It has been almost three weeks since I posted this rant about how I believed Starbucks Rewards was becoming less appealing each year since its release in 2008. Today, I received some welcome news from Starbucks. You can view the new Starbucks Rewards program here: http://www.starbucks.com/rewardsfaster.
I’ve copied this and pasted it below:
For starters, rewards are now redeemable for food or drinks. It’s still more of a value to redeem your coupon for a Venti Mocha Frappuccino with Whip versus a $2.95 Breakfast Sandwich but it’s nice to have more options.
You now earn a free item every 12 transactions instead of 15. This was a big deal to me because the barrier to gold was 30 stars yet you had to earn 15 to get a free reward. My thought was either make gold higher to achieve or make rewards easier. It’s like buying a $30,000 car and having to spend $15,000 for tires. One should cost more or the other should cost less.
The 30 star requirement is unchanged to renew gold for the next year.
Starbucks is finally allowing us to redeem our rewards via our card or mobile payment application. No longer do you have to get a postcard in the mail and remember to bring it with you when you when you visit Starbucks.
Starbucks is removing the free Soy & Syrup deal. Did anyone actually ever use this? I only drink black coffee so I didn’t before. Maybe not enough customers knew about this? I know on one occasion I was charged for Soy and had to say I’m gold during ordering in order to get the discount. Maybe the POS system never worked with it at the time the card was scanned? I’m not sure.
The tall drink with whole bean purchase was cool. A tall coffee is easy and costs pennies. Give me a tall drip coffee when I order beans. I think that’s pretty cool. Maybe people were getting lattes and that takes time and more money? I’m not honestly sure but it’s a shame this is going away. A customer is buying a pound of coffee to take home and you’re giving them coffee that’s brewed in-store and showing them what they’ll be missing by brewing at home.
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Two steps forward and one step back. There are nice changes but these two things going away just shows us that Starbucks can’t fully commit to giving a crap about the most loyal customers. I’ll keep visiting Starbucks but, as I’ve said before, Starbucks’ rewards program isn’t worth the effort. It won’t win any new customers and it won’t help retain any new customers. It’s just a way for our favorite coffee company to save credit card transaction fees with some simple incentives.
Starbucks Melody (not a Starbucks Employee) weighed in. Her last section of the post as best and it aligns with what I’m saying here. Long term customers won’t care about these changes but it does simplify things.