Starbucks Final

Final thought.--- This morning Spotify finally worked on the Starbucks app to show the song playing in the Starbucks, both in the dashboard and in the music (click on music icon in upper right corner). And it didn't take their wifi to work, just LTE. Enuf said from me.

Orignal Post.-- Ok, enough about Starbucks, which I can say because I finally got an intelligent answer from their customer representative about why the information about current song playing at any Starbucks you visit wasn't being displayed on the Starbucks app.

Here is part of the response:

"Some of our stores are equipped with technology through the Starbucks Digital Network. If you're in one of these locations and are connected to our in-store Wi-Fi, the song currently playing will be displayed with the option to purchase it through iTunes.  If you've left the welcome page, it can be found at digital.starbucks.com. Unfortunately this is not available in all stores, but we are constantly working to make this functionality more robust!"

This explains a lot, and here's the rest of their response:

"Here are some tips to get this feature to work on your App:
- Make sure that the location service is enabled;
- New music features within the Starbucks App will automatically show you what's "Now Playing" and "Recently Played" in participating Starbucks stores.
- Starbucks customers will need a Spotify account to save or create Spotify playlists.
- You must have a Spotify account to play music and must connect your Starbucks and Spotify Free or Premium accounts to save music."

This means that Starbucks released an app with software features they didn't have the technology in place to work. Along with all the other problems Starbucks have had with their app, it's clear they're resolving them, but it's also clear they released it too early to initiate the new rewards program, with untested and known bugs, assuming any customer problems won't hurt customer loyalty.

And it's clear, just from my experience, they're customer service, while good isn't great and why they handed out a lot of stars and credits, and are offering frequent additional stars for more purchases. That said, it doesn't change much for me, and in fact, makes me use other cafes more often now for the higher priced drinks.

I'll still go to Starbucks, in part because it's the halfway point on my daily walk which has a good Doppio con Panna (tried the non-Starbucks cafes) and I will accumulate stars for that and other occasional purchases, but on trips I'll do what I always do first, find a good local cafe and only Starbucks if one isn't around.