In case you were wondering why people in your office had tear stained makeup yesterday, it was most likely due to the fact that their beloved realm of all things holy and caffeinated betrayed their trust and belittled their devotion.
Starbucks announced yesterday that it was altering its rewards program from quantity of transactions to quantity of dollars.
In the old program, customers could achieve gold status after making 30 transactions in a year's time, and reap rewards (as in a free drink) after 12 additional transactions.
According to CNN, customers will earn 2 stars for every dollar spent, but will have to earn 300 stars ($150) before receiving the gold status, and must earn 125 stars ($62.50) for the free drink.
On paper it might seem like a great deal, but we're going to put it in terms you might understand.
A grande pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks costs $5.25 in New York City... yes, it's one of the most expensive drinks on the menu without additional costs.
In the new plan, you will have to purchase 29 pumpkin spice lattes to achieve gold status. Then, you will have to purchase an additional 12 in order to get one for free.
Seems similar to the old program right? But that's when someone spends $5.25 a day for a cup of coffee. In our humble (rather broke) opinions, that's pretty insane.
For those of us who drink less extravagant, less expensive, and less fattening drinks like, say a grande cup of coffee, black, is about $2.25.
We'll have to order 67 grande coffees before we can reach gold status, and then an additional 28 cups of coffee in order to get a drink for free.
Essentially, for those of us who could do the math, we're paying $62.50 just to get our free $2.25 cup of coffee rather than a mere $27 with the old program.
Cue ensuing outrage on social media regarding the favoritism for people who order fattening, overpriced frappuccinos and cake pops, while depreciating the devotion of the little guy...
Starbucks, however, responded to the outrage to Fortune, stating:
"By evolving our loyalty program to reward customers on both frequency of visits and total purchase--as well as unlock new ways in which customers can earn stars both inside and outside of Starbucks, we will increase the overall value of the program as customers will be able to earn stars just as fast, if not faster, than they currently do today."
We're not so sure if we can agree with that, Starbucks... especially when one crunches the numbers, which, as you can see, we did.
The new rewards plan goes into effect in April, when all of your current points will apparently be multiplied by 11. These are just some of the responses to the Starbucks loyalty price gouging.
[anad]
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