False Advertising

I work in a part of Tampa that is ripe with free WiFi. It's great, I can head over to Panera on my break and log in. There's a great restaurant, The Wine Exchange, that also has WiFi (but you have to ask them). The combination of great food and surfing the web while dining solo can't be beat.

Then, of course, there is Indigo. I've spent many a break blogging and surfing while enjoying a cup of Indigo Indulgence. The only thing that had been lacking is something more than sweet nibbles. I wasn't a fan of their wraps because they used that disgusting Miracle Whip. (I've been corrected, though, they now have a new supplier).

A new place opened a few doors down, JJ Smoothy Cafe. I was excited, because they had wraps and salads. They also advertised "Free WiFi" on the window. Cool, sign me up.

The first time I went in, I got a really large, pretty enjoyable Southwest Wrap-and no signal. I kept pinging and pinging, but no routers came up except for secured ones. The owner suggested I switch seats in the place and still, no signal. I got the excuse "oh, the router's acting strange". Meanwhile, I thought to myself that if you're advertising having something, damn it, make sure it's working.

A couple of weeks later, I tried again. I got the same four or five secured routers and the person working gave me another lame excuse. That day, I hadn't plunked down nine bucks for a meal (that usually feeds me twice), so I wasn't as irritated, but I walked over to Indigo and got myself a Vitamin Water-and the bandwidth they promise and always deliver.

Today, I gave it a third shot. I went over to JJ Smoothy because I wanted a sandwich. I ordered and sat down and fired up the laptop. FIVE minutes of refreshing the network list came up with one unsecured network (Pancho, two bars) and three to five secured routers. I asked the young guy behind the counter what the name of their router was-because I wasn't finding it.

He came over and asked what I was coming up with . This is a bad sign- you don't know the name of your router? He said the signal was better at some seats three tables away (whaaaa?), so I moved over. In fact, I got less signal there than I'd been getting at the first seat-all secured.
In an open room, ten feet is not going to make that much of a difference.

The young man went outside to ask the owner about the router and comes to find THEY HAVE NO ROUTER!!!! Apparently, they seem to think that people will keep coming back and think their router is down.

My laptop travels everywhere. I even have a neat way of hijacking bandwidth that Ed found on youtube (take an ethernet cable and wrap it tightly around your cell phone-two more bars!). The thing with using WiFi any and every place you go is that you know what to look for. You know to ask what the router name is. I'm not a fool-if you don't know your router name, you don't have a damn router.

Nope, not going back to JJ Smoothy. I got the sandwich to go and headed back over to Indigo for a Vitamin Water. I don't care how badly I am hankering for a wrap or a salad-I'll drive my car somewhere else long before I walk through THAT door again. So, be warned, if you're in South Tampa and need a WiFi signal, JJ Smoothy promises one, but doesn't deliver.




ETA: Apparently, Peter, a student at University of Tampa and probably an employee at the JJ Smoothy in question does not like the blog entry I've written. Peter, I guess the truth hurts so much that you have to question my sexual orientation AND threaten me with performing sexual acts on you. That's okay, I'll drop by JJ Smoothy and UT. It shouldn't be too hard to track you down-your IP address IS logged with Sitemeter, even if you don't see it.

Then again, maybe I should open up my sitemeter so everyone can see your IP address? Your comment is being left up so all can see it(for now, anyway).
The email notifying me of each of your comments are saved. It's going to be a lot of fun explaining that to UT and your boss! You DID sign a code of conduct when you enrolled in UT, right? It's not too difficult to go to the IT department with the IP address and have them locate you, Peter.