I was in my car last week and was alerted that the need to forward a document to an associate was now urgent in nature. Fortunately, my laptop was in my bag so I parked my car and ran into the Starbucks, here in Montclair, NJ, thinking, "sure, no biggy, I'll just get online in a second and send this document along in a flash!" Wrong.
The Internet connection is not free at Starbucks as it is at the majority of independent coffee shops I frequent. No problem, they need to compensate for their diminishing sales to McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts, so I can understand that. The baristas told me that I need to purchase a gift card and then I would have access to the internet, OK, easy, except that I have now lost 10 minutes and $5 for the gift card.
Registering the gift card was not as intuitive as I expected it to be, in fact, the baristas needed to give me additional guidance which option to choose as the language was unclear and unintuitive. Finally I succeed, another 10 minutes lost.
Now I had to register with the service provider, who I believe was AT&T, which required another 10 minutes of interface truth or dare, only to find upon completion that I must go to my email and click the registration confirmation link to get online access. Wait a minute, I don't have internet access, how can I get into my email to click the confirmation to get internet access? I attempted to go down this path with my mobile device but the page is not optimized for mobile.
$5, 35 minutes, a stomach ache, and a brand experience that was not only disappointing and frustrating, but this experience instilled in me a deep emotional disgust towards Starbucks that I wanted to scream! HOW COULD THEY BE SO FREAKIN' STUPID THAT THEY WOULD ALLOW FOR ME TO GO DOWN THIS PATH???
I am sure some first-time Starbucks customers going online had a different experience and got access much easier than I did. But when so much time and energy is devoted to the whole-customer-coffee experience at Starbucks why was my experience allowed to be so awful? Why did they not ensure that my experience from gift card to internet access was seamless and easy? Especially when, upon asking, a barsita told me, "yeah, that really pisses-off a lot of people!"
So I drove to an independent coffee shop and had the document sent in less than 5 minutes, no charge!
