The Weekly Gripe

Gripes the News
The Soapbox
Gripes in the pipes
*

Charged for Wi-Fi on the train after buying expensive tickets!

5 comments  Add a comment

You can get free Wi-Fi in a pub or restaurant when you order a meal or a drink, you can get free Wi-Fi in service stations and in the supermarket. You don't even need to have made a purchase to log on and connect to the Internet.  You can even get your social media fix in the bakery (Gregg's) while you are waiting on your Cornish Pasty.

trains no free wifiThere are places where free Wi-Fi would be extremely useful but you will often find that it is either time limited or not free, even after you have paid to use services, in some cases quite a lot of money.  Examples of this are of course trains and hotels.  To be fair not all hotels charge for Internet access and one of these is the budget chain Ibis.  Premier hotels limit you to half an hour a day which is somewhat useful, but then there's the pressure to buy credit when you can't find what you need in that half hour or when you want some information later on.

Trains that don't offer free Wi-Fi are the main thing that I find annoying though, especially when your stuck on one for more than a couple of hours and you can't get a reliable mobile signal, which is more often than not the case.  You are left looking at a good strong got spot that offers you connectivity and you can even pay by the minute.  It's somewhat reminiscent of the bad old days of dial-up and entered Internet access.

As far as I am concerned this is just greed and it is unacceptable that these companies should try and squeeze every last penny out of you.  They've got you where they want you and if there's no alternative , as quite often there isn't on a train, all they have to do is sit back and wait while the money comes in.  I'm sure this is fine for those travelling on business because the company probably pays, but what about the average traveller?


Leave a comment

Airport Bollocks

Airport Bollocks

It's the same disease as when you travel by air. Airports want to rip you off everywhichway. Pay for this, pay for that, and overpay for car parking, add-on bags, the lot. Caviar and Champagne? What for? The caviar is fake of course, but the ultra-rich today are nothing but peasants under their designer clothes, and would not know.
11/09/15 Airport Bollocks
1
dandelion0709

dandelion0709

Maybe trains have a captive market.
Also, they get delayed, and because time is money, passengers are often left stuck on a train, wanting to use wifi and forced or cornered somehow into buying wifi minutes.
What a sad world we live in.
04/08/15 dandelion0709
2
Hereward the Wake

Hereward the Wake

OK I agree, many of the services in this country belong to the stone age. Why didn't every post office install a cheap, easy to use coin operated Fax machine? Answer because the management of the Post Office, both state-owned and the privately operated incarnation of that service have no imagination of how the future should work. Why didn't the post office create a cheap, simple email to snail mail service? Why are all these services on the verge of bankruptcy? So all the airlines and train services should provide Wifi. It should be expected of them. The state should provide free fast public Wifi services everywhere, just as they provide roads and streets, and street lighting.

But beware of "free Wifi" in pubs and other public areas. They wish to commercialise the arrangement. They want you to sign up to a lifetime of Spam, for just half-an-hour of free low level quality Wifi. That's a bargain for them. I refuse the service.

I also loathe the fact that my mobile phone operator forbids me to tether my mobile phone to the internet network, simply because I am a PAYG users. What matter should it be whether I use 1 MByte of data on my mobile or sending an email from the Yorkshire Moors via my PC connected to my mobile phone. Just as everything else all these services care about is business users on huge mobile phone contracts and expense accounts. Well they are also behind the times. Most businesses today forbid their field staff from spending much using their mobile phones.

A land run train service should have the fastest internet services free for every traveller, at home or abroad.
25/12/14 Hereward the Wake
2
Kenny

Kenny

As soon as I can. Christmas time is a difficult time to get things done. On top of that I'm having issues with the hosting company and their crappy restrictive service. Patience please. In the mean time feel free to post up a list of what you'd all like to see. I'll address what I can when I can.
22/12/14 Kenny
1
miserablemoaninggit

miserablemoaninggit

I take it that TWG site remains unfinished?

Must be - it is so NOT user friendly at present. in fact, it is barely useable! When will it be finished?
22/12/14 miserablemoaninggit
1

FEATURES

Gripes the News
Gripes in the pipes
The Soapbox
spinner