The second biggest Starbucks complaint has now been remedied as the massive coffee chain has rolled out a mostly free Wi-Fi service courtesy of AT&T. Prior to this deal, Starbucks has an exclusive partnership with T-Mobile that had users paying upwards of $10 for a day of Internet service.
Here's how the new Starbucks "free Wi-Fi" plan works: Customers purchase a Starbucks Card, which is like a gift card to yourself, with a minimum of $5 on the card. Then you go online to register the card for the rewards program. The rewards program grants you up to two hours of consecutive access every day. The $5 on the card can be used to buy coffee, snacks or other goods from Starbucks.
The Catch
The Starbucks rewards program isn't limited to free Wi-Fi, either. The service is a couple months old and offers free syrup and milk as well as free refills for frequent buyers and more.
The catch for this service is that the rewards card has to be used at least once per month with a Starbucks purchase to keep the rewards active. AT&T will send you four solicitation e-mails per year.
This recent move reportedly comes after Starbucks' sales have been floundering due to the current state of the economy. With a ka-jillion different Starbucks locations worldwide, this isn't too bad of a deal for the workers with a mobile office. Now if they would just do something about that $4 coffee.
