While I’m on a tear about bad customer service experiences (are we jinxed?) I should mention my unhappy discovery that Miami International Airport (MIA) has reconfigured its wifi services to try to milk the customer as much as possible. It used to be that you could get roaming access at MIA through Boingo, just as you can at almost every other major US airport. If you flew an average of once a month this was a good option — wifi on this end and that end of the journey, for about half the price of two day passes, plus access at random other hotspots here and there. If you had stopovers or connections Boingo just paid for itself further.
But now although MIA still boasts about having Boingo, it doesn’t. I called Boingo the other day to ask why they don’t serve MIA any more and Boingo said that I had to ask MIA, it was their decision.
The current wifi carrier list at MIA is:
AT&T
BT Openzone
T-Mobile Polska
Orange
PT WIFI
Tata Indicom
Telenor
TeliaSonera
WeRoam
WeRoam is I think a placeholder for some other services, but Boingo isn’t one of them. Of the suppliers on that list, only AT&T is a US-based service, and it charges $19.95/month — about double what Boingo wants…if you can even find the very well hidden signup page for AT&T’s “premium” (includes airports) service. I got as far as this page and gave up when the “buy now” button produced a “not found” error.
No doubt many people will say I either shouldn’t bother, bring a book, or just accept being ripped off for $7.95 for one day’s wifi, even though that’s almost what Boingo charges for a month, just like I have to accept being ripped off for bottled water inside security. Yet it does seem like a remarkably customer-unfriendly move for MIA. I’ve emailed MDAD Deputy Director of Business Retention and Develoopment Miguel Southwell to ask about this, but I’m not hopeful. Hey guys, don’t you know that FLL offers free wifi throughout the terminal?
FLL is also in Broward. Whatever you are saving on wifi you are losing in transportation time and the cost of getting there and back. My calculation typically is that flights out of FLL have to be at least $100.00 less than from MIA to even consider them an option. Even at $100.00 less, if I’m flying alone it may still not be worth it.
We carry empty water bottles across security. The new AA gates have water fountains nearly near them.