It's 50 in the UK. You need to go pretty much once a week to maintain gold status.
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Starbucks iOS App Gains Support for Apple Pay
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It's 50 in the UK. You need to go pretty much once a week to maintain gold status.
Or seven times a day for one intense and incredibly jittery week, during which you can talk at 900 words per minute and see through walls.
Seriously though, once you're gold, they have a lot of little promotions along the lines of "try X and get 3 bonus stars", or "earn Y stars this week and we'll give you Z bonus stars". If you take them up on a few promos you don't need to "earn" anywhere near the whole 50 (30 in the US) stars.
And with an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.1.3, Apple Pay as the only form of payment registered, and a decent balance already on the card... yeah, it crashes every time, at what seems like the point where iOS would be handing control back to the app.
They gotta get it working in one, first.
Mine crashes with every Apple Pay reload attempt.
Oh technology...
Well, actually...
You can set your Starbucks app up to automatically reload your card once it reaches a certain balance. For instance I have mine set to reload with $25 every time it gets down to $10.
And, you can put the SB card in Passbook.
And you can set Passbook up to automatically give you a lock screen notification when you walk into your favorite SB store, using geofencing.
So, with those features you walk into the store, pull your phone out of your pocket, swipe the notification and put your phone in front of the SB reader. Voila!
Also, for every 12 drinks I buy using this method I get a free drink (or food item).
Not to mention that I don't have to give my credit card to the Starbucks employee. In this day an age of employee credit card theft I am getting more and more sensitive to that. Granted, SB employees rarely get the opportunity to get out of your sight with your card (which is how most employee CC theft occurs). But anything that keeps my credit cards in my pocket, or even better yet allows me to leave them at home is a good thing.
Thanks for the clarification. This make sense and I can see that once it is set up it is easy to use when you walk into a starbucks. I dont frequent them enough, but based on your description, I can see that this could very well be worth setting up the app if you are a frequent visitor to SB. Maybe CurrentC will take the same approach.
Personally, I never liked storing a credit card number in the Starbucks account. Just one more place where it can be stolen. Much prefer Apple Pay.
Just make sure that nobody swipes your Starbucks card number; the Barista could then easily generate a barcode and use that to buy lots of coffee on your dime. Particularly useful for him if you have set up auto-reload.
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Agreed. It's the same CC on Apple Pay as what I have been using, so I see no reason not to move it over.
Multifactor authentication is why I use it. It allows me to add that security for services where I can't. It's a risk but it's less of a risk using known passwords for shared services without multifactor auth.
Has anyone else noticed that with the latest update, the app permanently keeps location services on? I shut down all my apps, and the location services icon in the status bar at the top never went away. Ended up disabling it just for Starbucks.
It's a shame, because the version before worked great with location services, and didn't abuse it like the new version does.
I'm surprised at how bad the Starbucks mobile team is (are they a 3rd party app developer)? Can't optimize for 6/6 Plus, crashes on reload, permanent location services set to always on... yikes.
It's a shame, because the version before worked great with location services, and didn't abuse it like the new version does.
I'm surprised at how bad the Starbucks mobile team is (are they a 3rd party app developer)? Can't optimize for 6/6 Plus, crashes on reload, permanent location services set to always on... yikes.
Thanks for letting me know, I was wondering why my location icon wasn't disappearing. What a shame.
Agreed. I expected the update to include the larger resolution of the 6/6+ screens, so I was disappointed to find that was not the case.
I'm also not cool with the fact that it's tracking my location, even when the app is closed. They need to only track my location when I'm actually using the app.
My first thought as well. I don't really like the idea to manage several apps for paying my stuff. It's like carrying around an extra wallet for every store you visit in town...
Spoke with a customer service representative this afternoon who stated that the crashing issue has been identified and their technical team is working on a fix.
Starbucks iOS App Gains Support for Apple Pay
Starbucks already has a mobile payments system that works rather well, so they don't think it's worth it to rebuild the system. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Starbucks generally isn't very good at making apps.
30MB of my mobile data is taken up monthly by Starbucks re-downloading my Card artwork whenever I open up the app to pay, check my rewards, etc.
Starbucks already has a mobile payments system that works rather well, so they don't think it's worth it to rebuild the system. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Starbucks generally isn't very good at making apps.
30MB of my mobile data is taken up monthly by Starbucks re-downloading my Card artwork whenever I open up the app to pay, check my rewards, etc.
Finally! I've been waiting for this. It's annoying having to update my cards and such.
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Yup, it happened to me last night. Turned off location access for the app.
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Yup, it happened to me last night. Turned off location access for the app.
It crashed when I attempted to add money to my Starbucks card on yesterday. It worked when I tried it this evening.
I think the US get a much better deal with your rewards programme. We have some "earn extra stars" but they usually come attached to something more. The last one I think was to earn 8 stars in a week and you'd get double stars. Still required you to go more than once a day for at least a week.
Plus we have to earn 15 stars to get a free drink versus the US's 12.
I believe the only thing we seem to have is free syrups/soy milk and free unlimited extra shots at gold level. I couldn't see these on the US site.
The app has just been updated with a fix for a "bug related to reload with Apple Pay" (presumably the crashes that some people experienced).
Just updated and it is still crashing. Did delete, restart and redownloaded the app. If anyone has figured this figured out, I'd like to know.
IT WORKS!!!
Just loaded the update, Starbucks app v3.2.2, and was able to add $10 to my Starbucks balance using Apple Pay, in-app. it seemed to be extremely picky about the address for the card, first attempt kicked out an error, so I tapped on the address and reentered it - the address was correct, I think either adding the last 4 digits of the 5+4 zip code, or letting it update so the country (US) shows, made it happy. But it didn't crash (now, compared to the day the last version came out), it just complained mid-authorization.
I had deleted my credit card and paypal connection (the latter added recently on a whim) from the Starbucks app the other day, so it only has Apple Pay to work with now. And this is an iPhone 6 on Verizon (and bought through Verizon, because they let me upgrade several months early), with iOS 8.1.3. And now that I've done it once, Apple Pay is the default on the reload screen. Cool.
I know some of you are likely still having problems - my sympathies to you (included lots of details above in case it helps). Just wanted to say it has worked in at least one case now, where it was crashing before.
Just loaded the update, Starbucks app v3.2.2, and was able to add $10 to my Starbucks balance using Apple Pay, in-app. it seemed to be extremely picky about the address for the card, first attempt kicked out an error, so I tapped on the address and reentered it - the address was correct, I think either adding the last 4 digits of the 5+4 zip code, or letting it update so the country (US) shows, made it happy. But it didn't crash (now, compared to the day the last version came out), it just complained mid-authorization.
I had deleted my credit card and paypal connection (the latter added recently on a whim) from the Starbucks app the other day, so it only has Apple Pay to work with now. And this is an iPhone 6 on Verizon (and bought through Verizon, because they let me upgrade several months early), with iOS 8.1.3. And now that I've done it once, Apple Pay is the default on the reload screen. Cool.
I know some of you are likely still having problems - my sympathies to you (included lots of details above in case it helps). Just wanted to say it has worked in at least one case now, where it was crashing before.
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Ah, interesting. I think we used to get free syrups, or some such, but I don't see it now (it's not something I use, ordering mostly boringly standard things). And our doubling promotions are often structured like "in week X, earn 3 or more stars and we'll give you 3, or earn 5 to get 5, or earn 8 to get 8", so yeah, 8 for 8, but also partial bonuses for lesser amounts. (And I was guilty of rather US-centric thinking in my previous post - not surprising that their deals might be structured differently per-country.)
It is also entirely possible that they tailor some of these per-person, depending on their algorithms' perception of how much it takes to draw you in. I am not an everyday visitor of Starbucks, just here and there. Cheers!
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