If you collect Starbucks Reward stars, they are making some major changes to the reward program starting on April 1st. No longer will you have to annoy the baristas paying for your items individually for the extra stars as they will reward your stars based on the amount spent.
Currently you earn a star for each visit (or payment if you pay for each item separately). Starting in April, you will earn 2 stars for every $1 spent on drinks, food, mugs, accessories and more. When you get to 125 stars, compared to the 12 current stars, you will be able to redeem for a free reward – but only if you are a Gold member which means you need to earn 300 stars to be able to redeem anything.
To help Gold members, they will surprise you with a monthly double star day where you will earn 4 stars for every $1 spent and we will still receive bonus star offers in-store and personalized card offers.
If you are currently at the welcome level, they will upgrade you to Green level as the welcome level will no longer exist. Green and Gold members will keep their current status and any stars you currently have in your account will be multiplied by 11 when the new program takes effect in April.
Full details on the changes to My Starbucks Rewards can be found here. Unless the offers are really good, I imagine it will take a while to get to 300 stars to be able to redeem, so you may want to start earning bonus stars in March that can be multiplied.
Will be losing me as a customer. Add this to the already high price and mediocre coffee and no thanks.
Can’t say I like the change, but it seems like it was done to prevent people from gaming the existing system as described above.
This new changes suck! U simply have to spend more to get an reward. U have to spend $62.50 to get a free drink/reward. Before u can just buy 12 regular coffees and get your reward! Dislike!
They definitely did this to make it harder to get your free reward. But for customers who do get snacks in addition to their drink, and especially for those who buy any type of merchandise, the spending $62.50 to get a free drink that will likely cost around $8 is actually pretty good. If you’re in it just for the regular coffee though, then just go to McDonald’s.
I like this, it’s a bad thing if you go and get regular drip coffee or cheap drinks but when I go to starbucks it’s for something more fancy. So for a free drink you’d have to spend $62.50 at the regular reward rate (ie not including any bonus/double offers) and $62.50 divided by 12 drinks (how the reward system is now) is $5.20 which is around what the average drink (I get) at starbucks costs so I’m glad the stars arent limited in a transaction since I usually will get a snack and drink at the same time.
This is a horrible change……looks like McDonalds will be getting more and more of my coffee buying business.