How to Complain to Starbucks

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 1, 6:45AM EDT

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Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX | SBUX Price Prediction) shareholders are tired of poor results. Long wait times frustrate customers.
There are ways for customers and investors to let the company know how they feel.
Also: 2 Dividend Legends to Hold Forever.

Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) announced weak earnings. Its stock has remained sharply down for the past year. Critics have given several reasons, including long lines and people having to wait five, 10, or more minutes for drinks and food. One fault is that people who order with Starbucks apps compete for time with those who order in stores and drive-throughs. This particularly happens in the mornings.

Company management says it has begun to attack the long wait problem. Among the solutions is what the coffee chain calls the “Siren Craft System.” It will change the workflow in its stores and get workers to focus more on customer orders. This will be added to the efficiency its more modern drink and food making has been designed for. Since earnings were announced, it may take another three months to see if management has addressed the wait time and customer satisfaction problems.

Contacting Starbucks

Since people might want to register their opinions before three months are up, Starbucks has a way for them to comment. It is part of its “Customer Contact Center.” The URL: customerservice.starbucks.com.

Some of the categories in the service center won’t be very useful. There is a section about company information, which is largely about COVID-19 policies and data breaches. The “Coffee at Home” section teaches people how to use packaged coffee bought at Starbucks or other chain stores.

The “mobile” section of the customer contact center is very helpful for those who use the Starbucks app. The “Starbucks Rewards” and “Starbucks Card” sections are equally useful. The “In-Store” section covers why people can’t get their favorite drinks, the eggnog latte, and the Juneteenth holiday. “Wait times” does not appear in this section.

There is an email address for people who own Starbucks stock: [email protected]. It may be an excellent place to write for shareholders who have lost money in the stock.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.