Let me preface this by saying I am not a very tech savvy person. While some of my ex-colleagues with half a brain started businesses involving world class technologies, I decided to sell magazines. These guys are now rich beyond belief. I am still surrounded by magazines.
Where was I… oh yes, not tech savvy. So I don’t know the ins and outs of the available technologies. I am sure you guys could fill me in, but that is not the point of this post.
So what is the damn point of this post?
Free WiFi. Since our inception, we have offered free WiFi at all of our stores with seating capacity. We never really expected it to become such a big draw card, but we have become known for it. Some people even come in daily and use us as an office.
We have no problem with people using our free WiFi. That’s why we put it in. Duh Fred! Just like we allow and encourage browsing, you are welcome to use our bandwidth. However, I have copped more grief over our WiFi than any other part of our business.
People seem to forget that we are a business and eventually have to make at least some money. Otherwise, we close down and can’t offer you any WiFi. We have to pay for the bandwidth. Which we happily did. But then, usage rose to a level we didn’t anticipate. So, we increased our package, paid more per month, and were able to accommodate more usage. Within a short period, this too was regularly being used up, so we increased it again.
We now pay a large amount per month for free WiFi. I love that word Free. It ain’t free to me. I am not grudging this at all, but we often still go past our monthly limit, after which our speed slows down significantly. People use us for mass downloads and other anti-social activities. I have strongly resisted putting up signs in-store saying “Don’t do this and Don’t do that”. I don’t want a “don’t” ambience in any of our stores.
You have no idea how much abuse we cop as a result of our wireless being occasionally slow. It is super fast most of the time, but if a few wreck it for the rest by being inconsiderate in relation to their usage habits, me and the rest of my staff get yelled at. Or people get on the social media channels and say how crap we are.
This somewhat bemuses me. We are offering something for free, but we are still crap! Unfortunately, perception is reality when it comes to the online masses. If someone with influence tweets something about us, it is impossible to change the ripple effect of public opinion. And none of the hundreds of happy customers who each month use our free WiFi without any problems are likely to tweet something such as “used free WiFi at mag nation today. What generous souls they are for providing this service.”
We don’t really want this public acclaim either. We could however do without the abuse. In a customer facing industry, we are always going to get the occasional unsatisfactory interaction. Though we try, we can’t please everyone. But nothing is more frustrating than copping it for something good that we are trying to do.
I’m in awe that you offer free WiFi at all.
In most places it’s simply too much of a hassle, for exactly the reasons you point out.
Unfortunately I don’t really have any advice, but think of me as one of those people that really do appreciate that you can offer it, as it makes me want to hang around, and spend more of my paycheck on glossy paper.
We love you.
Interesting. Im on the road usually 4 days a week as I go from one apointment to the next, and often have a bit of downtime between appointments which I use to fire up the laptop and do some work. Usually I will end up at Cafes, and feel obliged to buy a coffee every 20 minutes. I dont mind, but I end up with an eye twitch by the time I leave, as I can really only handle one a day! – however, I feel very uncomfortable not purchasing from the cafe if Im taking up room AND I have my own modem! so Im not even using their wireless, not that many cafs in Bris offer this (another subject!). Im a bit shocked that people are taking advantage of your genorosity like that. Maybe dont make the area so comfortable? – less seats? – time limit? – booking a seat? you could jokingly make it a proviso that everyone using your wireless is obligated to twitter/facebook your praises, I would!. One thing Ive noticed is, even if you are doing people a favor, sometimes you still have to politely point it out, just in a clever way! Make it clear its a service you are generously providing.
By the way, I think what you are doing is great!
I’m in the same boat as Claire – I can’t sit at a cafe or a shop like MagNation and use something as generous as free internet without buying something for the privilege. I manage to get myself in to a state if I DON’T buy something. I just think it’s rude. I don’t go to my neighbours’ front yard and sunbake just because they have a patch of grass and I don’t. I’d chave to at least bake them a cake to earn that privilege. Besides, the coffee at MagN is damned fine!
Unfortunately, there will always be a__holes in the world and there’s nothing you can do about it. My advice is to focus your (positive) energy towards the ones who aren’t nasty to you. Don’t give these oxygen thieves any more attention than they deserve, not that they deserve any.
how about put up sign for some sort of restriction (no large download / p2p etc) or ask for donation towards your wifi cost to get people to think about their usage.
I guess just saying “DON’T”, it doesn’t sound nice, so have positive thing people can do – i.e. donate, or buy a coffee/food etc?
Or make people “uncomfortable” by making small talk, going around asking them how they are if they been there for a while so they know they are being “watched”
I used Magnation as an office for a week when I first moved to Melbourne about 7 months ago. It was a great place to work and I bought the $6 24 hour pass you used to sell. That worked for me great. I understand now that you don’t sell these anymore and it is all free. Stands to reason that some jerks of society would just use and abuse (and probably make a big mess with coffee cups and magazines while they are at it). It’s a pity you’re getting slack for this as I really appreciated being able to get my work done at Magnation while we were looking for a house. Now I just come in and spend silly amounts of cash on magazines… ahhh
Not enough free WiFi in this world (even those in the US and EU seem to be locking down their networks more and more – and theyre without caps), so pat yourself on the back for a job well done. what sort of bandwidth are we talking about? are people torrenting? im sure you can block ports etc if that’s the problem (i cant see how general surfing will eat your bandwidth!). anyways, nice job – now you’ll just need to install a cafe and WiFi in your ponsonby rd branch and i’ll be a happier chap.
Regarding what ‘nik riviera’ said above, it would definitely be worth getting someone to check out the capabilities of your router, because there are usually some handy features which allow blocking particular ports and so on. When I visit the local library with my laptop and use their wireless, I can only use it for regular web browsing, any other non-browser related applications which require the Internet but which do not use the standard web port simply can’t function. Bandwidth heavy applications such as some media sharing ones might have a hard time working. It’s not unreasonable to restrict users to *just* surfing the web when you are not charging.
Also, thinking about it, the library system requires an access code to be entered every 2 hours along with my library card number — they change the code daily. This sort of system might be something to consider in the future for MagNation. I’m thinking you could have a MagNation club or something similar, which customers can join for free and that gives them a unique membership number. You get a hold of their details for marketing purposes and perhaps keeping a track of them in case they get up to dodgy stuff on-line, and in return they can request the renewed-daily Internet access code when they need it.
As much as we all hate Telstra, they do have a $300pcm unlimited business plan that my employer recently implemented as we offer free WiFi to our customers as well. We had exactly the same issues with a free offering that was CONSTANTLY whinged about — unfortunately we just had to upgrade to avoid the ridicule.
There is a cafe stateside called Pannera that offers free wi-fi and has a lot of people running their businesses out of it – a similar situation to yours. But when signing into their wi-fi service, you first encounter a Panerra home page that asks you to acknowledge that you won’t hog a table or their bandwidth. Maybe that could be a way to at least encourage some people to behave.
What a huge sigh of relief I just let out.
I thought the slow wi fi was just my jurassic macbook giving up on me.
For every joe that complains think of all the jennys (and the GRATEFUL joes) that sing hallelujah for Magnation and your free wi fi.
Aside from being my idea of heaven on earth, Magnation is also the answer to an out-of-towner’s prayers! Whenever I come to Melbourne, I generally stay in the city, which means that I’m generally asked by Telstra to fork over my credit card details for a measly 30 mins of browsing time.
The fact that I can wander down to MN and check my mail at my leisure is
not only convenient, but so very generous and lovely of you. To be honest i’d even take DIAL-UP in severe times of desperation!
And not that I EVER need an excuse to blow $50 on Magazines…but the free internet sessions also mean that I never leave without some form of glossy under my arm, so well done!
You should ask one of your techie staff or resident IT consultant about restricting the actual bandwidth doled out per connection – so that instead of getting the full 2MBps, for example, every user gets only 256KBps. That’s enough for casual surfing and emailing but it’s too slow for most ‘downloading’. That plus a ‘welcome page’ with a notice not to suck bandwidth, as suggested above, could be good strategies.