Beginning December 2, 2014, you can enter in a contest to possibly win a Starbucks For Life Card. This card will give you a free drink, every single day, for thirty years. Here are the websites to help you get started.
Looks at this gorgeous card!
You might even notice signage for this promotion at your neighborhood Starbucks:
Now you need to know how this works. There are a number of rules. Don’t assume that because you are using a registered Starbucks card, you must be automatically be entered. You must enter with a code that is found at the bottom of your receipt (this is likely how most people will enter – there is a way to generate a code without a purchase).
So how do you get a code? Go to Starbucks. Pay with your Starbucks card or using the mobile app. You do not necessarily need to be using a registered Starbucks card but you must be using a Starbucks card to get a code. You get one code per receipt – regardless of how many items are on that receipt. Take your code and enter into this website:
When you enter your code, from what I can tell, you will enter your email address also. This is how you’d be notified if you win something – via email.
This is important: According to the fine print, you are limited to entering in TWO codes per day on the Starbucks.com/play site to enter to win. The fine print is very clear that you cannot try to bypass the two codes per day rule by using multiple email addresses.
I don’t want to confuse you – You can play two codes per day. This is NOT related to your earning stars. You can still, as always, earn as many stars as you like under My Starbucks Rewards. With more than 8 million registered card holders (and the many people playing this giveaway who will be using an unregistered card), it is bound to happen the someone somewhere is going to confuse earning My Starbucks Rewards stars and playing Starbucks for Life codes – two totally different things.
There will be a total of ten Starbucks For Life cards given away. It will work out to be two cards per each promotional period. There are five promotional periods (each one is roughly one week). If you are notified as a possible winner, you be contacted via email and have paperwork to fill out – releases related to publicity. Each promotion period, there is a small randomly selected group who are the “potential winners” – a small group of about fifteen people selected each “promotional period” and from that group, two winners of the Starbucks for Life cards will be selected.
There will be many other prizes too. You may win pounds of Christmas Blend, free beverages or other prizes.
As I read through the fine print terms and conditions associated with this promotion, I only found one possible ambiguity. I’m not totally sure what Starbucks intended: In the very first paragraph, it states that you must be over 18 to play. However, when you get to paragraph 7, it says that if you’re selected as a potential winner and you’re a minor, your parent or guardian must sign the paperwork for you.
So in summary, these are some bullet points to keep in mind:
- Make a purchase and hang on to your receipt.
- You must pay with any Starbucks card (whether registered or not!) or the Starbucks mobile phone app.
- Enter your code from your receipts.
- One code per receipt, regardless of how many items are on the receipt.
- You may enter up to two codes per day.
- Enter your code at this website: http://www.starbucks.com/play
- There will be ten grand prize winners of Starbucks for Life cards.
- There will be many winners of smaller prizes, such as free Starbucks Christmas Blend or free beverages.
- The contest Starbucks For Life begins December 2nd.
- The contest ends January 5, 2015
- Starbucks employees are not eligible to enter
If you want to read all the fine print yourself, click here.
Are you ready? I’m in. I feel like I should get Starbucks For Life for this blog! LOL – I’m just kidding. I hope someone who is reading this wins!!! That would be super exciting to have a reader of this site be a winner. Of course, the odds of that would tiny, but it would be super cool. I’d be happy just to know a reader has won.
Good luck!
Edit on 11/26: What I did above was describe the U.S. version of this contest. There is a Canadian version of the contest – it’s structured the same way – you enter with codes. But the Canadian version has 3 Starbucks For Life cards, not ten, and some different prizes, including Verismo machines.
71 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Socialize
I have used my Rewards app to pay about 3 times this week and only received a code once. The receipt says “SBUX Card x# New Balance: Unavailable Card is registered but not code. :-/ I did email to get a :no purchase necessary” code but why isn’t a code coming out when I pay with my app? Even the baristas were trying to figure it out. They were very nice but I just want it to work. 🙂
Could be easier to play, but finally…Yippee! Won a tall coffee 😉 Now I feel like singing along with official Carol singers on YouTube; thanks for link, Melody.
Ok…so I visit SB everyday and I have numerous codes. Since I may have only 2 entries per day, what about all my others codes? Should I pass those along to my husband and son to enter?
I won! A coffee 🙁
Cut and paste the code from a PC, don;t try entering the code #’s manually
IF it says the code was used already, the captcha on the bottom probably wasn’t entered right re-do and refresh the captcha until you find one easy to do. Sometimes I get the street photo for addresses and other times it is words and letters.
I’d love to know what people are winning; I’ve won a tall coffee. Would love to know if anyone has hit it ‘big’ with the half pound of Christmas blend!
I’ve won nothing I enter everyday . Hope they give something better than Coffee do they have a prize list?
When I asked the Barista at my Starbucks for my receipt she gave me the the duplicate one that didn’t have a code on it 🙁
I wonder what she’s doing with the originals?
Both my wife and I have “won” a coffee, cookie, etc. The website says you will be emailed a coupon or voucher shortly except that neither of us have received anything and it’s been several days; this was on the Canadian website. Anyone else experience this issue? The email addresses that we entered were correct (browser auto-fill)
i’ve won a tall coffee (or tea) and a holiday pop! Fun contest. Wished they had a little more variety in their prizes, but its fun.
So far playing every day have won a tall coffee twice with receipt entry numbers only. Never anything with e-mailed numbers, which mostly start with two capital letters. When redeeming one, I asked the barista to add a shot of espresso, for which I was ready to pay; happily the register’s software rang it up as free too. Bonus! My s.o. got his fave simple drink Chr’mas morning.
Your peppermint hot chocolates are to die for. Too bad they are only seasonal. Wish I could have them all year round. Thank you.
I have won a free cup of coffee or tea two times and I have won a free cake pop 3 times. All the free coupons were sent to my email and I have printed to use after the contest is over.
I’ve won free coffee:) gotta love the rich taste doesn’t matter early morning or late night snack
Is anyone else having issues submitting their code? Every time I do it, it says they don’t recognize the code. Then they have me enter the random letters below over and over. Once I stop getting the error message it says that I am out of plays for the day.
I won a tall coffee and twice I won a peppermint brownie cake pop. Today I tried to redeem the peppermint brownie cake pop prizes at a local Starbucks store and was told they do not have any left and will not be getting anymore this season, even though the emails I received state that I have unti January 12 to redeem these prizes. They had other cake pops, which I pointed out, but did not offer them as a substitution. What a disappointment!
it does not matter if I win or not. Just want to tell you that my starbucks store is the best.In the south bay area
I keep putting my receipt numbers in and it keeps saying wrong number!
I didn’t get my receipt three times I had to asked for it, but no winning on every enter:(
Hey Melody. I haven’t seen any news about the winners of this contest, except for one small article mentioning the Voice tv show or something like that, announcing the first 2 winners back in December… I’m assuming that if we won, we’d know :-), but I’d sure like to hear some news about who/where the winners are and all that!
I was just going to mention that. In Alabama, you are a minor until age 19 so that may be what they are addressing there.
I live in Waxahachie where there are 2 Starbucks. I used my card and didn’t get a code when I ask the lady where the code was, she didn’t know what I was talking about AND the other store didn’t wither. I tried to get one online but it wouldn’t go through. SO I emailed Starbucks and days later all i got was Starbucks advertisments. No answer.*If the employees don’t know what s going on and no one answers an email all I see is bad business . I will use up my card and not return.