Starbucks Gold Rewards: Double the Stars on purchases made after 2pm (April 18-24)

Starbucks continues its “charm offensive” to do some damage control over the disappointment of many regular customers of the change to the new Rewards program that favors big spenders over regular coffee and tea drinkers.

sbux_double_stars

This new promotion, sent via email to Gold Rewards members (keep in mind, I am doing this using my Rewards account as a guinea pig ~ I have no way of knowing if every single person gets it or a subset), gets you double stars for purchases made after 2pm local time at Starbucks stores. Double stars means 4 stars per dollar. This means you need to spend $31.25 to get a free reward (125 stars divided by four). This is essentially the level of the previous rewards program, a dozen $2.50 drinks is about $30 and would have gotten you a free Reward “way back then” 🙂

Having whined about the new program, I should also point out that this has a nice benefit if you purchase multiple items per visit. You no longer have to break your order in parts to get the maximum stars. Since the stars are rewarded on the purchase amount, it doesn’t matter if you buy 10 $2 items or one $20 item. You earn the same amount of rewards 🙂 This is especially useful for “To Go” customers.

There is no opt-in or coupon code, this happens automatically on their systems. The promotion runs April 18-24 in 2016, so even if you don’t know about the offer, you still get the bonus stars (if eligible).