I was annoyed enough to write all of this up. I used to go regularly, and the rewards program was genuinely a good deal, and made it worth going to Starbucks. Now, even if I set aside all of the horrible things they’re doing, I wanted to show just what an absolute shit program this is, and why there is absolutely no use in trying to “gain starbucks status”.
Its all marketing bullshit to make people think they’re earning something, or their gaming the system. In reality it’s all carefully planned to extract the most value out of their most loyal customers.