"Free Internet Access" Should Be FREE!

OK, just a little bit of help here for you coffee shops and cafés out there.

If you advertise free internet access, then make it free.

Don’t make people spend the time to park their car, find a space, walk into your place, buy some stuff, sit down, fire up the laptop and then;

1. Have your internet access down.
2. Make us jump through 8 hoops “registering” to use your internet access.
3. Require us to sign up with T-Mobile or some other phone provider.

By requiring customers to jump over all these hurdles you essentially are making them pay for your internet access with their time and summarily pissing them off.

For example I go to Caribou Coffee and fully endorse them. It’s easy, I go in, turn on the laptop, plug in and I’m on the internet. Pretty much every other place you will have to go through trials and tribulations just to get maybe 15 minutes of “free” internet access.

Additionally, view it this way. Internet access is an amenity, like your furniture. Yet you don’t make us register or have a T-Mobile account to sit on the couch. You don’t make me register if I have to use the bathroom. So if you want us to have a pleasurable experience at your venue, how about you cut it with the 6^th grade games and make your internet access genuinely free.