How to annoy paying wi-fi access users.

I’m staying at the premier inn at tower hill in London this week and, on Sunday night I decided to whip my credit card out to the tune of £20 for a week’s internet access on their wifi, provided by spectrum interactive.

It goes like this;

1. I connect to wifi, then sign in;

That goes well and tells me I’m signed in – it also tries to open a session window that doesn’t exist;

All good right, well, you’d think so. I start actually using the service, send an email, browse facebook, twitter, read some articles and connect to source control and then;

2. Five to ten minutes later, the connection ceases working.

Only solution is to close the browser, open it up again and it gives me the login screen again;

3. Sign in again

So, I sign in again, but this time it tells me I’m already signed in and tells me to force a logout;

So I do as it asks, I click “HERE” to sign me out of the session that it’s closed and it gives me some rather strongly worded warnings and tells me my account is locked!

4. Get warned about sharing connections

5. Sign in again (two sign ins for the price of one)

After reading the warnings, promptly then ignoring them, I sign in again, and again get the connected message and missing session window;

6. GOTO (2)

Rinse and repeat every 5 to 10 minutes.

The moral of the story
Testing… it’s not a luxury, if you don’t do it or do it badly be prepared to piss off your customers!