Singapore Airlines Billed Me $1200 for the Internet

I recently used Singapore Airlines to fly to Asia and I used their internet service. It was very clear what the charges were, $10 for 10 MB of internet access, and $0.15 per 100 KB overage. I even took a picture of it because I was shocked at how expensive it was, but it was very clear what the price was.

The author apparently didn't care to read the very clear instructions, and didn't monitor his usage, which the connection also provided. If he was charged $1200, that's more than 500MB of data usage, so he clearly was doing a lot more than uploading a 4MB file and 155 page views.

>"So what does it take to rack up $1200 of internet use? In my case, just 155 page views, mostly to my email."

Looking at SA per MB pricing [1] you'd need to pull down just shy of 1.2GB to be charged that much - 7.5MB per "page view". Personally, my Gmail and Outlook Inbox are a few hundred K each.

So maybe the author just doesn't know what he's talking about? according to his bio [2]...

>"Today, I design and code Trend Hunter until 4am because I like it."

It would seem likely that statement is an exaggeration, the one about the number of page views is disingenuous or both.

Either way, the author loses credibility.

In any case, the author is apparently the globe trotting, baja racing, "rule breaking", former banker son of a VC [2] - he can surely afford to pay for - at best - failing to pay attention to the terms.

1: http://www.singaporeair.com/jsp/cms/en_UK/flying_with_us/inf...

2: http://www.trendhunter.com/Jeremy

Those are always expensive and Singapore Airlines is passing the costs onward.

For example an Iridium phone is about $.75 for 9600 baud per minute, and Inmarsat BGAN is $450 for 100 MB.

There are other satellite services, but in the general aviation field that I know, Iridium and BGAN are the two biggies.