My silly Starbucks story

I got an offer that if I made a purchase using my rewards account, I would get a free drink to use within 7 days.

I made the purchase ... but never got the drink. So I contacted customer support.

They advised me that I did get it, but that it wouldn't appear under rewards in the app, but rather on the card. I follow the directions and find it. Great.

Now I also get an instruction that the cashier has to enter a code at the time of purchase. Fine.

I go to use the award, tell the cashier, and....she redeems stars that I have on my account.

Well, it is what it is. I still have the other award. But I decide to reach out to customer service to let them know that it's hard to find and harder to use.

The person I contacted was very nice and apologized, and returned the stars. And I still had the award. Sweet.

I go to use the award again today. I explain it to the cashier, and she nods and says she's got this. And...proceeds to remove stars.

Ugh. I'm like "wait..." but it's too late. Stars are gone. So I explain it again, she apologizes and calls over who I assume is the manager. He tells me it was a mistake, and proceeds to refund me the cost of the drink to my card, which is more or less the equivalent of the stars, I guess.

Then he starts a new order and manages to enter the code and it works! Yay. He then tells the barista to only make one of them, not two.

But she's already made the first one, and thus only sees one and proceeds to make it.

So on this trip I have two drinks. They tell me to keep the other one, which isn't a bad play.

And in all, my free drink based on purchase resulted in 3 drinks and 125 stars converting to $5 in cash on my account.

So uhhhh. Yeah. #winning I guess.