What to do with Those Empty Cards
Jul 01, 2008
by sbx_kema		   RSS

Hi all, my name is Kathleen and I work on the Starbucks Card team. First, I want to thank you for the many great ideas and dialogue around our Card program, specifically the ideas about how we can give our customers a reason to keep reusing the Starbucks Card.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Starbucks Card, let me take a minute to go over the program. The Starbucks Card is designed to be used in our stores and reloaded over and over again. Many customers register and reload their Cards in our stores or at www.starbucks.com. Some even set up auto-reload, which gives them the flexibility of choosing to add money to their Card on certain dates or at a specified balance level. A great benefit for registering your Starbucks Card is that you become a member of Starbucks Card Rewards. This new program includes free coffee refills during your visit, free select syrups and milk additions (including free soy, which many of you have been talking about on this site!) to your favorite beverage and a free tall beverage when you purchase at least 1 lb of whole bean coffee. All you have to do is register your Card and use it to pay for your purchases and enjoy the rewards over and over again.

My main purpose in writing today is to address the many of you who asked for a reload incentive as well as asking that our Cards be recyclable. I really like the idea around giving our customers other incentives to reload. We have been talking a lot about this at Starbucks and I am taking it back to my team to evaluate, so stay tuned.

Recycling is very important to us and we hope that in the future we’ll be able to give you the Starbucks Card that you love in a sustainable form. In the meantime, we hope the rewards program gives you a reason to reuse your favorite Card again and again so you’ll never need to throw it away.

Cheers!

Stop Trashing Empty Cards  

5 comments Launched, Starbucks Card


LQSBUX
8/14/2008 10:23 AM

I have enjoyed the seasonal art on my sbux cards for years and before you had the ability to reload them, converted them to refrigerator magnets by sticking business card magnets (available at office supply stores everywhere) on them.  I now have a lovely collection of magnets and they didn't go into a landfill. Now I just reload my cards.

tarasamwiz
9/2/2008 3:39 AM

Give people a reason to hold onto them...Personalized, like you are doing in your loyalty test markets!

Porkchawp
9/4/2008 3:24 PM

"Give people a reason to hold onto them...Personalized, like you are doing in your loyalty test markets!"

Well Starbucks does have those Personalized cards you can buy at most stores still. Those came out last November. But you can't put your own pictures on it, you have to use SB's clip art.

You buy a card that is just plain white at a store, It cost $25.00  minimum when you first load it. Then you can go online and do all the clip art. Five dollars of that $25 goes to shipping and the custom. Then you have $20 on the card to spend.  Now if you bought it for someone and they didn't want to do that, they could just use the white card as a regular SBUX card

I've heard many customers wish they could put their own picture on it. Starbuck you could do this it's not like it would be as big of a change, or difficult. I know as of now the custom STARBUX cards have to be looked at so no one has written any thing inappropriate. Come on Jones Soda can do custom bottles.

dawgs08
9/4/2008 8:39 PM

I often receive Starbucks gift cards as gifts from other people, and would love to be able to combine them all so I just have one card to keep track of.

vogue0009
9/21/2008 6:18 AM

Possibly everytime you re-load it get 5 cents (or whatever)????


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