Free Depending on Payment

This morning, at Starbucks, I went up to the counter to get a coffee refill. As I handed the barista my cup, I removed the lid as that is often their request. She takes my cup and promptly throws it away. She then gets a new cup and "refills" my coffee, though I'm not technically sure it can be called a refill since it's in a new cup. Either way, it's only 54 cents as opposed to $1.87, and free when I pay with my Starbucks card.

[Yisrael Campbell, 'What's Wrong With Starbucks Is Also What's Wrong With America', Huffington Post, 11 May 2010.]

The bold is mine, of course.

Sometimes I'm trying to read a little article, maybe just looking at the beginning to see whether I'm going to read the rest, when I get hung up on something that I just can't get past, so that it becomes yet another something that I never finished reading.

Maybe it's my fault with old-fashioned, curmudgeonly literal thinking or something, but I can't understand* "…it's free when I pay with my Starbucks card."

If she used her designated cash card to "pay" for the refill, it was free, in which case no monetary units changed accounts, no recognized financial transaction took place, and I can perceive no way in which the designated cash card was "used", suggesting that the designated cash card was not "used", in which case she would have had to pay the $1.87 cash "refill" price, for which she might have then been able to "use" the designated cash card.

Or something.
———-
* As it turns out I'm not even bothered by the question that troubles the author, whether it can be considered a "refill" if a new cup is used; I'm happy to accept "refilling" as a process that can be somewhat flexible in what goes where.

Posted on May 11, 2010 at 17.48 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Laughing Matters

One Response

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  1. Written by BearToast Joe
    on Wednesday, 12 May 2010 at 16.08
    Permalink

    One of the many reasons I avoid Starbucks. "Cash cards" are a rip off. They "give" you "discounts" when they get to hold on to your money.

    And, did one have to make the original purchase with the card? Or do you just show them the card? If they swipe the card for your "refill" does it deduct something? I've got an old Starbucks card (a gift), if I show it to them do I get free refills?

    And don't even get me started on the VISA cash cards you get for rebates. Oh. . . . . .

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