Friday, February 20, 2009

Why can't foreigners use free wifi in Starbucks?

Gord Sellar is encouraging people to send a message to Starbuck's, letting them know that foreigners are prohibited from using the free wifi offered in South Korea's locations. Visitors wishing to use the service must login with a national ID number, though foreigners' ID numbers are incompatable with this and many other Korean websites. Gord calls it "discriminatory":
The fact it results from laziness or bad coding or whatever is one thing: the fact it has gone unaddressed although shop staff are aware of it — meaning its a zero-priority issue, where if the connection went down completely, for everyone, it would be a higher priority — makes it discriminatory.

And plus, it's, like, a foreign company to begin with.

* Update: Problem solved?

2 comments:

Bobby McGill said...

Gord calls it as it is... welcome to korea.

Check out my column in the Herald today. Hopefully the final chapter on Mad Bull.

Good blog you got here, man.

Bobby
http://www.idlewordship.com

yunho chung said...

I am well aware that non-koreans living in korea are having big difficulties. I am not the responsible person for this mess but I do feel sorry.