Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

samiwas

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 26, 2006
1,598
3,579
Atlanta, GA
I am on my second week in a hotel in Chicago, where their "High Speed Internet Service" is provided by Guest-Tek. Good God, I have never used a more painfully slow internet service since I was on 2400 baud dialup in 1993.

Just to load this forum took 93 seconds. For a FORUM. It's freakin' TEXT...and it took 93 seconds to load. Google Maps is almost unusable, and forget even trying to go to speedtest.net to test the speed...the page can't even load after about 4 minutes of letting it sit there.

I called the front desk, and even Guest-Tek's service tech, all of whom said the service was working just fine and as it's supposed to. The tech asked me to load cnn.com and see how long it took. After about 30 seconds, I said it was done, and he said "Yeah, then everything is fine..that's about right". So that's what counts for high-speed in their world I guess.

I realize the service is free, but give me a break. Bandwidth is not that expensive...I'd even be willing to pay a few dollars (although not the $15 a night those swanky hotels charge for just-as-useless internet).

Damn..another week of this crap.
 

jimmc

macrumors newbie
Apr 28, 2008
24
0
I am on my second week in a hotel in Chicago

I realize the service is free, but give me a break. \

It isn't "free", it's a cost you paid with your hotel room. If your hot water wasn't hot, or your phone only allowed you to hear every fifth word, you'd go and kick their ass.

This is a Hyatt, I assume? I'm having the same kind of problems with Guest Tek. Plus Mac users are blocked from VPN access, while Windoze users can login just fine. Guest Tek's management doesn't give a crap.
 

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
3,002
St. Louis, MO
I realize the service is free, but give me a break.

It's not that....I've stayed at hotels with free internet and it's been great. I bet if you were paying for it, it would still suck, but management may be forced to listen to your complaints since you're paying.
 

Eraserhead

macrumors G4
Nov 3, 2005
10,434
12,250
UK
Free internet is often bad, though I'd expect more from a Hyatt or something of that class.
 

amcoffice

macrumors newbie
Feb 25, 2013
1
0
Guest-Tek still horrible after all these years

Three years since the last post, and Guest-Tek hotel internet is still horrible. I travel around the world on business, and no one has worse internet service than Guest-Tek. Guest-Tek knows it's bad, and it just doesn't care. I have over 10 "case numbers" from the past 3-4 years at the hotel with Guest-Tek with the same problem.......SLOW, even at 3am when there are presumably very few people connected. Here's the kicker - hotel charges extra to use crappy Guest-Tek internet. I always refuse to pay for Guest-Tek, because it's ALWAYS unacceptable service. Usually end up going to a some fast food joint in the area and get much better wi-fi for free. Maybe enough complaints will get this hotel to cancel Guest-Tek or force Guest-Tek to fix the problems. Probably not, but worth a try.
 

amdose

macrumors newbie
Nov 6, 2013
1
0
Hi, as a former guest-tek employee I can say:

Guys really? Internet connection at the hotel is not like - there is the provider as guest-tek and you - the receiver.
First of all, guest-tek is not the internet provider!!!!! The provider is for example Time Warner Cable or Windstream. The speed of the internet connection the hotel has, is not up to Guest-tek, is up to hotel management. Guest-tek may only suggest what should it be, hotel decides, hotel pays for it.

Guest-tek is just the support for the hotel equipment as routers, servers etc. Still, they suggest the hotel what they should buy to make it all working smooth, yet hotel decides. For example guest tek suggest 5 routers per floor, hotel buys 3 (30 floors x 5 routers = 150 routers, hotel buys 90 routers - 60% total price).

What is more - there are some routers at the hotel. If one of them fails, it needs to be restarted, or replaced by the new one. And guess what... Guest tek can basically only reboot the router if it is accessible. If not, hotel staff should do this, and if necessary replace it with the new one (it's their cost!)

What else - guest tek provides the login page of the hotel, but the hotel's front desk keeps the register. If front desk misspell anything, you will not be able to log in to the system. Ofc guest-tek fault :) Call them and moan.

Just to make you imagine it all better:
You are the the cashier at some chain supermarket. Customesrs are blaming you that food you are selling has bad quality, prices are too high, there is no parking space in front of the shop, air conditioning is not working etc. I'm a fc*n shopkeeper not the owner! I do not decide of any of this stuff. I can just suggest to the manager...

Advise:
If it is like - the internet is working good, and after a day or two it got reeeeealllyyy slooooww, call guest-tek, they will deal with it. But if you are staying in ESA and try using free internet, you will be receiving *****.
If you cannot connect on your laptop, check if your phone can connect. If not, call them. Try doing the basics first, such as rebooting the laptop, checking if you have any wireless switch on it etc, that will make them solve the issue faster.

blame more :)

heh people
 

NewbieCanada

macrumors 68030
Oct 9, 2007
2,574
37
When you put your name on something, don't be surprised when people blame you for its shortcomings.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.