Oi WiFi

If you're trying to make a credit card purchase then you should have no problems. Foreign debit cards do not work in Brazil for anything other than ATM withdrawls on your account. That's probably why your having the problem.

Cheers,
William James Woodward, EB Experts Team

I'm trying to use my credit card. The message says refused, but it's not visa that's refusing it. There was no request made from Oi.

After spending time on the phone with oi three days in a row, I have found out that their system for accepting funds is down and apparently has been down for several weeks. Not only that, but oi and vex are merging and they have two separate systems that their customer service department is not aware of. When this fiasco started on Friday, oi was unable to figure out why my credit card wasn't being accepted, they gave me a voucher, which would not work. So they gave me another voucher, which still did not work. For some reason, they could not see my account, even though I was logged in. After spending time on the phone with a nice gentleman who really wanted to figure out what was going on, I walked him through the login process. He was quite surprised to find out that I was logged into a different system that he was using, which is why the vouchers were not working. He created me an account on the other system and I was able to get in. However, that system only offers a month to month account, not by the hour or day or month. I didn't want to try setting up a month to month account, because I don't want to get into a situation where I can't cancel it, which is an outcome that seems likely, considering how broken their system seems to be. I called back later and talked to another gentleman who informed me the system for taking payments is not working and hasn't been for several weeks. It took three days for someone to figure that out!?!?!

Sigh. I wouldn't be wasting time on this if the hotel wifi was working. It has been down all day today. I love brazil, but times like this, it drives me crazy.

I thought I would update this thread about OI Wifi. Since I was not able to get it to accept my visa, I brought a mastercard to see if that made a difference. Amazingly, it worked. I was able to purchase wifi and I was able to connect with my phone and laptop.

I called Oi to let them know there is a problem with their ability to accept visa as payment. Oi was not able to find my account! I gave them the username and they could not find it. Even though the account has billing and usage history, they could not find it. They created a new account for me. I tried to log in and I could not access it. I have never encountered an ISP / Telco with such a broken website.

I purchased a 30 day wifi pass so I will leave it at that. Oi has a lot of wifi hotspots, but if my experience is anything like everyone else's, they are losing a lot of revenue because of their broken infrastructure.