“Well, [CENSORED]. Money just slips through my fingers everywhere and always.”
This is how my friend’s travel report began in our friends’ group chat. This story is both cautionary and witty, so with my friend’s permission, I’ll share it in full:
“I arrived in London with absolutely no money on my phone. I had tried to log into all those free internet kiosks at Sabiha airport before departure, but at Sabiha everything’s a mess — those awful queues, the dirt, the inconvenience, the lack of space. Even the internet kiosks worked only every other one, and the network kept disappearing and reappearing, requiring a new PIN each time.
Anyway, not important. I landed at London Stansted (just as provincial as Sabiha) with a phone I couldn’t use. The plan was to connect to the internet at the airport, log into my banking app, add money to my phone, map the route to the house I was lucky enough to be staying at, and calmly get there by metro (and other means of transport). But at Stansted there was no internet either! An unfriendly lady at the information desk said the internet was glitchy today and suggested I walk to the trains — “they have their own Wi-Fi!”
But leaving the airport was scary. I only had an address and no route. If there was no Wi-Fi near these mysterious trains, it wasn’t clear where to find a hipster café with internet in these fields. I couldn’t call an Uber either because, well, no internet.
Long story short, my depressing wanderings around the airport led me to a completely empty, lovely counter marked ‘Taxi’ and ‘First Class Service.’ They told me they could drive me to my address right away without any internet after paying by card. They showed me the driver and said a taxi was waiting outside the airport. The driver said he had a phone charger and could share his Wi-Fi with me.
Did I give in to temptation, you ask?
I rode in a black tinted minivan with leather interior, with internet and a pleasant local driver who carried my suitcase and opened the door for me. He asked if I was on a business trip (if I needed an invoice). Oh, if only it were a business trip, dude!
On the way, I converted pounds into a more familiar currency and sat in shock with very wide eyes. Then I tried to get pleasure worth all that money…
(I WON’T TELL YOU HOW MUCH IT COST) 😭😭😭”
My friends and I laughed and sympathized, and I didn’t switch into the unbearable mode of pedantic adviser, intensified by professional deformation. We’re all adults and wise in hindsight. Although such an adviser would have informed her that by adding just €10 to an MTX Connect balance, she could avoid spending anything (while other internet options were available), but MTX Connect would absolutely always be ready as a backup. In the end, in Pay As You Go mode, the internet costs for my friend would have been mere cents — exactly as much as the traffic used, not to mention that for the UK we have an excellent cheap EU+ internet package that would work both in Istanbul and London.
Yes, I didn’t say any of this at the time, but simply gifted her an MTX Connect voucher for €10, because no one, absolutely no one should find themselves without connectivity and end up spending enormous sums on luxury service they hadn’t planned to pay for. As Louis Pasteur once said, ‘Chance favors only the prepared mind’. I’ll add that saving money does too. So whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure, always be prepared, be safe, and be connected.
Tatiana,
MTX Connect Finance Operations Director