Edit: as of this morning, February 9th, whatever glitch they were experiencing has been repaired. So props to the local establishment, but still scratching my head that the national helpline considers this place outside of their purview.

Driving back from a visit to New York City and parts south this last week, I was overtaken by a blizzard which caused all sorts of havoc throughout New England. I stopped at a Motel 6 in Milford, CT, just a little bit down the road from where there was a horrific bus crash about an hour later. It’s been blizzarding all day, and I’m glad I made the choice to hole up rather than to proceed.

My experiences at Motel 6 around the country have been almost uniformly good, except for one nightmare in Toledo, Ohio which I won’t go into here. This particular property is very nice, more upscale than most I have stayed at. But for some reason, I was unable to connect to their Wi-Fi.

My cell phone detected Wi-Fi signal and connected all right, but when I went to the login page to enter my code, what I got is this:

This webpage is not available

ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

Details

A secure connection cannot be established because this site uses an unsupported protocol or cipher suite. This is likely to be caused when the server needs RC4, which is no longer considered secure.

I explained the situation to the desk clerk, and he told me that he was aware of the problem, and that the location had recently installed new equipment. He was, however, unable to help me solve the problem.

I thought I would give the national feedback line a try, and sent them an email via their website. They responded promptly and suggested that I call their Wi-Fi hotline; unfortunately, the phone number they gave me was for Resorts World Bimini. After another exchange, in which I got the correct number (a single digit was transposed), I called said helpline only to be informed that I was staying at an “unsupported property.”

That makes no sense to me, but it appears that not all Motel 6s are created equal. Apparently if you want tech support, you can’t be staying at a franchise location. At least that’s what the lady on the other end of the line told me.

So no Netflix for me tonight. With luck, the weather will permit me to get back to Maine tomorrow.

The Old Wolf has spoken (via 4G).