Re: meeting network

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

I don't think it is. I think that you can negotiate and I will point out that the hotel
here has wanted our business enough that they have now scrambled to make
life significantly better. You can also bet I'll be demanding that they credit my
$54 that I put on the in-room access be credited to my bill even though ARIN would
pay it.

I routinely do this when the conference network (or the in-room network) sucks and it's provided by the hotel. I have 
yet to have one refuse my refund request.

Owen

On Oct 10, 2011, at 3:41 PM, Frank Bulk wrote:

> Holding the last 10% of the meeting room payment seems like a good start for
> any venue.
>
> But as others have indicated, the market may be too small for free-market
> principles to be fully effective.
>
> Frank
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: JC Dill [mailto:jcdill.lists () gmail com] 
> Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 1:36 PM
> Cc: North American Network Operators' Group
> Subject: Re: meeting network
>
> On 10/10/11 7:00 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> > It would be wise for NANOG to approach future venues and specifically
> discuss these things with the hotel IT departments in question ahead of time
> so that they have some remote chance of being prepared.
>
> I tried this approach many years ago, for a Blogher conference.  The 
> hotel's IT people were uncooperative, and incompetent, and they lied 
> both about their network design and their equipment capabilities.  I 
> have since learned that this is par for the course.  IMHO the only way 
> to solve this problem is with big $$$ penalties in the contract, big 
> enough that the incompetent IT people realize their jobs are on the line 
> and relinquish control so experts can get access and set-up things properly.
>
> Also note - the conference or hotel's IT people will always claim they 
> have "done this before with no problems" even when they haven't.
>
> jc