Today is the beginning of the all-new Starbucks rewards program! I’m so excited! I already like this program much better – I buy Teavana tea; I stop by the Roastery; I buy whole bean coffee; and I buy food too! Lots more stars! Just this past weekend I spent about $20 on Berry Kiwi Colada tea at Teavana. Under the new program, rather than that being just one single star like before, it’s now 40 stars!
Use your registered Starbucks card now through May 2nd and Starbucks will give you instant Gold status!
That’s an incredible deal. Rather than waiting for 300 stars to accumulate, you’ll be Gold right away! For existing card members, you’ll earn another year of Gold level.
I don’t want my readers to miss out on the chance to be instantly Gold!
If you are not part of Starbucks Rewards, you can easily join. You’ll need any Starbucks card (look for them at the register of your neighborhood store), Teavana Card, or Evolution Fresh card. Load $5 or more on the card. You can easily do that at the register of your local Starbucks. Then register the card:
Join Starbucks Rewards – Register a Card
If you have been using the Starbucks mobile phone app to manage your stars and account, I suggest that you re-install it today. You haven’t lost any stars! For some people though, they won’t see their stars until they’ve reinstalled the latest version of the app. I did that this morning and you can see my stars are still there:
Use your fingers on the stars to move them around! The stars will follow your fingers! It’s pretty entertaining.
So how is your rewards launch day going?
Welcome to the new Starbucks Rewards!
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It went great for me, Melody. I had to delete and re-install my app 3 times in order for it to “take”. No big deal at all, and everything was there as soon as I did that. It really is a pretty app. The store’s ambassador, Joe, was very dapper this morning in all black and a sparkly gold bow tie. He even gave me a card with a special code that I entered for an instant extra 35 stars! Pretty cool!
I wonder how long it will extend my Gold status to? Because I am already gold until September 2017 (I requalified fairly quickly in 2015). Overall, I still think the rolling expiration thing is confusing. I generally am a drip drinker with the exception of when they give bonuses or charge clearance prices on Via.
The rolling expiration is awesome. I have three rewards that carried over plus 2570 stars that are now good for 6 months for rewards. I think this will be much better esp with the starbucks prepaid credit cards in the future. Thank you for all the info melody
I can use my Starbucks card at the Teavana store right? We finally got one nearby in a new mall.
@Leann Yes! You can use your Starbucks card at Teavana stores!! 🙂
Got the app update, but only some of the new features were showing like the get one star to earn Gold for another year. But none of my rewards that were on my account prior to April 12th were showing up. So I deleted the app off my iPhone and reinstalled it. Much better.
As for the new program, I think it will be good. Just need to remember I get 2 stars for each $1 and partial stars get applied, too.
Is the 6-month expiry for stars at Gold level new? I don’t recall it ever being there before.
To me, that’s the big negative on this new program – it means if I get close to another reward, I’m on a six-month clock to get there or I could lose a whole bunch of stars that leaves me further behind.
Mike, on the app under “history”, you’ll find a tab called “star expiration” which will indicate when the previous stars roll off. It’s the first day of the month following the six month duration. So, for example with me (and presumably everyone else), all grandfathered stars expire November 1, 2016.
I hope there is room for disagreement on this website.
Some of us come to Starbucks just for one cup of a coffee beverage. Unfortunately for me, there’s usually nothing I want in the way of food. Starbucks has not one pastry that’s sugar-free and the one “no sugar added” item was taken away a few years ago. I liked the grilled cheese but they changed it.
I crunched the numbers and although I buy an espresso-based beverage, I would have to increase my regular purchase by close to 30%. That means, instead of buying a tall I would need to buy a venti. No, thanks. That’s not going to happen.
When Starbucks arrived here in New York City, people were surprised that the default serving size was 12 ounces rather than the 8 we were used to. But I will not buy nearly twice as big a cup as I want to drink.
What is especially infuriating is the use of the word “free.” “Free” implies that something is given without consideration, for example, a birthday. If you are in the supermarket and see a sign that says soup is $3.00, “buy one, get one free,” only a fool thinks the second one is free. Everyone else knows that nothing is free; the price has been marked down 50%.
If you look at any website that caters to frequent travelers, you’ll see that nothing makes them crazier than an airline employee who refers to a reward trip as a “free ticket.”
We have lots of choices here. Some are lesser quality like Dunkin and McDonald’s and others are at least equal to Starbucks like Gregory’s Blue Bottle, and Caffe Bene.
If the Rewards program is effectively over for me, I don’t feel any need to be loyal to Starbucks. In my neighborhood Starbucks, they seem more loyal to the two homeless people who camp out every night and those who continually demand free cups of water.
Your coffee is not free. Neither is my loyalty.
[In case anyone is interested, that picture is not me. I have no idea why it’s posted next to my user name.]
That should be “birthday gift” above, not “birthday.”
“Use your registered Starbucks card now through May 2nd and Starbucks will give you instant Gold status!”
This above “promo” screams “We know we screwed up and we’re trying to fix it in some small way”. Because to a new customer, getting to Gold status via 300 stars looks all but insurmountable. That’s $150 of spending just to qualify for free drinks (and then once at 300 stars, still has to earn another 125 to get their first free drink).
Kind of like how infrequent flyers like me almost never get a free trip, and after finally accumulating 25,000 miles, the airline decides to change the redemption to 40,000 miles.
I do applaud this move, with 2 slow claps. I certainly don’t buy French presses, burr grinders, Aeropresses, Verismo machines, $20 bags of Reserve coffee, or $10 liquid desserts every day. Starbucks is looking more and more like Delta Airlines to me. And I don’t fly Delta anymore.
Wigmore, I wanted to address this point, and it’s a good one:
*** If you look at any website that caters to frequent travelers, you’ll see that nothing makes them crazier than an airline employee who refers to a reward trip as a “free ticket.” ***
Years ago I worked for a mobile phone provider back when you can get almost any handset you want with no money down if you sign a contract (was 3 years at the time) for an expensive-enough post-paid plan. We were told never to call that handset “free”. We had to say “zero dollars”, as ridiculous as that sounds. (and that company’s advertisements to this day still say “zero dollars” or “$0.00”)
You and I know that phone isn’t free, you’re paying for it in installments. Perhaps by law if you call it “free” then you can’t charge the customer a cancellation fee (which is essentially the balance owing on that handset by bailing out of the installment plan early; you wouldn’t be making installment payments on a free thing, that makes no sense).
But using the airline case, there’s no “contract” requiring you to fly with that airline for 2 more years to pay back that reward ticket. You already earned it. So if they call it free, so what. The customer can’t get a refund for all those flights he took earlier to earn the reward flight.
I have some questions about the new rewards program
* How are grocery store purchases (stars on coffee) handled?
* Where can we see when free drinks expire? I used to see that in the Dashboard but no more. It just saus “Free drink or food available (#)” If Starbucks is going to make it more costly for me to get rewards and shorten the expiration for redeeming awards, I’d like to have a good handle on when they expire.
I have a question too – I loved getting free songs and apps in the little message section. Is this gone now? I can’t find it in the app.
Janyne: Grocery store purchases, if I’m not mistaken those items will have a star code on them that you enter on the website and then the appropriate stars get added. As for expiration, if I read correctly, rewards don’t expire (as they did under the old plan), the stars themselves do. So as soon as you have 125 stars or more, you can get a free item, and the system will automatically remove your oldest 125 stars and leave the newest ones for future redemption. The 125 doesn’t automatically “convert” to a reward like how the old 12 stars did.
Janyne: wanted to add, any rewards earned under the old plan (12 stars converted automatically) will expire as they originally did. So definitely use the app and/or website and note when your existing rewards expire. My oldest reward expires on Sunday (17th) and that did not change when the program did.
Janyne, I’ve entered some of my star codes and the small bags are worth 10 stars a code, 15 stars for the bigger bags. There’s still a daily 2 star code limit.
So for grocery store purchases, you’re getting stars as if the small bags cost $5 and the big bags cost $7.50. If the small bags cost a lot more than $5 you might as well buy them at a Starbucks shop and get the full star value for them. Might be the reason for shortchanging the stars on grocery store buys…
Wondering if this happened to anyone else… A few hours after I bought my first purchase under the new program I got an email from Starbucks giving me 50 free stars. You had to click on a link to accept and I almost thought it was a scam email but they are in my account this morning. Not sure if my purchase triggered it or I was going to get the offer all along. How many times per year is Starbucks going to do this and is just for people who were already gold? Hmmm…
Amazing, just a week into the new program and my wife (with her U.S. card) and me (with my Canadian card) both get emails saying we get double stars after 2pm for the next week (April 18-24). This on top of our current promo of the Star Routine (formerly known as the Star Dash). And I was under the impression double star would be one day a month. Can we all say DAMAGE CONTROL?
Did anyone else receive the email today for 50 bonus stars on any purchase(s) this week? You have to opt-in, but when I clicked the button the page had an error. Hopefully they’ll fix that soon cuz it’s a great offer!
have to say,, :))
whenever you think “meh, starbucks is just :O me with this
‘stars’ program.”
they find a way.
the star bucks stars of stars ‘borg’
case in point; besides the ’50’ free by email.
‘besides’ the two breakfast sandwiches ‘extra 60!’
and besides the new promotion of visit 6 by may 5th,
100 stars! (any purchase.. sorry. not advertising, best
is yet to come)
i was missing a drink, a free one from the conversion,
so, the nice lady ‘on the other side’ read what i had to say,
where it was ‘lost’
and she gave me 250 STARS.
i’m like.
no wonder people walk around with 1500 STARS.
a little here.. a little there app email what you like location
people.
borg of stars. i’m tellin gyou!
😛
seriously, no bs.
like that, after the ups and downs, the ‘system’ online.
it’s worth it in the end.
but only on what youLIKE and DO!!!
(apps email people locale, too! 🙂
~peace
thomas 🙂
One big problem that reared its ugly head this week. If you have rewards earned under the old program that you’re redeeming now, check your account and make sure that reward is deducted. I redeemed one on Monday (which expired that same day) but instead, the system took 125 stars off my account. So that essentially wasted TWO rewards instead of one. I don’t know if this is a fault of the barista or the system but look carefully for this until you’ve used up all your old rewards.