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.