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Starbucks Web Site Overwhelmed By Users Seeking Free Wi-Fi

by Will Safer on June 4, 2008 at 05:11 PM



Starbucks customers looking to get their Wi-Fi fix along with a caffeine kick found themselves stymied for a few hours yesterday while the Web site the coffee company set up to handle free wireless Internet access buckled under the influx of new jittery customers.

The ubiquitous coffee retailer announced this Spring that it would be switching its in-store Wi-Fi access from a paid model with T-Mobile to a free membership model, with a few caveats, with AT&T. The coffee chain will be rolling out implementation of the AT&T hotspots throughout 2008.

Customers wanting to take advantage of the Wi-Fi access -- two hours a day in exchange for buying one cup of coffee (or another item) per month -- need to first purchase a rewards card for $5. Not a bad deal.

For much of the morning, visitors to the rewards site were met by a pop-up window stating "Due to overwhelming interest in Card Rewards we are currently experiencing difficulty accessing Starbucks Card accounts. We are working to fix the problem and ask that you please try again later." The problem was fixed by midday Pacific Coast Time. Starbucks took the blame on this, saying AT&T had nothing to do with the site not working properly.

Who out there in Switched Land is using this new Wi-Fi access? Or do you just go to Starbucks for the hot Java? [Source: Yahoo! News]

Tags: ATT, free access, FreeAccess, Starbucks, WiFi

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