MacBook Pro Retina stopped detecting wifi network in one location.

Question

Hey everyone, experiencing kind of a weird problem and was hoping someone would be able to help.   I was doing some studying at a Starbucks, connected to their WiFi network when randomly my computer lost connection to their network and was no longer able to detect that it even exists. I was worried this was some sort of problem with my wifi card as it could no longer detect any networks nearby, where as before it was detecting multiple networks in the area of the Starbucks. Oddly i was still able to connect to the network on both my iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Upon returning home I was relieved to find that I was still able to connect to my home wifi network. Since then i've been to many locations with my laptop but not once had an issue connecting to or detecting wifi networks, with the exception being at that Starbucks location. I've returned many times hoping that the problem would somehow fix itself, and that maybe it was just a problem with their network, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be that for whatever reason something happened to the MacBook pro while I was at that Starbucks location that has caused it to no longer detect the wifi networks there, and only there.  One possibility could be the I updated Mountain Lion to the 10.8.2 supplemental update while there, but I don't see how that would cause the problem. If anyone has any ideas as to a solution that would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I considered the network hog point, but I don't believe that I was using any excessive amounts of bandwidth. Also, because I can no longer detect any networks at the Starbucks location (not just the Starbucks network) I don't believe that this is the problem. Also, when I updated the operating system I was sure to disconnect from wifi first, I had already downloaded the update on my home network, just had yet to restart to install it, so my security shouldn't have been an issue either.  How exactly can I go about masking my MAC address so I could double check to see if it was the network issue?
Oh, also, I booted into Windows 7 via boot camp and for some reason Windows is also unable to detect any networks while at Starbucks as well, which is even more confusing.  I don't know if it's worth mentioning, but I bought this MacBook pro retina in Canada and am now in There UK for school. I've heard that north American macs don't play well with one of the network channels that is commonly used over here, so that also may play a role in all of this. But considering that I was able to consistently use their wifi for a couple weeks with no issue, I don't see how that could be the problem. As far as WEP encrypted goes, the network is unsecured so I don't believe that's the problem.
Thanks for the response, I appreciably appreciate it!