The world is changing a little too fast. There was a time when people were decent, when you could walk into one of eight different Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) coffee shops in any given square mile in America and know you had a comfortable place to sit and look at Facebook pages of ex-girlfriends for at least six hours. Or you could follow a selection of eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) auctions that you’ll never spend money on. Or you can just pretend you’re typing a grand opus when you’re actually posting angry comments on YouTube.
It didn’t matter — the free wireless was plentiful and the baristas were content to ignore you. No, not everyone knew your name, but it still was home. A home where you could pay around two-and-a-half times what you would at a gas station for a burnt cup of coffee that had been made three hours before you arrived. It was a more civilized age.
But that age is over.
According to Starbucks Gossip (via Gawker), America’s most recognizable chain of coffee shops has had it up to here with the wireless Internet leeches that buy one cup of coffee and then stay for a full day. Multiple customers in New York City have complained that Starbucks management is covering electrical outlets to prevent laptop users from keeping their devices charged over the hours they spend in the shop. An anonymous commenter on the site confirmed the move was corporate policy, saying the New York Starbucks leadership team approved the outlet covering because “some people can’t be reasoned with.”
That there are scads of customers coming into Starbucks and not spending very much money can’t surprise the company too much. After recovering from a major slump in 2009, when the company had to close 900 stores in the country and the stock plummeted below $10 for the first time since 2001, Starbucks was resurgent in 2010. Shares climbed back above pre-’08 crash levels and the company expanded into new markets, opening stores in Hungary and other countries for the first time. Then it announced in June 2010 that its big plan to keep the good times rolling was to offer free WiFi at every location for all smartphone and laptop users. It was a big partnership with AT&T (NYSE:T) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), the latter of whom built Starbucks a brand-new, entertainment-rich Web portal.
What Starbucks didn’t account for was the massive increase in consumers with Internet-capable devices in their pockets. Laptop sales might have been disappointing in the past 12 months, but Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) alone sold 1.1 million MacBook Air laptops between November and December 2010. That company also sold nearly 15 million iPads last year. Nearly 300 million smartphones were sold last year. Starbucks, meanwhile, gave these millions of consumers a place where they could access the Web on these devices hassle-free. What did they think was going to happen?
Unfortunately for the company, Starbucks can’t backtrack and take the free Wi-Fi away. It would be a PR fiasco. It can, however, do what Panera (NASDAQ:PNRA) does and just limit Web usage to a half-hour. That should at least limit the number of squatters stopping cash flow.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
