What questions to ask in advance to determine whether hotel wifi is worth paying for!

[hermespan]

I speculate that upload speed is one of them. While I am able to upload photos efficiently my videos (*.mov files) simply are not moving, even after an hour.

Grace Hotel charges THB300 for 24 hours but the connection is mediocre.

[Digitalbanana]

Just do a speedtest.net test to get an answer. Check your movie files sizes and you'll see how long the uploads will take and whether the fee is worth it to you.

[lomatopo]

"Can I have a free password?"

Seriously, I'm not certain there are any questions you can ask which will somehow result in a guaranteed level of service, which you could subsequently challenge for payment? Any terms and conditions would no doubt be filled with a lot of language regarding "best effort". And, heavy uploading/downloading sometimes violates the users terms, and can be blocked with service terminated.

Of course, by charging for WiFi one might assume that very few guests opt for this and performance might be acceptable.

[hermespan]

Waste of time at the Grace. I moved to the 'new' wing as the old wing has no wifi. Paid THB300 more to upgrade and still nothing. Waste of money.

Plus one has to wait 20 minutes mid-day and late night for hot water. I suspect they turn the boilers off at non peak times. Great location especially to BAMBOO restaurant with great Arabic food across street. But for 1400-1700 I get get much better value at hotels catering to farangs in vicinity.

[hermespan]

Ghnak you for thd lead to speedtest. I fon't knos if this is considered acceptsble but the result gor Grace wifi was (down, up, ping) was at two consecutive tests..

11.9, 0.64, 28

13.83, 0.94, 30

[Digitalbanana]

Those results are very reasonable for an extremely old tourist class hotel I would say.

[hermespan]

Yet essentiallyy .*mov files (iphone videos) would not upload, neither from the lobby nor my room. So I moved onto the closest Starbucks where for the same price I het 30X more time, i.e. a month usable at any Starbucks in Bangkok, maybe beyond.

Toy astonishment the speed was worse, with only 4 customers, only one of which wax obviously using a device, and he told me he had his own plan.

.47 down, .35 up, ping 243

Perhaps the iphone5 or dropbox is the problem

[hermespan]

But here's the weird part. The meter says it's worse, but almost immediately the backed up (in the old sense) movie files are sent - well those I had broken into small bits that had failed to move at Grace.

[Bpuumike]

It really should be free.

Otherwise go via wifi?

[Gnasher328]

Sounds like you need to find another hotel, most of the ones I stayed in in the 300-600 Bht range had free WiFi.

The paid internet in my condo was rubbish. I complained, not expecting much response from what I read here, but they came and checked it out. A while later I heard drilling and banging, found they had moved the transmitter to right by my door - problem solved. Hillside 4 Chiang Mai to give them their due.

[NoshowJones]

Hotels that charge you for wi-fi do not deserve your custom. It is just pure greed.