MobilityPass

November 28, 2009

There has in the last several months on the Internet been a growing number of complaints about a firm named MobilityPass. One of my friends has tried using this service and was completely dissatisfied with the experience.

My curiosity being aroused I have been gathering information about this firm. There’s little to learn about the firm itself. It has an address in the British Antilles and is owned by a parent firm with the name of Sharp Rock Technologies Ltd I can find nothing about the people behind these firms.

MobilityPass offers international Internet access by modem dongle and telephone dial up. The advantage of using the service would be that a single sim card for the modem can be used in whatever country a customer finds himself . With the dialup service the customer is provided with access numbers to use worldwide.

The nature of the complaints fall into several areas that I will enumerate:

Several complainers have said that the connection technology doesn’t work at all, or works very poorly.
The actual fees for using the service are unreasonably high.
A non-refundable user account is a requirement.
The means of contacting the firm are very limited. Either the customer can send an email, referred by MobilityPass as a “Ticket” or by telephoning a number in the UK.
The UK number is only open in British office hours and is manned by a salesperson. Otherwise not much help if you are outside of Europe or on the weekend.

The customers who have complained about the connection technology say that either the modem dongle or the dial up number failed to connect to the Internet or that there were long delays.
Besides being very annoying in itself, the long waiting times were racking up usage charges.
Customers have reported being charged several hundred Euros even when they never were able to get an Internet connection.

The actual fees that MobilityPass are charging are extraordinarily large. Seeming to be about 10 times the charges of other providers. On top of this MobilityPass requires access to the customer’s credit card and withdraws money directly from the customer’s account without even providing an invoice. The so called user account is also kept topped up without the customer’s permission. This money won’t be refunded by MobiltyPass to customers who wish to close their account.

In conclusion MobilityPass offers a very poor service, is very, very expensive, and is operating with doubtful legality. There are many methods of connecting to the Internet while traveling and all of these ways are more reliable and much less expensive than using MobilityPass.
Use MobilityPass if you wish, but you might regret doing so.

From Mike in Canada:

I’m in Canada. I was looking for a mobile internet service with a pay as you go feature so I didn’t have to pay a monthly fee. I found Mobility Pass through a Google search. Boy am I kicking myself now for trying to “cheap” out. What a joke!! I used it for about 5 mins. It was so slow I couldn’t stand it so asked for a refund. Of course they refused. I decided to chalk it up to a bad experience. Only to get hit with a $100 additional charge on my credit card out of the blue a month later! Luckily my credit card company reimbursed me this fee. Then 2 months later (more than 3 months since I stopped using the product) my credit card shows another $70 out of the blue!! I’m out the $300 it cost me for the modem and have learned an important lesson. I’m just lucky the credit card I used with them expired last month. I highly recommend if anyone’s thinking of cancelling their subscription with Mobility Pass – CANCEL THE CREDIT CARD that you signed up with. Otherwise you’re bound to be surprised with fees charged months down the line. Mobility Pass is a total rip off and fraud.

Here is a list of links with customer reviews:
Customer reviews published on TrustPilot

Norbert Haupt’s experience with MobilityPass

Comment on Tucows website

Customer review on Complaintsboard

Discussion on the 50plus forum

Experiences from Samuel Snodgrass

Mr. Haupt again

A comprehensive list of reviews of MobilityPass