Customer Service

Starbucks Corp. and AT&T Inc. will start offering a mix of free and paid wireless Internet service in most of the international coffee retailer's U.S. shops, beginning this spring. The move announced Monday ends a six-year partnership with T-Mobile, which did not include free Wi-Fi and charged higher fees than AT&T will. Starbucks said it would give customers who use a Starbucks card two hours of free wireless access per day. More time than that will cost $3.99 for a two-hour session.

So let me ask you a question about the tip jar. I had a little thing with the calzone guy this week. I go to drop a buck in the tip jar and just as I am about to drop it in, he looks the other way. And then when I am leaving, he gives me this look [like] thanks for nothing. I mean if they don't notice it, what's the point? -- George Costanza, "Seinfeld," 1996 -- It may be a hand-painted tin can, a stray paper cup or a corporate-issue plexiglass cube, but it's becoming a fixture: the tip jar.

Buyers of this year's most advanced televisions might notice a curious new feature -- a little jack that connects the sets directly to the Internet. For now, the capabilities are modest. Viewers can't surf the Web as they can on their computers, but they can use their remote controls to get updated local weather forecasts, personalized stock quotes, on-demand access to a handful of TV shows such as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and thousands of YouTube videos.

U.S. airlines' on-time arrival rate in January was the worst for the month in three years as winter storms and increased traffic caused airport backups, a government report showed. About 72% of flights arrived within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, down from 73% in the same month last year.

Southwest Airlines temporarily grounded several dozen planes and canceled flights Wednesday as the nation's largest low-cost carrier was hit with its second safety inspection problem in a week. The Dallas-based airline said it was forced to cancel about 4% of Wednesday's flights as 38 of its oldest jetliners underwent 90-minute inspections. The action caused only minimal travel disruptions in Southern California, Southwest said. The extraordinary move to ground the planes came as Southwest faces a $10.2-million fine, one of the biggest ever, for allegedly failing to carry out mandatory inspections.

Dish Network Corp. said a failure in the launch of a satellite would result in delays in the introduction of some high-definition television channels, including local networks. The satellite is in a lower orbit than planned, Dish, the second-largest U.S. satellite-television company, said in a regulatory filing. The SES Americom AMC-14 satellite, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., appears to be functional, Dish said. Englewood, Colo.-based Dish, competing with larger rival DirecTV Group Inc., is adding the networks to generate increased revenue from customers and attract more affluent subscribers, who are less likely to cancel their subscriptions.

Opening day at Heathrow Airport's grand new Terminal 5 turned sour as severe baggage delays led to numerous flight cancellations, stranding irate passengers. British Airways, sole occupant of the mammoth new terminal, was finally forced to limit passengers to carry-on luggage, leaving many with the choice of rebooking their flights or seeking refunds. At one point, a flight left for Paris without any of its checked baggage in the hold, airline officials acknowledged.

Heathrow has always been the bad boy of European airports, an international crossroads that periodically morphs into a black hole of chaos and delay with no more provocation than a good English fog. Even by Heathrow's standards, though, the debut of the long-awaited Terminal 5 -- the spacious, $8.

U.S. airlines' on-time arrival rate rose in February as carriers experienced fewer glitches within their own operations, the Transportation Department reported. About 68.6% of flights arrived within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, up from 67.3% in the same month last year. Delays attributed to the carriers' operations fell to 7.1% of the total, from 8.2% a year earlier. The two biggest causes of delays were late-arriving planes, at 9.7%, and national aviation system delays, at 9.4%, the government said.

As more and more people drop their telephone land lines, the wireless industry faces a challenge: poor cellular coverage inside residences. To tackle it, companies are looking at providing devices that would essentially give customers their own, private cellular towers. The devices make cellphones work like cordless phones, connecting to a home base station called a femtocell ("femto" is a scientific term for something that is very small). The devices look much like home-computer wireless Internet routers.