Tue 3 Jun 2008
Finally! Free WiFi at Starbucks, but There’s a Catch
Posted by Caroline on Crack under Los Angeles, Other -
Starting today, Starbucks is offering two hours of free wireless Internet, courtesy of AT&T, to its customers. (Bye bye, T-Mobile.) And I don’t know how much any of you care about this but I LOVES it considering I’m addicted to the nonfat vanilla latte and am currently “borrowing” my neighbors’ WiFi.
But before you rejoice, it’s a whole thing to get the free WiFi. You have to buy a Starbucks Reward Card ($5 minimum that you can use toward a purchase of whatever — coffee, scone, breakfast sammich) and sign up for the free WiFi at Starbucks.com while registering that card for the rewards program. (New rewards members get a voucher for a free drink.)
Thing is, the free service is only good for one two-hour session per day, meaning you can’t use 30 free minutes here and 30 free minutes the next day and so on. But then again, who’s going to go online for only 30 minutes? Oh, and you have to use the card at least once a month to keep it active. BAH! So many rules!
BTW, if you’re currently an AT&T broadband/wireless data customer, you can use your existing AT&T account info at Starbucks and don’t have to purchase the card. iPhone users say “Hooray!” If you don’t want to get embroiled in the whole rewards program, you can purchase two hours of WiFi time for $3.99.
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Hasn’t this been true for awhile, as I heard you could do the once a month card thing for months now? Is it just that now it’s ATT?
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
It came up in February of this year but then mysteriously vanished in May. http://www.macworld.com/article/133321/2008/05/iphonewifi2.html And now is back again. Hopefully to stay.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I thought the 2 hours was per day, not per card or something like that. The session runs per day, once started, so 1 session per day is pretty good, eh?
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Yeah the session is per day. One 2-hour session. That’s pretty good to me.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Can you use more than one card? Say, if you use 2 hrs on one card then 2 hrs on a second card? Or purchase a second drink?
June 5th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I guess, if you register for two different cards with two different contact info you could. But also I think $3.99 for two hours ain’t so bad.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
ah I understand now. thank you for clearing that up.
June 8th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Wow, your poor neighbor if they are reading this site!! HAhaa well maybe next monday when the 3G iphone zombie kit comes out!