Surprise, surprise. Customers are angry at Starbucks for changing their rewards program. If they would just take 2 minutes to do the math, they would discover that it is basically the exact same program.
Here’s the deal. Beginning in April, customers will no longer receive one point or “star” per visit to Starbuck’s. Instead, they will receive 2 stars for every dollar spent. Not so bad right?
This is where people are getting angry. Right now customers receive a “gold” status once they have earned 30 stars in a year. Gold members then get a free food or beverage product after earning an additional 12 stars.
When the new system launches, customers will have to earn 300 stars (which is the equivalent of $150) to reach gold status.
But lets take a moment and see how different this program really is. We’ll start with the old way and figure that the average coffee at Starbucks is $5 a piece. This means that after buying one coffee per visit at 30 visits (one star per visit)… that would be $150 spent to earn gold status. Then to get free food, you have to have 12 stars, at one star per visit and $5 a cup, that’s $60. Keep in mind that on the old way, you only got 1 star per visit. So if you brought a friend with you and bought their coffee, you would get one star for $10. With the new way, you will get 20 stars for that same $10.
Now lets do the math with the new way. You get 2 stars per $1 spent. So you spend $150 to get 300 stars to become a gold member. Then you need 125 stars to get free food, which means that you have to spend $63 to get free food. In other words…. give or take a few bucks, its the exact same thing.
The people that will actually be effected by this are the ones who spend less than $5 on coffee. Keep in mind… this is a bonus program that Starbucks does not have to offer at all.
