What would you do if you signed on to the Wi-Fi in your hotel room and saw a bill for €300 (US $391) the next morning?
According to the Telegraph, that's what guests of the Majestic Barriere in Cannes are being hit with.
The hotel (which isn't one Frommer's recommends) used to charge €15 a day for everyone, but like so many hotels it recently switched to a tiered system in which the more guests pay, the faster their Web access is. The baseline Wi-Fi access is only fast enough to download e-mail and surf simple pages without video. The medium speed you can buy is a mere €200 (US $261) a day.
One commenter on the original story had his own explanation: "In Nice, a taxi driver was telling me that most hotels there are now owned by the Russian mafia - and certainly, having moved from hotel to hotel almost every day during a recent (much regretted) stay in Nice, most of them have very much the same Russian mafia feel (and obscenely high prices) that I experienced when visiting Moscow."
True or not, the Majestic Barriere, which reportedly will knock down the fee to a mere €9 if guests complain loudly enough, isn't the only hotel that's upcharging guests for Internet access with adequate speeds.
At least the management found a way to make serious bank without making their hotel look too expensive on Travelocity: Rooms go for around €200 there. The parking fee, €45, is listed on its website when you book, but the exorbitant Web fee is not.
(Source: The Telegraph)