Staying for the week at an AirBnB in Rochester, MN. This is what I just found out I'm stuck with.

Flying Squid@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 489 points –

How is this even possible in 2024? I realize Rochester isn't exactly a major metropolis, but we're in the middle of town! It's not like they're relying on Hughesnet or something.

Also, it's not that they're cheaping out on us either. The owners live upstairs. This is a duplex.

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Ok I have an amount of experience with basically everything going on here so here's what you should do:

First, find the listing and see if they have WiFi listed as an amenity. If they do great, you can complain to Airbnb as a last resort. If they don't you can't, which honestly probably isn't going to change much unless they are turds.

Second, do a few speed tests around the house, especially next to the other duplex unit. On the Airbnb app, send a screenshot of them and say something to the effect of "hey we noticed the Internet is slow, are you having issues too?"

Either they never checked if the downstairs WiFi and there's no signal, or there's a problem with the Internet and they need to call the company. Both are pretty viable. Does your phone say 75% signal or -75db? -75db is not great, but 75% should be ok. If you get faster speeds near the other unit it's likely their WiFi.

The other option is they have issues too. Fixed wireless can run into issues when things change like radar frequencies. They can call the company and get it fixed pretty quick. Even if they aren't paying for the faster speeds the ping shouldn't be anywhere near 600ms. Like, I lived with wireless internet for a long while and it's slow or shouldn't be that painfully slow.

Don't just suffer through, often people don't mention this kind of stuff and if the hosts aren't on top of their tech they don't know it's an issue. There was an issue with the Wi-Fi firmware on a unit I do work for and the guests only mentioned it at the end of their month long stay. They should be willing to work with you especially if they advertise wifi but honestly probably even if they don't. Like, just don't be an ass about it and they'll probably be pretty accommodating.

Definitely 75%. The WiFi signal is undeniably strong.

I told my mother to talk to AirBnB about it, but that's all I can do. It's not on my dime and I didn't make the reservation so I haven't even see the listing. She said she would, but we'll have to see.

If the signal is decent I'd bet there's a problem upstairs too.

Going through Airbnb support really isn't worth it and will take forever. Just message the hosts directly. If you have an Airbnb account you can be added as a guest on the trip by her and message them yourself if she doesn't want to deal with it.

I do not have an AirBnB account and I don't think it's worth creating one just to complain about this, but thanks.

Guess it's not a big deal to be stuck with this speed then hahaha

The things people will deal with to not talk to a human being. It has probably taken longer to post/respond in this thread than the time it would take to actually solve the problem.

Not a big enough deal for me to do that now that I discovered I can tether my notebook to my phone via USB even though it won't let me use it as a WiFi hotspot for some reason. Annoying having to cart around both together like that if I want to go to another room, but better than the alternative.

Weird that wifi doesn't work, maybe it's 5ghz on iphone and your laptop doesn't support?

Anyway you could try bluetooth tethering, it could be a bit slower than usb but it's more convenient, just keeping both in the same room should get good signal. I had no problems on android + linux using blueman. I think mint uses blueberry, dunno if it supports tethering too, but it's pretty easy to switch from one to the other.

Bluetooth tethering is super slow. And yeah, it might be a 5g thing. It's an old notebook. It's not a big deal.