30th Apr 2004
Starfucks
Had to check my email this evening, expecting an important work-related email, and for reasons I won’t get into I had my computer with me, so I went to a Starbucks. Previously I had bought into their WiFi plan when it was a debit account kind of thing, so you basically paid for minutes as you used them. At that time, I juiced up my account for $50, which I think was the basic option, and over the course of several months, I’d pop in and draw in down half and hour here and there as needed.
Now, they’ve got a new pricing plan, whereby you can only pay either $30/month subscription (I don’t use it nearly often enough for that) or $10 for a 24 hour period. I felt it was important enough that I had to pony it up, but not without deciding to blog about how angry I was about it.
I really don’t understand why the hell the charge for WiFi at all, frankly. I saw a story once — but can’t find it now — about how Starbucks actually loses money on WiFi, as the whole billing and support infrastructure is so time consuming for their partner T-Mobile that it’s a net loss. Why not just give it away free, on an as-is basis (i.e., no support), and just have a policy that people can’t sit at a table for more than half an hour or an hour without ordering something.
A cable modem or even a T1 line is a fairly negligible expense for one of their stores on a monthly basis, and the router is a one-time $100 fee. If it gets people in the door, buys goodwill and keeps them buying coffee, they’d have a lot more of a margin than pretending they’re a tech company selling $10 a pop for Net access for a margin (splitting it with a partner) much less than what they make than selling coffee and sandwiches.
Grrr.
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If it’s a nice day out, I just go to the nearest park and use the free WiFi access. I think every large park in the city has it. Just sit on a bench and log in… you can get a little color on your face while you work, plus no one can tell if you’re looking at porno because of the glare. -F