SIA passenger racks up huge Wi-Fi bill
A Singapore Airlines passenger claims he was billed for over S$1,500 (US$1,142) for using the carrier’s in-flight Wi-Fi during a long haul flight.
Canadian businessman Jeremy Gutsche said he used the service mostly to send emails and did not watch any high bandwidth streaming movies.
He was slapped with a bill for US$1,142 on arrival at London for excess usage above the prepaid 30MB package he had earlier purchased.
Singapore Airlines offers quota or time based packages and charges substantially more for excess usage above the stated limit.
Mr Gutsche is CEO at Trend Hunter and used the company website to complain about the price gouging, accusing the airline of ripping off passengers.
"I wish I could blame an addiction to Netflix or some intellectual documentary that made me US$1,200 smarter," he wrote.
"However, the Singapore Airlines internet was painfully slow, so videos would be impossible and that means I didn’t get any smarter."
Gutsche said he only viewed 155 webpages during the flight from Singapore to London and slept for several hours during the journey.
"The pricing per megabyte was disclosed on sign-up but I bought the US$30 package and really didn’t think I’d end up a thousand bucks past the limit."
Gutsche estimated it cost him around US$100 to upload a 4MB document and US$10 for an accompanying email to tell work colleagues the upload was slow.
A spokesman confirmed Singapore Airlines is looking into the complaint.
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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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