingo software automatically detects networks that list Boingo as a roaming partner, it prompted you to connect to Wi-Fi within the paid access option. We agree that the customer experience isn’t optimal. We want you to be a happy Boingo customer, so we hope that a courtesy refund and free connect credit on your account will convince you to try our service again! Please send me an email so that we can adjust your account.

We appreciate your feedback and again, apologize for the unfortunate experience you encountered.

Sincerely,

Lauren Sanyal
Marketing Associate”

Not only did they apologize for the inconvenience; they also said that they were aware of the problem and agreed that the costumer experience was not optimal. Now, this is how I think that you should treat a customer, and because they did; there is a big possibility that I will use their service again.

Of course I wrote back to Ms. Sanyal and told her that I had not been as well understood from the normal customer service and said that I wanted the refund that she offered me.  Then she responded:

“Dear Ms. Näs,

Thank you for your reply! As someone who is passionate about quality customer service, I am sorry to hear that you had an unfortunate experience with Customer Care. We appreciate the opportunity to turn your experience around, and I sincerely hope you will give us another try. We have refunded you $39.90 (for the two $19.95 charges you received at The Foodmaker-Linthout) and have added a connect credit to your account. So, the next time you connect in a Boingo hotspot, your Wi-Fi session will be on us!

I appreciate your open feedback on your Boingo experience, and please let me know if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,

Lauren”

I hope that my post here will shine a light on the unfortunate experience I had with customer care and that other customers should be aware of it. I don’t know is the experience I had was a mistake and that it is not Boingo Wireless policy to respond like that.

I want other people to be aware of the problem I had with the service until Boingo Wireless has fixed it, and about the different treatment I got. But I applaud that someone at Boingo Wireless is passionate about quality customer service. Thanks!

I while back I was in New York at the Newark airport, I was having some trouble with my bankcard so I needed to log in to internet and check what may be the problem. Since I carried around my laptop I decided to use their paid WiFi-service and installed Boingo Wireless on my computer to access it. The problems was sorted and I continued with the travelling not thinking about it again.

In Brussels, Belgium where I live now I have a coffee shop close to my house that offers a free Wi-Fi connection that I use from time to time as I like to study there. One day the sign for Boingo Wireless came up and it said that I could connect to the free.wifihotspot using Boingo Wireless. Sure I thought, why not?

I think I did so another day as well, but some other times the service did not show so I used the normal way to connect which takes a little bit longer.

Today I checked my bank statement and saw that I had been charged from Boingo, I though it must be a mistake and logged on to check it out. It turns out that they charge 19.95 USD per connection. Even though when you connect it says connect to FREE Wifi-connection.

And this is the reason to why I will never trust them again, and I hope that they won’t trick you with the same scam!

Update:

Do you want to know what happened? Read more here. Also read the comment on this post from one of the Boingo Employees.