Joe Strazzere - All Things Quality - Perhaps They Should Have Tested More

Joe Strazzere - All Things Quality

June 13, 2009 - Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Starbucks

Posted in QA

For a couple of days in May, coffee giant Starbucks ended up double charging about 1 million of their U.S. and Canadian customers.

More than 1 million transactions at 7,000 Starbucks locations on May 22 and May 23 were double billed
The one-million Starbuck transactions involved both credit and debit cards
The POS charges—and the receipts given to customers—were perfectly in order. The problems kicked in hours later, in the settlement processing area
Starbucks has declined to say how the glitch happened
Starbucks has declined to say how they plan to prevent it from happening again
Starbucks says they've had some customers call whose accounts were not fixed
Any customers with questions should contact the company's customer relations hotline at 1-800-23-LATTE.

Starbucks spokeswoman Trina Smith didn't seem to think the double charges were a big deal, just a minor confusion:

"We sincerely apologize to customers who were confused,". But, she adds, in a world of digital transactions, "Consumers are accustomed to these kinds of things."

Others disagree, and think the Starbucks image may have been tarnished by the error:

Starbucks patrons pay more not just for a better product, but for a perception that it treats consumers better, says Bradford Hudson, assistant marketing professor at Boston University. "You expect a company like Starbucks to do everything flawlessly, or to do something extra special to recover." He says it could have given a free drink to all affected.

Perhaps they should have tested more.

Just wondering - On the Starbucks Annual Report, will this screwup be categorized as a "Short" bug? A "Tall" or "Grande" bug? Or is it actually a "Venti" bug?

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