OPEN THREAD conversation-starter: Where are the pay-it-forward stories this year?

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any Starbucks drive-thru pay-it-forward stories this year. A few years ago, they were everywhere and I wondered if they were being manufactured by Starbucks PR. Do you have any pay-it-forward tales to report from this holiday season? Tell us -- or discuss anything else in the week-before-Christmas OPEN THREAD. || Jump to the third page of comments.

Comments

[James Connolly]

Simphony either flat out crashes twice a day every day at my store or so thoroughly screws up that it might as well have crashed.

It was completely worth the time, money, and training to swtich.

Wait, who am I kidding no one in my area other than managers got a bit of training on Simphony until the day it popped up like some kind of work-related incurable STI.

[newbie no more (was sbuxnewbie)]

The tez prices in NE, after tax:
Tall, grande: $2.11
Venti: $2.54

Our add shot of espresso has been $0.70 for more than a year - I noticed that in northern California they were $0.55 in May, but $0.70 in November, so maybe some things really did equalize.

I wonder if tea prices will change here, too. Anyone else in Boston Remote notice any recent changes?

[Hipsterdufus]

lattedumb and easypissy need to calm down.

you guys are both saying the same thing but yet getting angry about it because you are referring to different sets of people as management.

Does anyone remember the years (about 3+ years ago) when we'd have TONS of holiday merchandise left over and it just set on the shelf post christmas and went clearance over and over again.

I am personally glad those days are over. Merchandise is one of the lowest profit items and when you have to clearance it you sometimes LOOSE money on it (depending on how long you have it)

Also, SBux upper management has to place orders for holiday merch FAR in advanced so that it can be manufactured. As you know we are the only ones who carry our specific merchandise. So in some ways it's a guessing game. Do we know a year from now is the economic recovery is going to be strong?

[easypeasy]

@latteDUH starbucks,not management. You just wanted to wine. Get the facts straight. People just come here to complain, but they (you)don't have any idea about the truth. You were blaming store managers for not ordering correctly. It's all here in black and white. Managers were ordering. starbucks was not supplying. Yes, name call to make yourself look better. It worked in 7th grade too!

[spence]

Tall and grande teas are the same price in the southeast (or my store anyway.) I checked.

[sw6blues]

Last time the pay it forward phenom happened at my drive-through it went on for 30-45 minutes through a constant line. A car requesting a handful of gift cards took the steam out of it.

[perky shift]

About teas: tall and grande are the same price (1 tea bag), venti price is higher (two tea bags).
But if a customer only wants 1 tea bag in a venti cup. You ring it up as a tall(or grande) IN a venti cup.
Check your custom buttons (the second page of the custom buttons).
It has buttons like upside down, in a grande cups (for tall coffees in a grande cup for room), double cup, etc.

[tired]

@perky shift, as I stated, talls and grandes are NOT the same price in my area. Believe me, I sell enough teas a day to know this. Obviously, this is different depending on where you are.

[javagirl666]

Teas are no longer the same price for tall/grande. They are figuring in the extra time it takes for you to fill a grande cup with hot water..swear. And James, about Simphony training..trust me, as a manager, we were in the same boat as all of the rest of the partners, except we had to come in an hour early the DAY OF LAUNCH to change over scanner cables and ohone the HELP desk to make sure there weren't any problems.

[Melody]

@javagirl, perkyshift, and tired:

Not a hot tea drinker here, and I haven't asked my local baristas about the pricing of tea, but I did genuinely think that tea is priced by the bag and not cup size. As recently as today, that is what MSI moderators are reporting:

http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/ideaview?id=08750000000HBQOAA4

The link in my name goes to that MSI idea.

[newbie no more (was sbuxnewbie)]

Melody-

It looks like the tea prices are different depending on the region. Spence and I are on the east coast, although I'm northeast and he's southeast, and we've confirmed that tall and grande are the same price.

I don't know where tired and javagril666 are, but they have different prices.

Perky shift is stating the case the same way I remember it since the change in tea bags, but i don't know his/her location, or if this is based on the prices at register, or just memory.

[tired]

I had stated that I am in the NW. I don't know why tall and grande teas are different prices, but I stand by what I see on the cash register every day: $1.95 for a Tall; $2.15 for a Grande. (I can't remember the price for a Venti--#2.25, I think.)

[Waltie]

I can state without a doubt that in my store all three tea sizes ring up as three different prices. Why this wouldn't be true everywhere is beyond my ability to comprehend.

[latteteadah]

@easy - deflect as you wish, but you're the one who started in with the name calling/changing and presuming people where saying things that they weren't. I was NOT talking about micro-level management, but again, you're reading what you want to because you're the one who came here to wine and complain.
My point was about business sense - SB would have a hit on its hands, but they ran out of inventory. That's not smart, and you work for a company that doesn't make smart decisions along those lines. Deal with it, and move on already. You've already bored the other posters with your fake vitriol.

[usorthem3]

I did notice that the price on SKU Iced Starbucks Double shot has risen since we first started using it a month ago.
Venti Hot tea is $2.54 here, grande/tall is @2.11 but I haven't checked since the POS launched. The could have changed the tall size price.
So any ideas why French Roast was the next choice for Via? I would have thought Verona, i.e. Valentines day. Are all the whole bean coffees going to end up going away to be replaced with a wall of VIA in every flavor? With the flavored Via you could already have vending machines popping up on Interstates across the country that will dispense a SBUX product. Would this dilute the brand or improve it's image?

[thinkbeforetyping]

@latteduh you are just making yourself look foolish. You are a customer who is clueless about how anything works. Stop while you are ahead. oh wait.

[zombified]

This happened to me only once, out of the 30489892 times I've gone to a Starbucks drive-thru.

[Melody]

[quote=Waltie]"I can state without a doubt that in my store all three tea sizes ring up as three different prices. Why this wouldn't be true everywhere is beyond my ability to comprehend." [/quote]

It can't be that hard to comprehend. ? Two big current reasons why there may be a lack of uniformity place to place. (1) Occasionally Starbucks does have small regional variations in what they do - Black & White cookies only in a few states, little things ... (2) Testing. This is a big reason for variation. I've heard of stores that credit "stars per drink" totally because of rewards testing.

I get your point that usually things are uniform, but if a customer came in and said to you, "Waltie I want to try the Sugar Free Mocha" you might not know that is currently in testing in two different states. I wouldn't assume, if I were you, that the customer is out to lunch.

I only respond strongly because those are really strong words you used, and there are idiosyncrasies to Starbucks at times.

By the way, when the deep south did the "Classic tea test" this summer, I believe their teas rang up as a different price than elsewhere.

[I.Heart.Spirit]

I REALLY hope this new SFMocha being tested tastes much better than that tar we had before! Eek!

[usorthem3]

@I.Heart>Spirit ha ha ha I said the SF Mocha we had before was like hair dye. Get that stuff on your skin and it stained. Joyous whichever freaking holiday you celebrate if any at all!

[Crema_the_Crop]

Regarding all Xmas merch, including beans/Via...they PLANNED on being OUT of it all before Christmas. Hence the promo features on perishable items like Cran Bliss, Xmas Via and whole bean. As long as you sell it all, it doesn't matter if you're out early. People will buy other things for gifts--they don't have to be holiday-themed. Sure, it helps. What if we just *didn't* offer Holiday designs on Sbux cards? Would people still buy them and give them as gifts? Of course.

[hearbutloud]

The latest price increase was not across-the-board. Some regions, apparently, are still charging the same for tall and grande teas. I am in the Western Mountain Region, and our talls and grandes ring up differently. (We have also been instructed to ring in Ventis, even if they request only one tea bag, as a Venti -- which I am not doing.)

@usorthem - my understanding is that French Roast is hugely popular at Costco and that is why it became the next VIA product.

[formermanager]

I still never understood why anyone would go to Starbucks for just a cup of tea. I can't brew a good cup of coffee, don't have the knack, but tea? A box of it is five bucks, nuke some water, throw in a bag, you have a month's work week supply of tea. You can get cups that look like Starbucks cups if you need the status symbol....

[usorthem3]

@hearbutloud I got the roasting plant order today with the Via Italian roast, but why would anyone buy Via in store when they can get it a lot cheaper at Costco? Never been there myself but I hear it from customers all the time when you suggest Via to them. We did get 8 cases of Xmas blend, we could have sold quite a bit of it yesterday if we would have had to sell.
We did have a regular buy the guy behind him a venti hot chocolate, He looked time Tim McGraw so I would have paid for it myself just for looking that good, ha ha

[latteteadah]

@formermanager - there's more to tea brewing than just throwing in hot water. Where to start? You can't nuke it long enough to get it safely to the point where it brews properly or you risk 3rd degree burns - different teas have different brewing temperatures, if you don't get it right, it tastes cruddy. Some people's tap water (and especially the water at office buildings - hello?) isn't filtered properly nor tastes good to start with.
At least if they're getting it at Starbucks, they're getting a consistent temperature and water that's at some level going to be better quality than their office's tap. Not an inexpensive venture to do all the time, but better quality than simply nuking hard water for 2 minutes and throwing in an old bag of black tea leaf trimmings that have been on a grocer's shelf for who knows how long. Quality tea preparation is just as complicated as getting a proper shot of espresso - it's not simply "add water, heat, pour."

[newbie no more (was sbuxnewbie)]

Just read a notice on the portal today that there will be price changes on the 4th of January - some up, some down. This will, we were told, include tea prices, with different prices for tall and grande. So that is settled - it has already happened some places, now it will hit the NE.

The STUPID thing is, it also says that prices may vary from store to store WITHIN THE SAME DISTRICT. We already get enough of "that's not what they charge me at store XYZ." I'm now in agreement that someone at corporate is doing a visual self-exam of the inside of the colon.

[James Connolly]

Corporate has always has rectocranial inversion syndrome, newbie no more.

[newbie no more (was sbuxnewbie)]

James -

Perhaps, but I didn't always agree. Now, I have no choice but to do so.

[Coffee Drinker]

Tall and Grande tea as of this week where I live is $1.85. Venti is 2-something. I know because I ordered tea 3 - 4 times in the last week.

Also, we know that starbucks.com says that brewed and iced coffee refills are FREE with a registered card. However, my local Starbucks says this mean only ICED coffee. I told them the exact text of the site, and the said would "check with corporate."

However, they then said, "refills only on ICED tea (a refill meaning a new bag, not just hot water." I like these baristas, but doubted they had checked with corporate ore even checked the site themselves. Hey, they're busy!

So when I called corporate to ask where all my coupons are, I also asked re the tea. They said I am correct, the website is correct, the baristas will be downloaded an upgrade to their software so that tea refill doesn't ring up as charging a new bag.

See, the baristas did actually ring up my tea with new bag as a REFILL, however, the software charged me 44c for it. So there is such a thing as a tea refill with a new bag. Corporate was kind enough to refund my 44c, lol...but of course that doesn't compensate for all the refills I didn't get, because the baristas were mistaken ; )

I doubt my baristas will comp me anything for their mistakes; I'm okay with that as I'm a regular and know how hard they work; though I do wish they'd step up to the plate and do what's right, so I don't have to feel I'm always coddling them. This store has peak times, but often is empty during off-season. They do have time to correct this.

The last few days I've been drinking drip Christmas blend which they brought back; however, I'll go back to tea next week, and hope I don't have to tell them "I called corporate and this what they said about the tea." I hope that corporate has indeed "downloaded the software fix to them" as was explained to me.

May wonders never cease.

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[JoeB]

Does anyone have an idea as to why Starbucks receitps no longer show the last four digits of the card[debit/credit] used to make a purchase.

Up until a few months ago those 4 digits were printed on the receipt, thent "poof"
they disappered....???

For someone who uses different cards for Starbuck purchases, this presents a problem.

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[AmapibSwifima]

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