Use Starbucks card, get free WiFi deal starts today

At the risk of blasphemy, I'm writing this from my home office drinking a mug of WaWa coffee that I brewed myself. My well intentioned plan of rising early and hitting a local Starbucks to see if they indeed launched their new WiFi offering went amok, so I'll have to rely on the source. Let me see... yup! Right on the Starbucks website, they now detail the plan. Here's the skinny for those that prefer Skim Milk:

• Register a Starbucks pre-paid card online
• Use it at least one time per month for a purchase or a re-charge
• Get two consecutive hours of WiFi use in a single session
• Starbucks is working on allowing multiple sessions... stay tuned
• Your free two hours is good every day for 30 days after you've used / re-charged your Starbucks card
• You will need to agree to receive e-mails from AT&T and you will create an ID / password with AT&T

Not a bad deal if you hit Starbucks even once per month for a purchase. I still may get out to my Quakertown location later today to see if they're up and running. Some locations might not be ready yet, so be advised...

Comments

[Oliver]

Kevin, you say that it's "right on the Starbucks website", but really the URL you use is an AT&T (they acquired SBC) website:

https://secure.sbc.com/sblp_index.adp

In any case, thanks for the reminder. Now I have to really think hard about keeping my Sprint EVDO plan. With free WiFi access at some of my favorite coffee places and now Starbucks, the need for a dedicated EVDO plan for my laptop becomes less and less compelling. Of course, I am writing this from a restaurant that doesn't actually offer WiFi of any kind, so the EVDO card is coming in handy (but is it worth $45/month??).

[Oliver]

Gah! After going through the registration (the server seems to be really slow), it eventually told me:

-----------
There was an error processing your request, please try again.

We found recently used Card(s) registered to your Starbucks.com account.
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Kevin, did it work for you?

[ignar]

If this change means even more crowded store and no sitting tables, I'm not so happy.

[Scotty]

I've signed up and used it, worked fine for me. I've also got free WiFi through my AT&T HSDPA all-I-can-eat plan.

But the free Starbucks card WiFi was the final straw. I went to T-Mobile's page to put 'er down (after 68 months of reliable service) but amazingly it wouldn't let me pull the plug! I'll apparently have to call in and let some human spend 30 minutes trying to talk me out of it. :-(

[Janye]

Luckily, phoning in to cancel T-Mobile is a piece of cake...or at least it was for me. Rep was very pleasant, asked no questions, and processed request quickly.

[Janye]

By the way, is there an easy way to find which Starbucks locations are actually serving wi-fi via registered Starbucks cards?
Thanks