Greed Rules Again!

Hi Everyone,

Nothing really surprises me anymore regarding the lack of common sense. But an article in my USA Today, Gannett newspaper did catch me off guard.

As you are aware, I worked in the hotel industry for many years. Like any company, hotels have many departments; with department heads charged with operating their department profitably. One of those departments is telecommunications. Back in the day, that meant having telephone switchboard operators scheduled 24 hours per day. Then computers eventually took the place of the majority of operators. Then came cell phones. Again, back in the day, hotels made a lot of money charging quests for use of their phones for all outside calls, both local and long distance. The proliferation of cell phones made telecommunication departments profits plummet. That was even when cell phones calls cost $.45 or more per minute. So what is a hotel suppose to do when Wi-Fi became common place?

Well the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, took it to a whole new level. In order to combat free Wi-Fi, upper management made the decision to install a program and/or system that was able to disable guests own personal Wi-Fi networks. Then the hotel charged, are you sitting down, $250 to $1,000 per device to access the hotel's network. Wow, what an exorbitant amount to charge to get Wi-Fi!!! Management must have patted themselves on their backs when they found this new extremely profitable revenue stream. They probably laughed all the way to the bank, when low and behold, guests started to complain to anyone who would listen.

Their complaints did not go unnoticed, The FCC, heard the complaints and began an investigation. Last month, Marriott, which owns the Gaylord, made the business decision to agree to pay $600,000 to resolve the FCC's investigation. That meant that Marriott did not admit to the illegal scheme.

Hopefully, the $600,000 Marriott paid, was more than the amount the hotel had received from their illegal scheme. If that General Manager had just one ounce of common sense, he or she would have nixed the idea when it was first brought up.

Common sense rules and greed drools.

PS. For those of you not in the know, my neighbors and I have been fighting an ill conceived location for a cell tower in our neighborhood. Instead of erecting the tower on a mountain top, next to the valley, (on town owned property) where the tower will be built. If you want to help us, please check out www.gofundme.com/hmctns. Then if you are so inclined, please forward to any and all of your friends. It is very expensive to fight "city hall" and we have been fighting since 11/2012.

Til next week.

Peter