Coffee shops taking free wifi off the menu

[thewayne]

I have no problem with this. The issue is that people are going in, buying one $2 cup of coffee, and spending the day there on their laptop. It's turning off other customers, it's hurting revenue for the coffee shop. I've used coffee shop wifi before, but I'll order more than a $2 cup, I don't freeload. The article mentions some jerk who brings in a DESKTOP COMPUTER and hogs a table all day!

I don't have the link, but the Slashdot thread had some great suggestions, such as your receipt prints a voucher code for 30/60 minutes of free wifi (apparently some Burger Kings do this), but I can see that might be difficult to integrate for smaller operations.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cafe-wifi-20100808,0,1079612,full.story

Comments

[beeyochkitty.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of an old SNL skit called "People who ruined it for the rest of us", and featured the first woman who started driving off without paying for gas & stuff like that. I don't remember most of the others, but it was great (and ended with Christopher Walken as the guy who picks up hitchhikers & kills them. Only Walken could make that funny, lol)

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I remember that skit! IIRC, Chris Farley would go to a stranger's house, ask to use the bathroom, then whiz all over it.

There was another comment in Slashdot about a group of scrapbookers who would go in to a coffeeshop, I think they mentioned Starbucks, and basically take it over. They'd gather a bunch of tables together, occupy them for hours, and just a few of them would get coffee.

It's a commercial enterprise, not a community center!

[silveradept]

This is both interesting and disappointing. How many of those permanent campers know they could just trek down to the library and set up there - the bandwidth might not be the greatest, and the seating may not be the best, but you won't get the stink-eye for being there the whole time. (You will, however, be unceremoniously herded outside at closing time.)

[donkey-hokey.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. there's several coffeeshops (locally owned) that I keep a mental list of, where I can get free wifi. When I go, not only do I order something that costs more than a bottle of water, I also leave a generous tip. And I will make sure to get more than one drink. The combination of these seem to keep the baristas happy.

OTOH, I see plenty of people showing up and sitting outside, where it's tougher to track them, and basically leech the free wifi.