Starbucks charging $5.00 for customer service

[Packard]

I’m at Starbucks and I ordered a cup of pour-over coffee (instead of their push-button coffee). It took 20 minutes to make because the baristas are multi-tasking and lose track of the pour-over. By the time it arrived, it was just lukewarm.

I went online to suggest that they get automatic single serve drip coffee machines that would not require full time attention, and would have a stay-hot feature. This was apparently too complicated for the chat, so they asked for my email address and phone number. I declined the phone number as I have hearing difficulties on the phone (I read lips) and that is further complicated by the fact that the customer service is located (I believe) in India, and the combination of hearing difficulties and heavy accent makes conversation impossible for me.

At that point a second screen popped up. To proceed, I have to pay $5.00 for the premium customer service. I have never heard of such a thing. Is any other retailer doing the same?

 

[Cheese]

...and the combination of hearing difficulties and heavy accent makes conversation impossible for me.

+1 so you're not alone.

 

[Packard]

+1 so you're not alone.

But who has ever heard of customer service charging a fee for that service (which only became necessary because they screwed up).

 

[Packard]

I checked with the store manager, and he said he will check on this. He never heard of this and suspects that the site might be hacked.

No answers until next week.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Premium customer service is an Oxymoron, is it not?
If you have to pay for actual customer service, do you get a discount for the usual stuff?

 

[MacBoy]

I’m certain we have more than just a few lip readers on this forum.

Have you tried hearing aids with built-in Bluetooth?

My uncle said it’s working marvelous for him.

I’m wary of RF immediately next to my brain for a repeated duration of morning to late-late evening.

Hopefully all of the Headphone and AirPods users will live strong and forever.

A charge to get customer service is just ridiculous Perhaps they did get hacked, or your smartphone did.

 

[luvmytoolz]

suspects that the site might be hacked.

Manager speak for "damn, someone called us out on this!"?

20 minute wait for a coffee, that's just insane and really poor service!

In the very busiest of cafes here you'd generally struggle to wait more than 5 minutes at the extreme.

 

[bertv]

Pour over should take less than eight minutes. Maybe ten. In Japan they almost always do the manual p o. But my local specialty coffee bar uses a fairly new machine that is far more consiistent than a human can be, with precise temps for bloom, firts pour, second etcetera, that are inconceivable to do by hand. And it takes them seven minutes and is at most 7 Euros for excellent Ethiopean or Columbian coffee with scores in the 86 to 88 region. Happy days! (And forget about Starbucks getting anything near that level of quality — their size makes it impossible. They need volume and specialty farms don’t do volume. And SB needs a lot more of profit margin to pay for their executives’ golden parachutes and stock options.)

 

[Michael Kellough]

Mac boy said, “I’m wary of RF immediately next to my brain for a repeated duration”

My brother-in-law was an engineer at Motorola and he said they tested this by strapping cellphones to the heads of pigs for some amount of time.
The results proved the bacon tasted the same. So, you’re good to go!

 

[luvmytoolz]

And forget about Starbucks getting anything near that level of quality — their size makes it impossible. They need volume and specialty farms don’t do volume. And SB needs a lot more of profit margin to pay for their executives’ golden parachutes and stock options.

I think it must have come as such a shock to SB management as to how dismally they did here in OZ despite entering the market in such a large and aggressive way. Not at all popular here as it turned out