The Boingo Scam

I was pissed too, they did the same thing to me and refused to refund
the extra charges. I live in FL, but "Bogus" Boingo Wireless is based
in South Santa Monica, California. I wrote the attorney general there
and asked him to investigate Boingo business practices. I've also
filed a complaint with the FL state attorney and the CA Better
Business Bureau. That's not all, I am on a mission. I bought
www.ihateboingo.com I am currently working on the website. Boingo
needs to be exposed, they are conducting the same business practices
that Blockbuster had attempted and looked where it took Blockbuster.
If you do a search online, you'll see people complaining about
fraudulent charges from all over the world. They'll give you access
alright as long as you give them unlimited access to your bank
account. Here is my story:
I was on vacation flying from ATL (Atlanta) to CDG (France). Since I
was going to arrive to France late, I needed to contact my hotel and
the car rental agency to let them know that I would arrive late.
Unfortunately I had no way to call, my only option was through the
Internet. When I fired up my browser, one of the option was Boingo =
Bogus. I thought I sign up for just a month – a month later I was
charged for another month. When I called to cancel the service, I was
on hold for almost half hour. When I finally reached someone from
customer service, she was very unhappy with me because I was canceling
the service. The last monthly charge was on 6/15/09. I had sent an
email to them instructing them to cancel the account and refund the
$9.95. I got an email back saying please call customer service to
cancel. To make a long story short customer service failed to refund
me the $9.95 even though I have only used their service once. Boingo
just made the biggest mistake because I will let the world know how
sucks their service is. I enjoy demolishing greedy companies like
Boingo. I was a big advocate when Blockbuster decided to sell movies
to customers if they didn’t return them without making customers aware
of the charge beforehand – that has resulted
http://www.blockbustervictims.com . I predict that Boingo will go out
of business pretty soon if they continue on this path. The service
itself is a mith, they are doing the same greedy things that several
companies have tried and continue to do until someone like Math and
others say enough is enough. It’s good that they monitor blogs, but I
don’t think they’ll be able to keep up – soon the internet will be
flooded with hating Boingo Wireless website and I’ll be the first one
to put one up and report them. Bogus Boingo, you are in for a fight –
see you on ihateboingo.com and how about Bogusboingo.com GREED MY
FRIEND, IT WILL TAKE YOU NOWHERE!

If this (and what many other things I've read are true)
What you really should do is contact law enforcement (eg State's
Attorney) to seek criminal prosecution with jail-time for fraud, plus
seek a large cash settlement from a class action lawsuit.

those who commit fraud should be afraid to victimize consumers. That
may sound harsh for what some might call "creative billing" or
"opportunistic negotiation" but it is crime, and they who do these
things are willing to disregard the consequences to thousands or
more.

People who commit fraud will not hesitate committing fraud unless they
are sure that just one of their victims can take them down and cause
them to loose more than all their ill gotten gains. will not be unable
to do it, unless they are not allowed to be in positions of trust and
opportunity, and will not stop voluntarily without a miraculous
repentant conversion...there'd have to be a reason for that.

as times get tougher, we're going to see more and more mischief in
business.

I called my credit card company and explained exactly what happened
and they removed the charge from my credit card. Its not the money
though, its the principle. I did know that if I connected to the
Boingo service that I would be charged, the point is though that I did
not intend to connect. They need a confirmation screen to tell you how
much it costs and if you want to connect.

You appear to have signed up for the Boingo AsYouGo plan -- which
means that whe you use the service you get billed for $7.95 a day in
the US and $9.95 a day elsewhere.

It is possible to get to the download page without going through the
page where you pick your plan. I'm not willing to actually download
the software to see how clearly they indicate the fact that this is an
ongoing plan rather than a one-time connection, but even at that
download page I run into a clear explanation of what I have to do to
terminate my agreement with Boingo via the End User License Agreement.
Nowhere else on their fight can I find anything indicating that
they're selling one-time access, even though it appears that you can
sign up for the AsYouGo plan and then cancel once you're done with the
one-time use. On the other hand, I can't find a $3.95 offer either,
so I assume I'm not seeing what you saw. They do indicate that when
you hit one of their hotspots you will get a prompt asking you whether
you want to connect -- it doesn't connect automatically -- although I
don't know what that prompt looks like.

I guess what I'm saying is that it appears that you entered into a
deal without paying attention to all the details -- and one of the
details was that you were agreeing to exactly what happened in
Budapest. You didn't uninstall and get rid of the software after you
used it in Memphis. If you were to describe exactly what you saw at
various steps, and what led you to think you were paying for one-time
use, I might find that sufficient to conclude that in fact Boingo was
so vague about what you were agreeing to that it ought to refund the
Budapest fee. But without that extra detail, it looks to me as if you
didn't pay enough attention and they were within their rights to
charge me.