Starbucks' To: You From: Us Promotion

I saw an ad yesterday in The Sun which has a promo where you buy a Dark Cherry Mocha Frappuccino and you get a Pomegranate Peach Frappuccino for free, just for today. It was great and I was excited about it seeing that I will not be at work today and will likely be swiping cards at Mid Valley today.

And so, I diligently cut out the coupon but forgot to bring it with me this morning *Doink*. But anyway, I tried to see if these guys at Starbucks would be willing to let me have it despite the little fonts there stating that the coupon has to be presented upon purchase.

I went to the outlet at The Borders, The Gardens. There were 2 guys there - one did not know what I was talking about and the other knew about it but was a stickler for rules. "We need to have the coupon, else we will be in trouble with the accounting procedures" he said to me. Something made me feel that this guy is from the Accounting/ Finance line with a part time job at Starbucks. After a minute of asking if he could bend the rules/ if he has a copy of The Sun ... I decided fine, I don't need that coffee anyway.

I then went to the other outlet they have in the main Mid Valley building. Guess what? They had The Sun there and I went to get my drink. The guy there said that they were running low on the Pomegranate Peach and asked if I would like 2 coffees instead. After explaining that I didn't want my kid to have any caffeine, he then offered to exchange it with a Dark Cherry cream based drink, but I was warned that it would taste funny. Later, they offered me to exchange it with another fruit based blended drink - great, I took the Mango Fusion.

After all said and done, they did not even bother with the coupon and just said "Have a nice day ma'am, enjoy your drinks!"

Wow, talk about the difference in service levels. And it was just a wlk across the buildings. The guys at Borders not only made me give up on my drink in the outlet, but also made me gave up my purchases in Borders. I actually had some books picked up, but then left it all when I could not get my coffee.

Lesson to learn: Outlets with franchise license especially, should have their act consistent, else it will only drive away customers.

Oh ya, the 2 drinks were great by the way and served to be the fattening food I had promised my kid on his last day of school/ camp etc.