Originally Posted by Efrem

As I understand it from this New York Times article, when you use your prepaid Starbucks card for at least $2 (not difficult) you get two hours a day free for a month. (Not sure if that's 30 days, the rest of the calendar month, or how they define it.) Granted, if you buy a $2.10 coffee once a month and use the wi-fi every day, that's a losing proposition, but so are a lot of things when you look only at the customer way out in the tail of the distribution. I think they figure that, anyone who (a) has a Starbucks pre-paid card, (b) comes into a Starbucks to use the wi-fi and (c) comes back to use it again is probably going to buy something a lot of the time. And if they lose money on a few free-loaders here and there - that's not much different from airlines losing money on a few FTers doing mileage runs here and there, is it?