Dark side of Starbucks app: Coffee giant accused of rigging payments to the tune of nearly $900 million over 5 years | Fortune
Dark side of Starbucks app: Coffee giant accused of rigging payments to the tune of nearly $900 million over 5 years | Fortune
Washington Consumer Protection Coalition complains to Washington state attorney general.
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This sounds like bullshit. When your card empties you can pay the rest with a credit card or cash. Starbucks doesn’t force you to reload a card, or use the card for the entire transaction price. You can even move your gift card balance to the app to consolidate multiple gift cards if you have trouble keeping up with multiple cards.
When I use the app it forces me to reload my balance, I can’t just pay what is owed. I support this investigation. Starbucks is basically forcing you to always leave a portion of unspent money on in your “Starbucks” account.
This is not my experience with the app. When the balance on my card runs out, they tell me, “it says you still owe x” and then I can pay that with a credit card.
Edit: I’m specifically talking about using the app to pay at the counter though, not to order ahead.
Chick-fil-a does this to me via online / abead orders but does let me use a credit card if I’m doing it in store. I assume Starbucks is the same.
And yet they still claimed an average of $180,000,000 a year the past 5 years that people didn’t spend.
I’m with you this is something Starbucks probably doesn’t engineer, it’s just people being dumb.
It’s definitely a dark pattern built into the app / gift card experience.
Kind of. The app doesn’t in any way tell you that you can use the card balance to pay part of your bill and then use a credit card for the rest; I only found out when a barista told me
Does this include people that just use their Starbucks cards for frequent purchases? I always have up to $25 on my card for the one or two times a week I get something. That is just money I haven't spent yet, and I'm fully aware that I could just use it up if I stopped going to Starbucks.
Well… as someone who thinks he spends more money at Starbucks than is smart I’d go as far to say anyone going there is a little dumb lol