Plan on Spending Hours to Cancel Your Boingo Account
by Nurse Liz
Filed under Health-E Living
Signing up for Boingo service could be hazardous to your wallet..cancellation policies make customers jump through hoops.
I like to give companies the benefit of the doubt, but in this case after repeated attempts to get our account cancelled with the Boingo service, here is an update on the number of steps that it took to finally get someone to supposedly cancel the account.
In yesterday’s installment, we mentioned that we had called the company several times to cancel but the very long waiting times when calling during our workday made us resort to trying to use the email address published on the Boingo website to try to cancel the service. We received a response back after one day saying that due to security concerns the company couldn’t cancel our service via email. Note: the company allows the customer to sign up automatically via their website and provide the credit card number for immediate access without any security concerns, but apparently does not extend the same courtesy to customers to allow them to login to their secure, online account and cancel their service. Instead , Boingo makes the customer call an 800 number and spend long times on hold. You may need a good speaker phone once you are connected, and if you’re lucky enough to be connected after waiting, will find yourself jumping through more hoops in trying to cancel the service, then it takes to get a loan these days. And in this economy, that’s saying something.
Our other attempt to reach an agent without long waiting times was as we had previously posted, done in a call placed during the middle of the night in the US, and going this route, we were able to speak with an agent right away. However, the agent after verifying our account information and finding out that we wanted to cancel, and running through multiple options of how we could remain a customer, then informs us that her system is “updating” and she cannot accept cancellations. This, keep in mind readers, after she was supposedly able to pull up the account and verify it etc. So at least part of her system was working, but obviously not the part that accepted cancellations. The agent, took down all of our information and said that she would cancel the account when her system came back up again, and she would email us a confirmation number. We waited for yet another day, no confirmation number came. So, again, we tried emailing the support email address saying that we had called and cancelled our account directly with an agent, and did not receive a cancellation number and could they please email us a confirmation number. We were then given options about responding back using email giving confidential information via email to “confirm” our account, or calling one of their customer service agents again 24/7 according to the company to process our cancellation. (Which, note, we had already done..we had already cancelled the account…Boingo just didn’t process it apparently, as we were not given a confirmation number.)
Ok, so we called again today and reached a customer service agent after about 13 minutes on hold. The agent then proceeded to “confirm” our information and retrieved our account. We then asked to cancel the account, and the agent said that she’d email the cancellation number. “Oh, no, we want a cancellation number right now we told the agent.” We actually cancelled our account several days ago and were told we would receive a confirmation number for the cancellation which never came. We asked the agent for her name and for the cancellation number. Keep in mind we were at work and had some patient appointments to attend to, so our patients were waiting. We were then placed on hold for another 8 minutes, before the agent came back on the line and then said she had to verify some additional information with us before she cancelled our account like the last 4 digits of the credit card that was used to sign up.
What do you mean…you need the last 4 digits of the card we used to sign up? We gave that to you when we were purchasing your service. Right now all we want to do is CANCEL. We have corporate cards and to find out the exact number that was used almost 30 days ago would require us to spend even more time on this issue that was getting to be a huge pain in the “you know what” this point. After telling the agent that we wanted to cancel NOW, and we wanted our cancellation number NOW, she finally provided the number we had asked for so many times and spent so many hours to try to get. Talk about wasted time and frustration. This is a really bad idea of how to make your customers angry and how not to do business.
Needless to say when traveling for health care reasons, we would not recommend that anyone use this service or company. There are enough frustrations involved with managing one’s healthcare, especially if being away from home is a necessity and you don’t need a website or company that touts “cancel at anytime” yet makes it almost impossible to cancel a service that’s supposed to help improve your productivity not hinder it.
Boingo has the same ethical standards as a loan-shark in the getto. If you absolutely need to do business with them be careful. Get a credit card that allows you to create VAN/virtual account number in place of your actual card number when making purchases. When the time comes to cancel your account all you have to do is cancel the VAN. It will not effect the actual credit card.
I had a pretty good experience with canceling Boingo. Like many others, I joined in an airport to get immediate email access, and didn’t notice that I was signing up for life. When I saw the monthly bills to my credit card, I called the toll free number to cancel and did get the “the system is down for maintenance, try again later” message from their account person, which I do think is a deliberate scam– they hope you’ll forget to try again. But when I did get someone later in the day, they politely canceled my account and agreed to refund to me the two months that I had the service and did not use it. I thought that was gracious of them. Of course, I’ll have to wait a few days to see if I really do get the refund. But so far, so good.
I was able to cancel after a 5 minute call as well — they definitely have a soft sell to keep you / show other products, but it wasn’t too painful. They now have a menu option on their main 800 number for cancellations.
I had to spend so much time trying to get my account cancelled. Would not sign up for the service again and agree that there should be the option to cancel online without having to stay on hold and wait for an agent.
I just cancelled – but it wasn’t difficult at all. Maybe they heard your problems loud and clear.
Thanks for this review, it may have saved others a lot of time and hassle.
I was told their billing system was down for maintenance. There is no way to cancel online. I called my bank and had the credit card blocked and re-issued. I’ve been trying for months to get this 9.99 off my account that has been there for nearly 2 years and I never used the service.
Alison, thank you for your comment regarding trying to cancel your Boingo account. Would really appreciate it if you could write back here and let me know if you were contacted by the company and if your cancellation went through? It is truly a shame to hear that getting out of their service is so difficult. I agree with the writer of this article who said they should let customers cancel on their own from their login panel. Why even make someone wait on hold and go through all these hoops?
I just read your comments after calling Boingo and being told the system was down for maintenance…. so I called right back and got a different Customer Service rep who said the same thing. I said that was fine, I was going to give them my information and that I expected a call by the end of the day confirming the cancellation. I also told the rep that I was recording the conversation, that I had read about their cheap tricks online and that I would not take no for an answer. This morning they took my details and now I am waiting for that confirmation email.
Just canceled my account. The call was answered immediately and a native English speaker ask for my user ID, zip code, email address and last 4 digits of the credit card.
It took less than 2 minutes to complete the cancellation process. He did try a soft sell on other plans, but did not press the issue.
Will see if the cancelation was valid when I get my next statement.
Had no problem cancelling…took about 5 minutes and over the phone service was very good.
I thought I had signed up for just one month, as I was traveling both ways through O’Hare. I just found that I am being billed a monthly fee EVERY month. I’ll head to my bank today to get the charges reversed, and stopped. If they won’t/can/t, then I’ll close my bank account. That should stop this nonsense.
I’ll NEVER NEVER sign up for Boingo again!
I’m glad you’re posted this info. One has to be very careful what companies you deal with these days.
Canceled my account in a 5 minute call. I hope the billing REALLY stops. The last 4 digits of the credit card was required, fortunately that information is available on the Boingo website. The “pay as you go” alternative to cancellation was offered for $7.95 for 24 hours/connection which seemed attractive, but with all Boingo’s bad press on their billing behavior, fright overcame convenience and cancellation seemed the safe option. I like Netflix “put membership on hold” web selection, if Boingo offered such an option I would feel safer dealing with them.
This is a complete pain.
I called their hotline but they couldn’t find my account in the system… they tried to transfer me to the mobile division without success.
I called the mobile division, but after TWO HOURS on hold I gave up. This is completely ridiculous.
I just waited 55 minutes after the cancellation option (starting at 1:45 PM Eastern on a weekday) and spoke to someone with an American accent who seems to have canceled the account.
I then tried the new-account option and got someone with an Indian accent *immediately.*
Perhaps Boingo will continue to get away with this as it’s their right to use two separate call centers with different staffing levels.
I’ve been sitting on hold for 57 minutes and 50 seconds and counting….Will I ever get to cancel my Boingo account???
I agree. Just called and selected the option 1 “To Open a New Boingo Account” and told the rep I wanted to close my account. Took about 2 min. seems ok, but i’ll believe it for certain when i see no bill 2 weeks from now. luckily though it’s on my AMEX and they are always on my side.
I just nixed my account .. after reading your issues, I was fearful. From start to finish, dialing the number, waiting for a rep, and verify the info, it took 3 minutes and 27 seconds. Not bad .. actually pretty painless. I have had to wait longer for blood pressure monitors to reset.
Secret to canceling your account without long wait times – ALWAYS select the option “OPEN NEW ACCOUNT” when you call. I’ve noticed this with every company. Comcast has wait times of nearly 45 minutes on their “support” extension, but lets you speak to someone instantly if you’re opening a new account. They try to cheat us, don’t let them get away with it!