Never Pay Hotels for Internet Again

Does anyone else feel this is unethical?<p>You are basically paying someone to circumvent the controls the price structure the employer has in place. This works because the front desk is empowered to make sure the customer is happy and therefore isn&#x27;t investigated for every &#x27;comp&#x27; that is provided to a customer.<p>However, that isn&#x27;t the intention of the power the employer granted to the employee.

Linkbait title. How do you go from &quot;I tipped someone very well and they did me a favor&quot; to &quot;This will work every single time for any person&quot;?<p>Want to know a trick to get favors like this <i>without</i> bribes? Be nice to the people serving you! Whether it&#x27;s someone at a hotel front desk, at the customer service call center, or a bartender... They get treated like crap all day, so when you act nice to them and make their jobs more enjoyable, they&#x27;ll be much more likely to bend the rules in your favor (if you ask).

I tried this once to upgrade my room to a suite, you basically put $20 in between your ID and credit card when you check in, and ask if there are any complimentary room&#x2F;food&#x2F;credit upgrades with a smile.<p>However, I was with a coworker who knew the 2nd-in-command boss of the hotel. So one night I was having fine dining with them and got pretty drunk on the free wine that was served to me. I accidentally spilled to the boss that I got upgraded to a suite just by tipping the front desk person, he got pretty furious about it and I think I cost that front desk person his job :&#x2F;

The problem with these social hacks is that they continue to incentive shitty service. So instead of paying $30 for internet I&#x27;m paying $20, and to one of the few people who can possibly yell at the lazy internet vendor to fix things or to management to lower the price. Now, of course, she won&#x27;t. So what if the login page is broken (or doesnt work with any iOS or Android browsers) or if the speeds are terrible. She got her $20, you got the backdoor employee login, and now the regular guests continue to suffer.<p>Even after my bribe&#x2F;complaints&#x2F;payment I&#x27;m stuck with yet another sub 1mbps internet that is literally useless to me. I just end up using the LTE tethering on my phone and minimize my usage so I dont hit my 5gb cap. I travel 6-7 times a year, usually to nice hotels, and am constantly shocked at how terrible the internet service is. Ironically, the cheap Super8 or Holiday Inn tends to have faster and cheaper&#x2F;free service compared to the nicer hotel. Before my wife and I could afford nice hotels, we had much fewer internet issues. I imagine those cheaper outlets are actually competing for the dollar, while the fancier chains know that Joe Business traveler doesn&#x27;t care about $20 a night internet because his company is paying for it anyway.<p>Worse, some hotels advertise &#x27;free wifi&#x27; but once you show up you get a login page that tells you that 256kbps is free and if you want full speed its $20 a night. 256kbps is useless to me.<p>Has anyone started a wifi wall of shame yet? I was going to setup a small wordpress or drupal site just to post my speed results to warn other travelers, ask others to contribute, but the only time I&#x27;m motivated to do that is when I&#x27;m in the hotel frustrated, and of course then, the internet is far to slow to develop a new site on.<p>The real question is why is hotel management culture so broken and blind to the basic needs of their travelers. Imagine if the bathroom had a per use toilet paper fee and the paper was over-priced and of low quality. Would we stand for that? Hell, I&#x27;m going to start that site tonight. Catchy names anyone?

This is referred to as the &quot;Twenty Dollar Trick&quot; and is very widely used by frequent (and savvy) travelers.<p><a href="http://thetwentydollartrick.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thetwentydollartrick.com&#x2F;</a>

I guess &quot;nobody ever tips them&quot; is usually true re: bribing the front desk.<p>But in Las Vegas, it&#x27;s de rigueur. Look at the results for a Web search for [the $20 trick].

Some hotels have 1-hour free internet per day, you just need to fake your MAC address. They do not even have a cookie, which is probably not an issue, since it can be cleared.

If you&#x27;re at a Marriott internet is free, well sort of. Just add ?marriott.com to the end of your URL and tada. Pro tip: write a proxy that appends &quot;?marriott.com&quot; to the path in your request.

You just gotta pay for the bribe.<p>Still waiting for the day when Internet is treated as a standard utility like plumbing... imagine if you had to pay to get water to your room (in the US).

I worked as a maintenance guy at a mainstream hotel that starts with &#x27;H&#x27; a couple years ago. I used to get upset that housekeeping would get tips for delivering a set of towels, but all I ever got was anger for unclogging toilets and hauling up new tvs when theirs was on the fritz.<p>I remember there was only one case of a customer trying the $20 trick while I worked there, he was &#x27;famous&#x27; and got treated very well.

I prefer the good old MAC address spoofing trick. It&#x27;s free!

With tethering on my smartphone and LTE service, I don&#x27;t feel a need for any local paid service. I&#x27;ll use WiFi if it&#x27;s free and reasonably stable, but if not, no skin off my back. I feel like the era of paid WiFi is already near its end.

Many hotels give you completely free wifi if you sign up for their loyalty scheme - which is usually free and just involves giving your email address.

Hyatt and all Intercontinental Hotels offer free internet to people in their membership clubs. Just join those for free. That is at Hyatt hotels (not Hyatt Place or Hyatt house) or at Intercontinental (not Holiday Inn). At the places in parenthesis, most internet is already free.<p>If you are member of a hotel points group, you can request and usually get it for free

Bribing for small favors is hardly anything new.

Another way to get free internet in hotels is to tell them it was shitty internet when you check out. It always is shitty (just try watching a movie on it!). They always credit it back to me.

No need to eavesdrop the network and fake MAC addresses, then? At first, I got disappointed about the actual &quot;hack&quot; in the post. And then, amazed.

Nice title. Pays poor man in back alley to stand there with huge wifi antenna...Aim it more towards the right!

How did this go from front page, #2. to third page, #72 in a matter of seconds?

I never book a hotel without free wifi. Problem solved.

I think she wants you brother, go for it!