Triangle Trip

Furthering my previous post on “How to get prepaid mobile data in Hong Kong and China,” here are some additional benefits and “gotchas” from China Mobile Hong Kong’s (also known as People’s in Hong Kong or CMHK) prepaid plans:

1.  First the benefit:  If you’ve signed up for one of CMHK’s prepaid mobile data plans (one day, seven days or a month), you can access China Mobile’s WiFi Hotspots throughout Hong Kong and Kowloon. “CMHK” is the China Mobile hotspot. This is a valuable free add-on as there aren’t many free WiFi hotspots in Hong Kong. Starbucks and other coffee shops in Hong Kong only provide 30 minutes of free WiFi access with your purchase.

To use the China Mobile prepaid mobile WiFi add-on, you will need to setup a password on your prepaid mobile phone card. To setup a password,  press “*124*<6 digit number of your preferred password>” on your handset.

For example, *124*123456 where 123456 is your password. To use the CMHK Hotspot, you will login using your prepaid mobile number and password. The WiFi network is pretty fast.

2.  Now the “gotcha”:  If you’ve signed up for a daily, weekly or monthly plan and you don’t want to renew the mobile data plan, you must make sure you have deactivated mobile data from your prepaid account. No one will tell you that you will need to disable mobile data from the prepaid plan as I have found out the hard way – watching my HK$50 credit drained to HK$0.15 in less than one day. If you do not deactivated mobile data on your prepaid card, China Mobile will charge you on their regular data rate which is highway robbery. Most smartphones have applications that uses mobile data in the background which will drain your prepaid mobile account at HK$0.15 per KB.

So if you do not want to use CMHK’s a la carte mobile data plan, you must deactivate your mobile phone from using CMHK’s data network. To deactivate from CMHK’s data network, you will need to send the following code using your mobile phone:  “*106*02#”. To re-activate mobile data service, just send:  “*106*01#” from your mobile phone. You can also use “disable mobile data” feature from your mobile phone if it has such a feature. I know that most Blackberries have it.

3.  Another “gotcha” is: your CMHK prepaid card must have a dollar value in order for you to continue to use your mobile data plan. For example, you purchased a one week prepaid mobile data plan for HK$38 and have HK$10 left on your prepaid account. Once your prepaid mobile account cannot fall to HK$0, you will not be able to use your prepaid mobile data plan even thought you have already subscribed for the service.

As you all know, United has been charging non-Premier customers to sit in Economy Plus seats with extra legroom. United has now considered exit row seats as a part of Economy Plus even thought larger planes’ exit rows are not in the Economy Plus seating area. I was recently on a United flight from Newark to San Francisco and was seated in the exit row aisle seat after Economy Plus. The entire exit row was empty by the time the plane cabin doors were closed. Soon after take off, two passengers moved to the exit row aisle and middle seats adjacent to my seat. The flight attendant went to the couple told the couple to return to their seats as the exit row seats require additional payment.

Caveat Emptor!  If you are planning to pay for an exit row seat, you should be aware that some of the exit row window seats on larger planes has a limited legroom because the emergency exit slide protrudes into the leg space. An example is United’s Boeing 747-400 planes’ seat numbers 33A and 33K. Everyone should check with Seat Guru before purchasing an exit row seat or you’ll end up paying extra for a seat like the picture below.

I contacted the Starwood Preferred Guest’s (“SPG”) Platinum reservation line to redeem my Starpoints for a hotel stay. The customer service representative (“CSR”) was friendly as usual but was not able to help me with my reservation and raised a huge security and privacy concern. Before I could complete my Starpoint reservation, the CSR requested for my password to my SPG account. When I told the CSR that I do not recall setting up a password to make Starpoint redemptions or any special types of reservations, she informed she needed my website password to complete my reservation.

After trying for over 10 minutes to explain to the CSR that it would be a security breach if I had given her my password, I decided to ask for a supervisor. All the supervisor  could do was to refer me to Starwood’s corporate policy which required me to provide my personal password to complete the reservation. She also told me that I could make the reservation via spg.com and stop hassling her. The supervisor also didn’t want to provide me a name or number for Starwood to escalate this issue.

I’m also pretty I am not the only SPG member to have raised this security concern to the SPG call center. I am also extremely baffled to have learned how Starwood Corporate has such a lax customer security and privacy policy. SPG needs to learn from Hilton where they only require two pieces of private information (i.e., mailing address and phone number on file) to make a points redemption reservation. SPG also needs to understand that its member’s password may be used on multiple sites. The SPG team should look at the cartoon below and learn more about security and privacy policies (special shout out to Brian Lewis’ blog for providing this cartoon image link).