Remember the promise of 2 hours of free Wifi for Starbucks visitors thanks to the recent acquisition of T-mobile’s HotSpot locations by At&t?  Well in case you forgot the details have shifted and skewed quite a bit, but the ink has finally dried on the fine print.  Unfortunately the 2 hours of free Wifi access must be consecutive and in order to even gain access you must purchase a Starbucks card.  The rules do not stop here, the Starbucks card must be preloaded with at least $5 and you must use the card at least once per month in order for the card to remain active.  Oh we almost forgot that you must register your Starbucks card online if you even want to start thinking about your 2 hours of free consecutive Wifi.

At this point you are probably rolling your eyes wondering why both with Starbucks free Wifi and we could not agree with your more.  With falling stock prices, this latest attempt by Starbucks to win over customers through some fine print Wifi access is simply not doing it for us.  While we are not fans of paying for Wifi, free Wifi with a lengthy list of requirements hardly seems fair.  It is too bad Starbucks did not take a page from McDonald’s book and simply print an access code on your receipt with a login and password, but then again many of us have a problem spending 5 dollars on a frappucino.