Thanks, Boingo — But it Could Be Better!

On a Sunday in May 2008, I was at Chicago's Midway Airport waiting to board a flight back to my home airport of Minneapolis and I had a ton of things I needed to do on the Internet while waiting for my flight. Boingo is the provider of wifi Internet service at Midway. Over the course of the last couple of years, I have used Boingo in a number of airports and coffee shops to get easy Internet access while I'm traveling. On this day, I was not happy...

Because I use Boingo only sporadically, I usually get a single day pass. This apparently means that my account has regularly been "deactivated" because I do not use it consistently. The last few times I've wanted to use the service (and I've usually been in a rush between getting through airport ticketing and security and waiting for my plane to board) I have had to go through an extended process of calling Boingo and waiting to talk to a customer service representative to "reactivate" my account. The whole process of finding out that my account is dormant, digging out the Boingo information and trying to reach a Boingo customer service representative has taken a significant amount of the time that I have before my flight leaves. That's time that I would rather have spent working - not dealing with Boingo customer service.

On this occasion, it took longer than normal. Apparently Boingo's billing cycle choices meant that they missed the expiration date on one of my credit cards in the past and therefore there were a number of unresolved charges (from a variety of dates) that needed to be cleared before my account could be reactivated. I had never received any notice of this from Boingo (due to a change in my contact information that I did not realize had not been updated) -- so I found out about this in the midst of trying to arrange for reactivation of my account.

To Boingo's credit, they credited my use of Boingo that day because of the hassle of clearing up past charges that I didn't know existed. That was helpful and considerate.

That said, I pointed out to the Boingo customer service supervisor my suggestions for improving their service and their relationships with their customers in the following ways. I would like to see the following practices instituted.

• Boingo customers should be able to log into their accounts at all times and be presented with their account activities/balances -- including any unresolved charges.
• Sporadic customers, such as myself, could be kept on the customer list for at least a year or more to allow them to continue to use the service on an "as needed" basis.
• Boingo customers should be allowed to review any past unresolved charge, pay for them and thus reactivate their accounts online in complete privacy and security. They should not be put in the position (which has happened to me a number of times now) of having to give a personal credit card number over the phone in a crowded airport or coffee house or other location.
• Boingo customers should be able to accept, dispute and even possibly resolve any of those unresolved charges online -- without having to call into the Boingo customer service lines and wait for a customer service agent.

Has anyone else had these kind of issues with Boingo or any of the other services that many road warriors / travelers use? What do you think?

Related articles

• Boingo Expands HotSpot Options For Mobile Devices (readwriteweb.com)
• Yet Another Reason to Use Boingo, Free VPN! (readwriteweb.com)
• Boingo Offering Free Wi-Fi To Nintendo 3DS Users (techcrunch.com)
• Apple devices dominate airport Wi-Fi (tuaw.com)
• Android Grows, but Apple Still Dominates Airport Wi-Fi Networks [Wireless] (gizmodo.com)

Tagged as: access, airport, boingo, Chicago, Customer service, internet access, Minneapolis, review, travel, wi-fi, wifi